(APPIATSE, Ghana) — A town in Ghana was rocked by a huge explosion Thursday that sent several people to the hospital, the authorities said.
The Ghana Police Service announced that the explosion took place around 3 p.m. local time in the town of Appiatse, between Bogoso and Bawdie. Buildings and structures were gutted, and debris was scattered in the streets.
A preliminary investigation has determined that the explosion appears to have been caused by a mining vehicle carrying explosives, traveling from Tarkwa to the Chirano mines, colliding with a motorcycle, police said.
“The public has been advised to move out of the area to nearby towns for their safety while recovery efforts are underway,” police said in a statement.
First responders and residents scrambled to find victims, with some using construction vehicles to clear debris. Smoke from the explosion could be seen miles away.
Police said victims had been taken to area hospitals but didn’t provide any details on the number of victims or the extent of their injuries. The number of fatalities isn’t immediately known.
“An appeal is also being made to nearby towns to open up their classrooms, churches, etc. to accommodate surviving victims,” police said.
(MIAMI) — A first-class passenger who allegedly refused to wear a mask disrupted a London-bound American Airlines flight Wednesday night and prompted the pilot to turn back to Miami so the customer could be booted off the aircraft, police and airline officials said.
American Airlines Flight 38, with 129 passengers and 14 crew members aboard, was over the Atlantic Ocean when the passenger allegedly refused to obey instructions to wear a mask and became disruptive, a spokesperson for the airline said.
The flight departed Miami International Airport at about 7:40 p.m. local time. About an hour into the flight, the pilot decided to turn the Boeing 777 aircraft around and head back to Miami, according to the airline.
The flight was ultimately canceled and the passengers needed to rebook on future flights, the airline’s spokesperson said.
“The flight landed safely at MIA where local law enforcement met the aircraft. We thank our crew for their professionalism and apologize to our customers for the inconvenience,” American Airlines said in a statement.
Steve Freeman, a passenger on the flight, told ABC Miami affiliate WPLG the woman was verbally abusive to the flight crew.
“She sat behind us in first class — she was a first-class passenger and was extremely abusive to the stewards,” said Freeman, who was flying home to London. “I could see the writing on the wall — they gave her a lot of warnings, so we were kind of ready for it.”
He said flight attendants tried to offer the passenger several different masks.
“She complained about each mask,” Freeman said.
Det. Argemis Colome of the Miami-Dade Police Department told ABC News on Thursday that police were contacted by American Airlines about a disruptive female passenger refusing to wear a mask.
Colome said police officers met the plane when it returned to the Miami International Airport. He said officers escorted the passenger off the plane, but she was not arrested or charged.
Colome said the woman, whose name was not released, was turned over to American Airlines officials to handle administratively.
A spokesperson for American Airlines told ABC News on Thursday that the woman has been placed on the airline’s internal no-fly list pending an investigation. Such incidents are referred to the Federal Aviation Administration as part of a standard reporting process, the spokesperson said.
(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden announced the nomination of Nusrat Jahan Choudhury to the federal judiciary Wednesday, who, if confirmed by the Senate, would become the first Muslim American woman to serve as a federal judge. She is also the first Muslim American woman to be nominated to the federal judiciary.
Choudhury was nominated to sit on the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York and is also the first Bangladeshi American to be nominated to the federal bench. She would be the second Muslim American appointed to a federal judgeship, according to the White House announcement.
“These choices also continue to fulfill the President’s promise to ensure that the nation’s courts reflect the diversity that is one of our greatest assets as a country,” the statement read.
Choudhury is currently the legal director at the Illinois division of the American Civil Liberties Union and previously served as the deputy director of the national ACLU Racial Justice Program. She is a graduate of Yale Law School, Columbia University and Princeton University.
The other nominees include Arianna Freeman, who would be the first African American woman to serve on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals; Ana Isabel de Alba, who would be the first Latina to serve on the Eastern District of California; and Nina Nin-Yuen Wang, who would be the second Asian American to serve the United States District Court. Tiffany Cartwright, Robert Steven Huie, Natasha Merle and Jennifer Rearden round out the president’s first set of nominees for 2022 and the 13th of his presidency.
The selections align with Biden’s goal of nominating more women and people of color to serve on the bench, jobs that come with a lifetime appointment. The trend is in stark contrast to his predecessor.
Former President Donald Trump’s nominees were 85% white and 76% of them were men, according to the Alliance for Justice advocacy group. To date, 78% of Biden’s confirmations have been women and 53% have been people of color, according to the White House.
