Thirty-five years ago today, President Ronald Reagan signed the Anti-Drug Abuse Act (ADAA) of 1986 into law. It mandated long prison sentences for convictions for small amounts of crack, a form of cocaine then widely associated with Black sellers and users, and it permitted leniency for people caught with the pricier powder version of the same drug.
The legislation has since become one the most notorious artifacts of the bipartisan War on Drugs — a prime example of how lawmakers targeted Black communities for policing and incarceration. Last month, the House approved a bill to undo the sentencing disparities. If the Senate follows suit, it could bring relief to people locked up for years under the old law.
But a lesser-known section of the ADAA helped furnish a legacy that few in Congress want to roll back, even though it also enables the forced removal of people from their communities. This clause ordered the creation of a pilot project to use computers to link police with federal immigration agents in four cities. The goal was to make it easier to deport noncitizens accused of violating drug laws.
Over time, the initiative evolved and combined with others to form the basis for nationwide programs used to deport people charged with all sorts of offenses. Like the sentencing disparities between crack and powder cocaine, these programs are grounded in racial prejudice and driven by impulses to punish and exclude.
The growing emphasis on drugs, crime and immigrants in the 1980s reflected trends in specific places, including some that had been peripheral to earlier immigration policy debates. Six years before the Anti-Drug Abuse Act passed, South Florida saw the sudden arrival of nearly 125,000 Cubans in a mass migration known as the Mariel boatlift. An initially warm welcome quickly grew hostile.
First, reports circulated that some of the newcomers had been incarcerated before they left Cuba. Then the press highlighted claims about the violent and illicit activities of certain “Mariel Cubans,” particularly those working in the cocaine trade, which had carved out a hub in Miami as U.S. demand for the drug soared.
Long-standing associations of Blackness with criminality affected how Miamians saw the new arrivals, many of whom were people of African descent. Some Mariel Cubans broke laws, though they committed trespassing and robbery far more often than homicide. The public and politicians tended to exaggerate the threat they posed while ignoring how racial bias informed the targeted policing that brought many of them into the criminal legal system in the first place.