By Aswad Walker
There are moments in history when the warning signs are so clear that ignoring them becomes a choice. This is one of those moments.
Kristian A. Smith, founding pastor of The Faith Community (an inclusive, diverse, and primarily online “Bapticostal” church based in Atlanta), recently sounded an alarm that too many are still treating as background noise. Writing for The Root, Smith noted, “First, SCOTUS ruled that ICE can conduct warrantless arrests and searches while looking for undocumented immigrants, basically giving them permission to racially profile with zero accountability.”
Warrantless arrests. Warrantless searches. Zero accountability. In a nation where Black people have long been subjected to stop-and-frisk, pretextual traffic stops, and “fitting the description,” the idea that federal immigration agents now have judicial cover to racially profile should chill every Black household in America.
The Haitian Target
Some Blackfolk have comforted themselves with the notion that ICE raids are “about Latinos.” That illusion (which was never true) shattered on Feb. 3, when temporary protected status (TPS) for 350,000 Haitian immigrants was revoked, rendering them immediately vulnerable to deportation.
Haitians are not a footnote in the Black story. They are central to it. They are children of the first free Black republic in the Western Hemisphere, the spark that terrified enslavers across the Americas. The success of the Haitian Revolution inspired enslaved Africans in what is now America to revolt with even more fervor and intensity than before. Any freedoms Blackfolk in the U.S. have today can be traced directly back to the fierce bravery of our ancestral cousins from Haiti.
And now, in 21st-century America, they are being positioned as prime targets.
As Smith put it plainly. “Haitians are Black Americans. Same skin. Same accent in many cases.”
There is no visible difference between a Haitian immigrant and a Black person born in Houston, Chicago, or Atlanta. None. If ICE is empowered to profile while “looking for undocumented immigrants,” and if Haitians are squarely in their crosshairs, then every Black person becomes vulnerable.
And before anyone clings to citizenship papers as a shield, history warns us otherwise. When, in the “history of history,” has our citizenship ever blocked those with ill intent towards us from initiating anti-Black rhetoric, media images, executive orders, or physical attacks? U.S. citizenship has not stopped ICE from detaining — and in some cases deporting — American citizens. Mistakes, they call them. Administrative errors. But when your freedom is on the line, a bureaucratic “error” feels like a life sentence.
Profit Motive Behind the Raids
We must also confront the engine driving this machinery: profit.
The nation’s largest for-profit prison corporations, primarily CoreCivic and GEO Group, have openly described Trump-era ICE expansion as “unprecedented” and highly lucrative. Detention equals revenue. More raids equal more detainees. More detainees equal higher stock prices.
These billionaires are not wringing their hands over due process. They are studying spreadsheets.
Add to that the airlines contracted to transport detainees (i.e., Avelo Airlines). Add the for-profit education companies securing multimillion-dollar contracts to “educate” people inside detention centers. Add the developers converting massive business park facilities into detention complexes designed to hold 5,000 to 10,000 human beings at a time.
This is not random enforcement. This is an industry, one some are calling “Detention, Inc.” And industries do not scale down voluntarily. They scale up.
So, if ICE is now judicially shielded to profile, if Haitians (who are indistinguishable from millions of African Americans) are being targeted, and if corporations are salivating over detention profits, what do you think is going to happen?
We’d best prepare now for the coming Black ICE storm.
Survival, Solidarity, and Strategy
Preparation does not mean panic. It means discipline, clarity, and community. Smith offers practical steps rooted in survival and solidarity.
First, stay calm. If confronted, comply and show identification.
“It’s about survival,” he stresses. Escalation in the moment can cost you your freedom — or your life.
Second, organize now, especially in areas with large Haitian populations. Create neighborhood text chains to alert residents when ICE is spotted. Develop rapid-response networks. Form community self-defense groups. Make modern-day “Underground Railroad” plans so families know where to go and who to call if agents sweep through.
Do not wait until the vans are on your block to exchange phone numbers.
Third, get involved locally and register to vote. Federal policies may grab headlines, but local prosecutors, sheriffs, mayors, and county officials decide how eagerly they will cooperate. Or not. As ancestor Frederic Douglass said, “Power concedes nothing without a demand.” And that kind of pressure requires organization.
This is not about fearmongering. It is about pattern recognition. Black people in America have always had to read the weather before the storm hit, from slave patrols to Jim Crow to mass incarceration. The signs are here again.
When warrantless power meets racial profiling, when deportation policy meets Black skin, and when billion-dollar profits depend on full detention beds, the forecast is clear. We’d best prepare now.