Democrats have pushed Biden to make federal court nominations a priority after Trump and former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell made a concerted effort to shape the nation’s courts.
Over the course of one term, Trump had 245 judges confirmed compared with Former President Barack Obama’s 334 confirmed judges across two terms according to the United States Courts.
As of Jan, 1, however, Biden had gotten the most federal judges confirmed in a president’s first year in office since former President Ronald Reagan.
(ATLANTA) — A Georgia prosecutor investigating possible criminal behavior by former President Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election has officially requested to seat a special grand jury, according to a letter obtained by ABC News.
The development is a major step forward in the only publicly known criminal investigation into Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
In a letter Thursday to Fulton County Chief Judge Christopher Brasher, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis wrote that the move is needed because “a significant number of witnesses and prospective witnesses have refused to cooperate with the investigation absent a subpoena requiring their testimony.”
Willis officially launched the probe last February, after Trump was heard in a recorded phone call pushing Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to help him “find 11,780 votes,” the exact number Trump needed to win Georgia in the 2020 presidential election.
Willis says that Raffensperger is one of those who will not comply with the investigation without a subpoena, based on comments he made in an interview with NBC.
In response to Willis’ request, Trump, in a statement, said, “My phone call to the Secretary of State of Georgia was perfect, perhaps even more so than my call with the Ukrainian President, if that’s possible.” The reference was to the phone call Trump made to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky ahead of the 2020 election asking him to dig up dirt on his political rival Joe Biden; Trump was ultimately impeached for that call, but the Senate did not convict him.
“I didn’t say anything wrong in the call,” Trump said of his call to Raffensperger. “No more political witch hunts!”
If empaneled, the special grand jury will not have the authority to return an indictment, according to the Willis’ letter. Instead it may “make recommendations concerning criminal prosecution as it shall see fit,” the letter said.
A majority of the judges on the Fulton County Superior Court will have to vote to approve the request in order for the special grand jury to be seated, according to Georgia state law.
Describing his Jan. 2 call with Trump in an exclusive interview with ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos last year, Raffensperger said that Trump “did most of the talking.”
“We did most of the listening,” Raffensperger said. “But I did want to make my points that the data that he has is just plain wrong.”
ABC News’ Steve Osunsami and Brandon Baur contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — Ahead of a key meeting on Friday between the U.S. and Russia, the Biden administration on Thursday pushed a full-scale campaign to pressure Moscow as Russian leader Vladimir Putin weighs a possible attack on its neighbor Ukraine.
The U.S. approved its NATO allies in the Baltics to provide additional arms to Ukraine, including critical anti-aircraft missiles that escalate U.S. support. The U.S. Treasury sanctioned four Ukrainian officials it accused of working with Russian intelligence, including to form a new government backed by Russian occupying forces. The State Department blasted a Russian disinformation campaign it said was part of its “pretext” to invade Ukraine and “divide the international reaction to its actions.”
One day before his sit-down with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, Secretary of State Antony Blinken tried to push back on Russia’s narrative and make clear just how high the stakes are in the standoff.
“It’s bigger than a conflict between two countries. It’s bigger than Russia and NATO. It’s a crisis with global consequences, and it requires global attention and action,” the top U.S. diplomat said in Berlin, hours after meeting his German, French, and British counterparts to coordinate a response.
That coordination has had tremendous doubt cast on it after President Joe Biden said Wednesday that the NATO alliance was not united about how to respond to aggression from Russia that fell short of an all-out attack on Ukraine — an uncomfortable truth that U.S. and NATO officials have tried to paper over for weeks.
After the White House scrambled to clean that up, Biden himself clarified on Thursday, “If any — any — assembled Russian units move across the Ukrainian border, that is an invasion. But — and it will be met with severe and coordinated economic response that I’ve discussed in detail with our allies.”
But the challenge remains of what the U.S. and its allies will do if Russia attacks Ukraine with the same gray-zone tactics it has used for the last eight years, as it annexed Crimea, launched a war in eastern Ukraine, and began a slow-motion annexation of those provinces.
That war, which has killed approximately 14,000 people, rages on in fits and starts on the frontlines — and in cyberspace. Ukrainian government websites were hacked in “”the largest cyberattack on Ukraine in the last four years,” a Ukrainian cyber official said Wednesday, and Moscow has launched a “disinformation storm” portraying Ukraine as the aggressor and trying to “build public support for a further Russian invasion,” a senior State Department official said Thursday.
