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Soon after being sworn into office for the second time, US President Donald Trump began delivering on his campaign promise of cracking down on illegal immigration by ordering mass deportation flights, and Caribbean nations have been closely monitoring developments.

According to a document released in November 2024 by the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), 97,148 Caribbean nationals were identified as part of its Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) initiative. As of the date of the ICE’s communiqué, there were 1,445,549 non-citizens on its non-detained docket with final orders of removal; people from Caribbean countries accounted for 6.72 per cent of the list.

The regional nations with the highest number of deportees on the list were Cuba (42,084), Haiti (32,363), and the Dominican Republic (12,699). Jamaica topped the list of English-speaking Caribbean countries with 5,120, followed by Guyana (1,236) and Trinidad and Tobago (1,197). This is just the list, not the actual number of people successfully deported, since “lack of cooperation from countries in accepting the return of their nationals may lead to ICE classifying those countries as uncooperative or at-risk of non-compliance.” Cuba has been deemed “uncooperative,” while Jamaica and St. Lucia are being considered at risk for non-compliance.

Legal protections under international conventions, as well as diplomatic and even logistical challenges, may also come into play, underscoring the nuances involved in regional migration to the United States, which has large and vibrant Caribbean diaspora communities. Naturally, the Trump administration’s deportation orders have helped fuel earnest online discussion about the issue.

Towards the end of January, two Caribbean Community (CARICOM) diplomats — Antigua’s ambassador to the US, Sir Ronald Sanders and Barbados’s ambassador to CARICOM, David Commissiong — advised that regional governments should prepare for an influx of deportees.

On his blog, Sanders noted that “the implications, particularly for Caribbean nationals, merit careful consideration.” One of the points to which he refers is the issue of a presidential Executive Order (EO) entitled “Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship,” which aims to discontinue citizenship by birth for children born in America to parents who are not US citizens or legal permanent residents themselves.

“This directly challenges the long-standing interpretation of the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution,” Sanders wrote. He further explained, “It is widely known that some nationals from foreign countries, including Latin America [and] the Caribbean, choose to have their children born in the US, hoping this will enable them […] to apply successfully for permanent residency or citizenship.”

While the EO does not have the power to strip those already born in the US of citizenship retroactively, there is the likelihood that children born to non-immigrant visa holders in the future will not be entitled to citizenship. “Until a court decision is made,” Sanders warned, “Caribbean nationals, particularly pregnant women, should expect stricter scrutiny when entering the US. Immigration officials are likely to examine the purpose of travel more closely, and denial of entry may occur if they suspect an intention to give birth in the country.”

Naturally, the deportation drive has undocumented migrants from the Caribbean nervous. While Sanders agreed that “it is the sovereign right of the US, and every other nation, to craft and implement their immigration policies,” the reality is that not every nation will cooperate in taking back their nationals. He did concede, however, that this position is “unlikely to be adopted by the majority of the English-speaking nations of the Caribbean [whose] societal character and principles would not permit them to turn their backs on their own.”

In that vein, St. Lucia’s Choice TV gauged local reaction to the probability of having to receive deported people. Most people agreed that the US — like any country — has the right to enforce its laws. Others were concerned about the repercussions of potential “criminals” on smaller island societies, many already grappling with violent crime. One man hoped that returning nationals would “get somewhere [they] can rest their head” — a valid concern since, over time, many migrants tend to lose touch with their Caribbean-based support systems.

Sanders, for his part, cautioned, “[A]bsorbing large numbers of deportees suddenly can have a disrupting effect on the social services of CARICOM governments, particularly in relation to healthcare and education. The additional strain could exacerbate unemployment and, potentially, contribute to a rise in crime rates.” He also suggested that — especially as “the US enjoys a significant balance of trade surplus with CARICOM countries, while its aid to the region constitutes less than 0.1 percent of its total aid budget,” Caribbean nations should be able to make “appropriate representation” to the US government if the challenges arising from mass deportations become “unmanageable.”

Prime minister of St. Vincent and the Grenadines Dr. Ralph Gonsalves has already expressed concerns over the limited information being provided about the criminal histories of Vincentian nationals on the deportation list, which he called “critical for reintegration.”

Ambassador David Commissiong, meanwhile, suggested that the next CARICOM summit — carded for mid-February — offers regional leaders an opportunity to create a shared policy regarding involuntary returning Caribbean nationals and discuss ways in which “we might help those people reintegrate into our societies.”

Part of the challenge is the language used in Caribbean societies around deportation, with terms like “mass deportation of citizens” often leading to negative perceptions of those involved. In Jamaica, for instance, the commonly used label “deportees” carries a negative stigma. Many who take offence to the term say it upholds the incorrect assumption that all deported immigrants are criminals – yet the correlation continues to be propagated in large part by local media.

The late Jamaican criminology professor Bernard Headly, a strong champion for change on the conceptualisation of the term “deportee,” once said that “deportees are, to their eternal detriment, viewed among the nation’s opportunity gatekeepers (notably in personnel offices and lending institutions) as generic criminal threats, “no matter the reason” for their deportation. “According to this narrative, nothing but more harm can thus be expected of and from them.”

However, the statistics often do not corroborate that view. Headly would often urge his students to be more critical in their thinking that “criminal or convicted deportees (not persons deported for simple immigration violations) are two types. One type, which constitutes the overwhelming majority, is of individuals convicted for sundry crimes, mostly drug offences, but also for crimes such as shoplifting and writing bad cheques.”

Professor Andy Knight, in an article for the Canada-based Caribbean Camera news magazine, one of the largest publications serving the diaspora community in that country, observed that that the deportations will have unavoidable ripple effects, including “the drying up of remittances coming from the US that normally benefit large numbers of families living in the Caribbean.” Remittances are a significant source of revenue for regional territories.

This, in addition to the Trump administration’s “America first” trade and economic policy, Knight argued, could have a negative impact on regional economies, just as its stance on the climate crisis is at loggerheads with the region’s interests. America’s new policies, he concluded — including the mass deportations — are putting a “new regional diplomacy” into play that has the potential to “create divisions within CARICOM, thus posing challenges to regional unity among small states in the Caribbean — states that are already faced with formidable external pressures and varying national interests.”