Patrice Lawrence talks with Felecia Russell, author of Amplifying Black Undocumented Student Voices in Higher Education.

Patrice Lawrence (PL): I am the executive director of UndocuBlack Network, a multigenerational network of Black immigrants fostering community, resources, and thriving lives. I am joined by Dr. Felecia Russell, Vice President of Campus Programs and Portal Initiatives at the Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration. An immigration scholar, practitioner, and former DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) recipient, Dr. Russell is a scholar of Black undocumented students, a community long missing from the dominant immigration narrative. Her debut book, Amplifying Black Undocumented Student Voices in Higher Education, weaves her own educational journey with a qualitative study of 15 Black undocumented students. She is also the host of Intersections with Dr. Russell, a bi-weekly podcast on immigration with over 2,000 listeners per episode, and serves on the boards of Immigrants Rising and California Lutheran University. Dr. Russell holds a doctorate from Temple University, an MPP from Pepperdine, and a BA from California Lutheran University.

I have spent a lot of time doing policy work, organizing work, and talking to several multigenerational Black undocumented folks all across this country. One of the things they have all held in common is that we need more resources. We need more information and documentation about who we are so that we can access the things that we absolutely need. We’ve talked about being hyper visible and not visible at the same time. So I am so excited to talk today with Dr. Russell.  Fun fact: a few of the folks Dr. Russell interviewed were actually connected to UndocuBlack. Really small world.

Felecia Russell (FR): Absolutely, yes.

PL: The book makes sense of the experiences of UndocuBlack students, a group who do not often see themselves represented in the immigrant narrative. And I’m so excited to have known you these past couple years and to now call you a friend. Thanks for talking with me today.

FR: Thank you. Thanks for doing this.

PL: What inspired you to focus specifically on Black undocumented students? And how did that shape the direction of the book?

FR: Growing up, I really didn’t get exposed to the conversations about immigration until I found out that I didn’t have the proper documentation. Once I learned that, my world, I felt, just really shattered. I didn’t understand what that meant. But fortunately, I had a really good college counselor. I decided to disclose my status to him one day, and he was so helpful; he just said, “We are going to get you to college. You won’t be able to access federal financial aid, but we’re going to get you to college.”

One of the things he did was introduce me to a Dreamers club at my high school. And I was excited because I couldn’t believe that other students shared the same experiences as me on campus.

At my first meeting, one of the students asked the counselor, “Why is she here?” Because there were no other Black students in that room. Even though the counselor explained that I was from Jamaica, that I was supposed to be there, that question still made me feel alienated, because already I didn’t see anyone who looked like me. It wasn’t until I got older that I understood that it wasn’t malicious in its intention, but that experience really shaped why I wrote this book and the direction of this book.

Ever since then, I wanted to understand what Black undocumented people, students, were experiencing. How were they experiencing immigration spaces, and how were they experiencing Black American spaces?

One of the first themes that emerged was the problem of invisibility… I had so many of the participants saying the same thing—that no one expected them to be undocumented.

PL: Can you tell us a little about how you came to study these 15 Black undocumented students centered in your book? And what were some of the common themes that came up among them?

FR: Actually, it was really hard to get 15 students. It was so hard. I had to reach out to so many different organizations, like Immigrants Rising and TheDream.US, to promote the study. And even then, it was really difficult to find folks who wanted to share their stories. I was pretty private about my status for a long time, so I understood it. And then also, I was considering the diversity of the pool. I didn’t want everyone to be from New York, Maryland, or Florida. I wanted folks from all over. Eventually, I arrived at a pretty diverse sample. I had people from Indiana, Texas, Florida, California, and New York, which really was important for the study.

One of the first themes that emerged was the problem of invisibility. For instance, one student said, “No one expects a Black person to be undocumented.” Not only was that reminiscent of my own experience, but I had so many of the participants saying the same thing—that no one expected them to be undocumented. Many of the very spaces that were designed to support undocumented students didn’t account for Black undocumented students at all, and most of the students in the study said they struggled to find resources on their campuses. Many of them ended up hiding their status or avoiding joining clubs and campus activities altogether. And even out of the 15 students, 10 said their campus had no dedicated support services or physical spaces for undocumented students at all. So they had to build their own networks outside of the institution just to feel a sense of belonging.

I would say that was also another common theme, the issue of belonging, or lack of it. Even the campuses that claimed to have spaces for undocumented students, they weren’t inclusive for Black students. Undocumented student centers usually focus on the Latinx undocumented experience, and Black cultural centers usually focus on the African American experience as opposed to the diaspora. So in both of these spaces, undocumented Black students felt alienated and not supported. Many also described feeling like the spaces that were for them were built only for Latinx students or DACA recipients. Many scholarships, for example, were available only to DACA recipients. And a lot of Black undocumented students in the study didn’t necessarily have DACA. Some of them had TPS (Temporary Protected Status), but some of them were completely undocumented.