The Kremlin’s campaign to destabilize its smaller, democratic neighbor allegedly includes spies on the ground, collecting information and even plotting to form a new Ukrainian government.
“Russia has directed its intelligence services to recruit current and former Ukrainian government officials to prepare to take over the government of Ukraine and to control Ukraine’s critical infrastructure with an occupying Russian force,” the U.S. Treasury said in a statement.
The U.S. has sanctioned two sitting members of Ukrainian parliament, Taras Kozak and Oleh Voloshyn, who it accused of furthering a plot by the FSB, Russia’s main security agency and the successor of the KGB. The agency, which Biden said Wednesday has forces on the ground in Ukraine, is “destabilizing the political situation in Ukraine and laying the groundwork for creating a new, Russian-controlled government in Ukraine,” Treasury added.
In the face of that effort, the U.S. is hoping that transparency can undercut any pretext Russian operatives or their Ukrainian colleagues may create — just as the White House last week accused the Kremlin of positioning operatives trained in urban warfare and explosives and planning a possible “false-flag” operation.
Russia has denied that, calling it “complete disinformation.” It has said repeatedly it does not plan to attack the former Soviet state, even as Putin warned that his demands, including barring Ukraine from joining NATO, be met or Russia will take “military technical” measures.
The U.S. is taking its own military measures, approving the transfer of more weaponry to Ukraine — this time from Lithuania, Estonia, and Latvia, a State Department spokesperson confirmed, while declining to say what weapons exactly.
But a Lithuanian Ministry of Defense source told ABC News the country was given the green light to transfer to Ukraine Javelin anti-tank missiles and Stinger portable surface-to-air missiles. The Baltic state wanted to send the weapons even earlier, but because they were originally U.S. provided, it needed American approval, which only came during consultations Wednesday, the source said.
Stingers are a kind of man-portable air-defense system, or MANPAD, where an individual soldier can carry the weapon and use it to down fighter aircraft. Javelins, which the Trump administration provided after the Obama administration had refused, have become an important weapon for Ukraine to pierce Russian-made tanks, which could come rolling across the border in an invasion .
Ukraine’s military capacity still pales in comparison to Russia’s overwhelming military superiority, and it’s unclear how many missiles are being provided. Lithuania has only 54 of the missiles in its inventory and only eight launchers from which to fire them from, meaning the amount provided to Ukraine will likely be even lower.
Still, Stingers in particular represent a symbolic threshold that previous administrations had not crossed. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., who was in Kyiv earlier this week as part of a bipartisan congressional delegation, warned Thursday that in this “very fragile time… it would not be helpful to give Putin an excuse to invade Ukraine, so I think we’ve got to be very thoughtful about how we address some of these issues like a missile system.”
Russia has already warned that it sees any Western weapons provided to Ukraine as a threat, especially after the U.S. announced $200 million in new military aid ($650 million total over the last year) and the United Kingdom announced it provided anti-tank missiles.
Russia, however, has warned that it sees any Western weapons provided to Ukraine as a threat.
“We underline the necessity of ceasing boosting the war-like Ukrainian regime with arms deliveries … and a lot else that represents a direct threat for us,” Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said Wednesday.
But Blinken pushed back on that Thursday in a major speech, disputing the Russian narrative and making clear Moscow is the aggressor.
“On its face, that’s absurd. NATO didn’t invade Georgia, NATO didn’t invade Ukraine – Russia did,” he said, adding NATO neighbors account for six percent of Russia’s borders and have 5,000 allied troops in those countries, while Russia has massed 20 times that around Ukraine.
There has been tense speculation about whether Putin will attack Ukraine, with Biden saying Wednesday he believes the strongman leader will “move in.” But Blinken said Thursday the U.S. still believes he has not made up his mind yet, but added his animus towards Ukraine has long been known.
“He’s told us repeatedly – he’s laying the groundwork for an invasion because he doesn’t believe that Ukraine is a sovereign nation,” Blinken said.
That argument has been a key part of Russia’s disinformation ecosystem, which has been in overdrive in recent weeks, according to senior State Department officials.
Russia’s military and intelligence entities have deployed 3,500 posts per day in December — an increase of 200 percent from November — as they seek to “create conditions conducive to success of attempted aggression in Ukraine and elsewhere and to divide the international reaction to its actions,” a senior State Department official told reporters.
“These are not just public statements from Russia’s MFA accounts … These are broader campaigns using shell companies, false names, and layers to conceal the real backers and their intentions,” a second senior State Department official said, calling it “a war on truth.”
