In 1927, the United States deported one of the most influential figures in Black American history. His name was Marcus Mosiah Garvey, a Jamaican immigrant whose vision of Black economic independence and global unity awakened millions. Garvey was not deported because he posed a physical threat. He was deported because he posed an ideological threat.
Garvey arrived in the United States in 1916 and quickly built the largest mass movement of Black people the modern world had ever seen. Through the Universal Negro Improvement Association, he inspired Black Americans to see themselves not as victims of oppression, but as architects of their own economic and political destiny. His message of self-reliance, ownership, and pride resonated deeply among Black communities living under the weight of Jim Crow segregation and racial violence.
However, Garvey was also an immigrant, and in America, being both Black and immigrant has long carried its own risks.
In 1923, Garvey was convicted of mail fraud in connection with the Black Star Line, his ambitious shipping company, created to connect Black people across the global diaspora. Many historians have argued that the charges were politically motivated, fueled by a government deeply uncomfortable with Garvey’s growing influence. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover himself viewed Garvey as a dangerous agitator.
After serving nearly two years in prison, Garvey was deported to Jamaica in 1927 — but his removal did not erase his ideas. It only proved how threatening those ideas were to the status quo. Garvey’s deportation is a reminder that immigration enforcement in America has never existed in isolation. It has often intersected with race, power, and politics in ways that reflect the anxieties of the moment. Immigration law has not only been used to regulate borders but, at times, to regulate influence and silence voices deemed disruptive.
Despite his deportation, Garvey’s legacy became foundational to Black American progress. His philosophy directly influenced leaders such as Malcolm X, the son of a Grenadian immigrant mother, and Kwame Ture, born Stokely Carmichael in Trinidad and Tobago, who became a central figure in the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements; Shirley Chisholm, the first Black woman elected to Congress and the first Black candidate for president from a major party, who was the daughter of Barbadian immigrants; Colin Powell, the son of Jamaican immigrants, who rose to become chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and U.S. Secretary of State.
The story of Black America cannot be told without the story of Caribbean immigrants. They helped build the intellectual, political, and cultural framework of modern Black identity in the United States. They were not outsiders. They were nation-builders.
Yet today, nearly a century later, immigrants — particularly Black and brown immigrants — are once again being detained, deported, and vilified under the justification of law and order. The language may be modern. The policies may be updated. The underlying tension — who belongs, who is welcome, and who is seen as a threat — remains strikingly familiar.
Garvey’s story reminds us that this moment, however severe it may feel, is not entirely new. America has walked this road before. It has feared immigrants before. It has expelled them before. Even still, those immigrants helped shape the very future the nation now claims as its own.
Immigration enforcement removed Garvey from American soil, but it could not remove his influence from American history. His ideas endured. His legacy grew. His impact became irreversible.
Nearly a century later, as immigration raids intensify and immigrants are once again portrayed as threats rather than contributors, Garvey’s story offers both warning and perspective. The lesson is not that injustice disappears on its own. It is that enforcement cannot erase truth, contribution, or belonging.
America deported Marcus Garvey, but it could not deport the future he helped create.
Felicia J. Persaud is the founder and publisher of NewsAmericasNow.com, the only daily syndicated newswire and digital platform dedicated exclusively to Caribbean Diaspora and Black immigrant news across the Americas.