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While much of the immigration discussion surrounds Central Americans, there is another population of asylum seekers that have been disproportionately targeted for deportations: Black immigrants. Advocacy group Black Alliance for Just Immigration (BAJI) has been working on behalf of this growing demographic, as we see with Lizania Cruz, an artist who is also a volunteer for BAJI, and Albert Saint-Jean, a BAJI organizer, who break down the very important work they do in New York City.

In this first of three parts, viewers learn about how BAJI is helping a young man who was born in Senegal but came to the U.S. with his family at the age of three. He is a living example of the extremes that people go through in order to secure safety from a humanitarian crisis in one country and seek refuge and opportunity in another. He is also one of more than 1 in 5 immigrants facing deportation on criminal grounds who is Black, according to statistics compiled for a 2016 report by BAJI and New York University School of Law. Nearly 9 percent of immigrants in the U.S. identify as Black.

21 Savage was a high-profile instance of what this young man has been facing, only without the same resources available to the wealthy rapper.

BAJI works to support these undocumented “Black immigrants and first-generation Black Americans” and make sure they get justice and fair treatment in their efforts to literally flee death and fight for asylum. This is their story.

Watch Part 2 by clicking here.

Watch Part 3 by clicking here.