Russia must pull back its propaganda campaign in addition to its troops on Ukraine’s borders, the official added, echoing previous U.S. calls for de-escalation to give diplomacy a shot.
Whether or not diplomacy has a shot will be tested again Friday in Geneva, where Blinken and Lavrov will meet. A senior State Department official said earlier in the week that the meeting itself is a sign the door to diplomacy remains open, but the two sides continue to talk past each other.
The two diplomats will “discuss draft agreements on security guarantees,” Russia’s embassy in Washington tweeted Thursday – a reference to its demands that NATO bar Ukraine from joining and pull back forces from Eastern European member states. But U.S. officials have repeatedly called those “nonstarters,” and Blinken said Wednesday in Kyiv he would not be “presenting a paper” to Lavrov in response.
That has raised fears that Moscow is simply using diplomatic talks to see them fail – yet another pretext before an attack. But regardless of whether there’s a full-born assault, Russia has now effectively shaken Ukraine once again. Its president Volodymyr Zelenskyy tried to reassure the nation late Wednesday, even pushing back on the U.S. warnings that the threat is more urgent.
“These risks have been there for more than one day, and they haven’t grown nowadays – there is just more buzz around them,” he said in a televised address.
ABC’s Dada Jovanovic contributed to this report from Belgrade, Serbia, Patrick Reevell from Kyiv, Ukraine, and Luis Martinez from the Pentagon.
(NEW YORK) — Many continue to worry about experiencing side effects from vaccines — especially the COVID-19 vaccines — but new data from a comprehensive meta-analysis suggests there is little to fear.
The study from Beth Isreal Deaconess Medical Center found that a large number of side effects reported by patients after receiving their shot can be attributed to the placebo effect.
Researchers examined 12 vaccine safety trials, involving thousands of people, and compared rates of side effects reported between those who received a placebo shot and those who received a real shot. They found that after the first shot, two-thirds of people experienced side effects like headache and fatigue, which the researchers said were attributable to the placebo effect. Shockingly, nearly a quarter of the people — some who received the placebo shot — experienced side effects like a sore arm, also attributable to the placebo effect.
What is the placebo effect?
The placebo effect occurs when people anticipate a medical treatment will have certain effects, so much so that they perceive the outcomes they were expecting after the treatment.
It is a well-known phenomenon among scientists and is important to investigate when developing vaccines and medicines, according to Dr. William Schaffner, professor of preventive medicine and infectious disease at Vanderbilt University.
“After the injection, people are more aware now that they think they might have gotten a vaccine. They’re more likely to tell their doctor about things,” Schaffner said. “Never underestimate the power of the human mind.”
Experts say the placebo effect is a powerful example of the connection between our minds, bodies and circumstances.
In the study, the amount of side effects attributable to the placebo effect decreased to about half after the people studied received a second shot. Frequency of side effects was lower among placebo recipients after the second shot, while the opposite was true for vaccine recipients. This helps reinforce the placebo effect phenomenon, experts said.
Researchers noted one caveat is that the studies examined included different phases of clinical trials, and results were not standardized throughout.
Experts address vaccine hesitancy
With the omicron surge still straining hospitals across America, addressing vaccine hesitancy remains a crucial discussion.
Experts interviewed by ABC News said that if more people knew that experiencing side effects from the COVID-19 vaccines is not as common as they think, more people may be encouraged to get vaccinated.
“When people are armed with information, they are better suited to identify and manage their symptoms,” Dr. Simone Wildes, infectious disease physician at South Shore Health, said. “This might also help those who are reluctant to get vaccinated.”
Aubrie Ford, D.O. is an emergency medicine resident at Northwell Health in New York and a contributor to the ABC News Medical Unit.
(WASHINGTON) — The House select committee investigating the Capitol attack requested on Thursday that Ivanka Trump cooperate with its investigation and asked her to testify regarding conversations with her father, former President Donald Trump, before and on Jan. 6, 2021, as they pertain to the attack and the challenging of election results.
In a new letter addressed to the former president’s daughter, Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., requested she voluntary provide an interview with the committee, citing her presence in the Oval Office.
“As January 6th approached, President Trump attempted on multiple occasions to persuade Vice President Pence to participate in his plan. One of the President’s discussions with the Vice President occurred by phone on the morning of January 6th. You were present in the Oval Office and observed at least one side of that telephone conversation,” Thompson says in the letter.
“[T]he Committee would like to discuss any other conversations you may have witnessed or participated in regarding the President’s plan to obstruct or impede the counting of electoral votes,” the letter says.
