The Racialized Retaliatory State: Weaponizing Immigration Law to Criminalize Dissent Criminalize Dissent

Just days before his ICE arrest in February 2019, 21 Savage, birth name—She’yaa Bin Abraham-Joseph—a British-born American rapper of Caribbean descent—performed a song on “The Tonight Show” that included lyrics critical of family separations at the United States–Mexico border and other injustices: “The gas was off, so we had to boil up the water/Been through some things so I can’t imagine my kids stuck at the border/Flint still need water/People was innocent, couldn’t get lawyer." A few days later, he was placed in immigration detention, and deportation proceedings were brought against him for overstaying his visa3 —ostensibly in retaliation for speaking out against the executive branch’s child separation policies.