Thompson wrote that the panel’s questions to Trump’s eldest daughter, who also served as a senior adviser in the White House for four years, would be “limited to issues relating to January 6th, the activities that contributed to or influenced events on January 6th, and your role in the White House during that period.”
“The Committee is aware that certain White House staff devoted time during the violent riot to rebutting questions regarding whether the President was attempting to hold up deployment of the guard[…],” it says in the letter. “But the Committee has identified no evidence that President Trump issued any order, or took any other action, to deploy the guard that day. Nor does it appear that President Trump made any calls at all to the Department of Justice or any other law enforcement agency to request deployment of their personnel to the Capitol.”
In a press release Thursday announcing the letter, the committee said the evidence it has already obtained shows “that Ms. Trump was in direct contact with the former President at key moments on January 6th and that she may have information relevant to other matters critical to the Select Committee’s investigation.”
A spokesperson for Ivanka Trump responded to the letter in a statement but did not directly address whether she would voluntarily comply with the committee’s request.
“Ivanka Trump just learned that the January 6 Committee issued a public letter asking her to appear. As the Committee already knows, Ivanka did not speak at the January 6 rally,” the statement says. “As she publicly stated that day at 3:15pm, ‘any security breach or disrespect to our law enforcement is unacceptable. The violence must stop immediately. Please be peaceful.'”
Notably, the spokesperson omitted part of the now-deleted tweet from Jan. 6, 2021, where she referred to those breaching the Capitol as “American Patriots,” before calling for an end to the violence.
And while she did not deliver remarks at the rally that day, she was present backstage and seen in a video speaking with her father while viewing video of the crowd.
The former president has repeatedly attempted to discredit the work of the committee and has urged his allies and aides not to comply.
Earlier this week, the select committee subpoenaed former Trump lawyers Rudy Giuliani, Jenna Ellis and Sidney Powell, who pushed unfounded claims of widespread 2020 election fraud. ABC News also confirmed that the committee acquired phone records from Trump’s son, Eric, and Kimberly Guilfoyle, the fiancee of Donald Trump Jr.
In the six months since it was created, the select committee has interviewed more than 350 witnesses, received more than 300 substantive tips and issued more than 50 subpoenas — for phone and email records, Trump administration documents, witness testimony and bank records, according to the committee’s public disclosures and lawsuits filed by witnesses.
The panel has also received nearly 40,000 pages of records — including text messages, emails and Trump administration documents provided by the National Archives in four separate tranches.
The request to Trump’s daughter comes on the heels of the Supreme Court on Wednesday denying the former president’s request for a stay of a lower court mandate that hundreds of pages of his presidential records from Jan. 6 be turned over to the congressional committee — a huge win for the panel, which is planning to issue an interim report on its findings over the summer.
ABC News’ John Santucci, Will Steakin and Libby Cathey contributed to this report.
Stephen Lam/ The San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images
(SAN FRANCISCO) — An individual with two guns was “neutralized” near the San Francisco International Airport’s Bay Area Rapid Transit entrance, temporarily delaying BART service Thursday morning, officials said.
When officers responded to the airport’s international terminal in front of the BART station entrance, they tried to de-escalate the situation, but the suspect kept showing “threatening behavior,” airport spokesperson Doug Yakel said.
Police “engaged non-lethal measures,” but the gunman “continued to advance, at which time SFPD officers fired shots to neutralize the threat,” Yakel said.
ABC San Francisco station KGO reported that the suspect has died.
One bystander suffered minor injuries and has been treated and released, he noted.
The incident didn’t impact any airport operations, Yakel said. BART service to the airport was temporarily suspended and has since resumed.
“The entire incident happened in the terminal. It didn’t happen at BART. It was near the entrance of our station but not at our station,” a BART spokesperson said.
(WASHINGTON) — One day after President Joe Biden appeared to cast doubt on whether the midterm election results will be legitimate without the passage of a new voting rights law, his vice president and press secretary worked to dispel any mistrust in the integrity of the vote.
“Speaking of voting rights legislation, if this isn’t passed, do you still believe the upcoming election will be fairly conducted and its results will be legitimate?” a reporter asked Biden Wednesday at a lengthy press conference marking the end of his first year in office.
“Well, it all depends on whether or not we’re able to make the case to the American people that some of this is being set up to try to alter the outcome of the election,” Biden said.
“I’m not saying it’s not going to be legit, it’s the increase in the prospect of being illegitimate is in direct proportion to us not being able to get these, these reforms passed,” Biden told another reporter who followed up on his assertion that the integrity of the results “depends” on passing voting rights legislation.
Early Thursday, White House press secretary Jen Psaki tweeted, refuting the notion Biden believes there’s a possibility the election results will be questionable.
“Lets be clear: @potus was not casting doubt on the legitimacy of the 2022 election. He was making the opposite point: In 2020, a record number of voters turned out in the face of a pandemic, and election officials made sure they could vote and have those votes counted,” she said.
“He was explaining that the results would be illegitimate if states do what the former president asked them to do after the 2020 election: toss out ballots and overturn results after the fact. The Big Lie is putting our democracy at risk. We’re fighting to protect it.”
Lets be clear: @potus was not casting doubt on the legitimacy of the 2022 election. He was making the opposite point: In 2020, a record number of voters turned out in the face of a pandemic, and election officials made sure they could vote and have those votes counted.
Psaki also appeared on Fox News, saying directly that Biden “was not making a prediction” about the legitimacy of the results.
“I talked to the president a lot about this and he is not predicting that the 2022 elections would be illegitimate,” Psaki said on “America’s Newsroom.” “… The point he was making the former president asked seven or more states to overturn the outcome of the election. Now obviously if there is an effort to do that we have to fight against it. That’s what our commitment is to doing, but he was not making a prediction. He has confidence in the American people and do everything we can to protect people’s rights.”
But a major Biden ally, Rep. Jim Clyburn, D-S.C., whose support for Biden in the critical primary state of South Carolina changed the trajectory of the 2020 primary, expressed agreement on the idea that the 2022 results could be questionable in a CNN interview Thursday.
“Are you concerned that without these voting rights bills the election results won’t be legitimate?” CNN’s Kasie Hunt asked Clyburn.
“I’m absolutely concerned about that,” Clyburn said.
Vice President Kamala Harris, appearing on all three broadcast network morning shows Thursday to dispel confusion over several comments from the press conference, argued the attention should remain on protecting the right to vote, dismissing questions surrounding election integrity.
“Let’s not conflate issues. What we are looking, and the topic of so much debate last night, was that we as America cannot afford to allow this blatant erosion of our democracy, and in particular, the right of all Americans who are eligible to vote to have access to the ballot unfettered. That is the topic of the conversation. Let’s not be distracted by the political gamesmanship,” Harris said on NBC’s “Today” program.
(NEW YORK) — About 4.6 million Black people in the U.S. — roughly 1 in 10 — are immigrants, and that figure could more than double to 9.5 million by 2060, according to a study by Pew Research Center.
Pew based its calculations in the study, released Thursday, on Census data collected from from 2006 to 2019 through community surveys.
“The nation’s immigrant population has been, to some extent, largely driven by trends from Latin America and Asia,” said Mark Lopez, director of race and ethnicity research for Pew and a coauthor of the study. “But African and particularly Black immigrant trends have become a growing part of the story of the nation’s immigrant population overall.”
Lopez noted that in addition to the roughly 10% of Blacks who came from anther country, another 9% were born in the U.S. from an immigrant parent, meaning “the immigrant experience is not far from the daily life experiences of about 1 in 5 Black Americans today.”
In 2019, New York (about 900,000) and Florida (about 800,000) had the most Black immigrants, according to the study.
“Our report is part of a broader research agenda to understand the diversity of the country, including the diversity of the nation’s Black population,” Lopez added.
Abraham Paulos, deputy director of Black Alliance for Just Immigration, which is based in Brooklyn, said Black immigrants and those who’ve lived in the U.S. longer face many of the same challenges.
“I think whatever is happening in Black America is also happening to Black immigrants,” said Paulos, noting America’s historically discriminatory criminal justice system, police brutality and housing inequality. Many of those represented by BAJI also struggle to unionize and to advocate for better working conditions.
Most Black immigrants, the study showed, came from Jamaica (about 760,000) and Haiti (about 700,000) from 2009 to 2019, and many of them, Paulos noted, also faced comparatively more difficult acclimation periods, including more discrimination, than some from other nations.
In September, thousands of Haitian asylum seekers camped under a bridge in Del Rio, Texas. The Biden administration came under fire when images were released showing Customs and Border Patrol officers using horses to push back migrants crossing the Rio Grande into the U.S. And in December, a group of Haitian migrants sued the Biden administration, alleging mistreatment in that incident.
“Haiti is a great example,” Paulos said. “I think with the Haitian immigrant, I think it is probably the best analogy to sort of get a window into how Black Americans are treated by the immigration apparatus.”