So there was just a lot of isolation all around—between the feeling of invisibility, the lack of belonging, and the privileging of Latinx experiences or DACA status. Fortunately, at least some of the students were able to find a community through the UndocuBlack Network (UBN). When they couldn’t find community at their institutions, they somehow found a community at UBN.

PL: Thanks for sharing that. I’m glad that some folks were able to find community through the UndocuBlack Network, at least.

I want to go back just a second—you mentioned DACA and TPS. Can you share what those things are and what those statuses mean for people, and what that means now in 2026?

FR: Right. So DACA, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, is an executive order by former president Barack Obama that came about as a result of grassroots organizing by immigrants’ rights activists. Basically, it is a program designed to support undocumented young folks who arrived in the US as children under 16 before 2007. Recipients go through an intense criminal background check, and they get two years of work authorization that they have to renew every two years. They can also get a driver’s license, depending on the state they’re in. For some of the students in my study who had access to DACA, it provided an opportunity to make money and pay for college if they didn’t have a full scholarship. Since its signing, DACA has gone through an array of legal challenges, and there could be a new decision coming down from the Supreme Court soon about the constitutionality of DACA that we’re waiting to hear about. As of 2026, the program remains in a precarious legal state, renewals are still being processed for existing recipients, but the Fifth Circuit has found the program unlawful and the case continues to work its way through the courts. Congress has yet to pass permanent protections for Dreamers, leaving hundreds of thousands of recipients in continued uncertainty.

I also had a few TPS holders in the study. TPS is Temporary Protected Status. It applied to folks who had either come in as refugees or asylees, and it provides the ability to work in the US. And then, of course, I had some folks who had neither DACA nor TPS. These folks were completely without documentation.

PL: In your interviews with Black undocumented students, you mention mental health and the emotional burden of being Black and undocumented. What do you think institutions, universities, and folks in general misunderstand about the emotional toll of navigating this experience?

FR: Yes, the mental health issue came up quite a bit. I didn’t spend too much time on it in the book, but I see it as an area for further research. Research about Black undocumented people is pretty scant right now. There’s a plethora of research about Black immigrants in general, but typically it’s for those who have legal documentation, not undocumented Black folks. Simultaneously, there has been a great deal of research on the undocumented community, but 95 percent of it is focused on the Latinx population. This gap takes a mental health toll on Black undocumented students and Black undocumented people because they don’t have access to the resources, the mentors, the programming, and whatever it is that other folks have access to.

I tell this story all the time about my first time doing advanced parole (a travel document that allows certain undocumented individuals to temporarily leave and re-enter the United States without losing their immigration status). I was so nervous, but everyone kept saying, “Oh, it’s fine, it’s going to be fine.” People sent me all these videos of people documenting their journeys. And I kid you not, every video was of a Latinx person, and it just didn’t do anything for me because I’m like, my experience is going to be different. This took a toll.

Being undocumented is already a chronic stress. Then, add in Blackness: Not seeing yourself represented, not being able to relate to the research that’s out there or the resources that are supposed to be for you. That really took a toll on a lot of the participants. And they struggled with a lot of mental health issues and felt like even though maybe they could access a therapist, it wouldn’t be helpful because the therapist wouldn’t understand.

So mental health was a big piece that came up. But hopefully another scholar will expand on the mental health issues, especially those from the Black undocumented community, and how it affects their experience.

Rarely does [university] programming represent the diversity of the undocumented population.

PL: I’d love to dig a little bit more into what it is that schools can do. How can institutions begin to address the problem of invisibility? And what would it mean for schools to become “undocu-competent”?

FR: Yes, for sure. So a few tangible ways. First, the most important thing is access to support and resources, and one of the ways to do that is to diversify programming. If you have an undocumented student center or a Dream Center on your campus, I would challenge the practitioners to audit their programming and look at what speakers they brought to campus or what type of events they had. Rarely does this kind of programming represent the diversity of the undocumented population. These centers need to be inviting Black undocumented leaders to campus, because representation matters.

The second thing would be to review scholarships and resource eligibility. Very often, the participants in this study struggled to identify scholarships and other resources that they could apply to, even if they received help from an undocumented resource center. Many scholarships for undocumented students had stipulations that said you had to be from Latin America or a specific country. So the resources that were supposed to be for undocumented students generally weren’t available to UndocuBlack students, because they weren’t from a Hispanic-origin country. Widening the resources and access to those resources is important.

Faculty must also figure out how to embed Black immigrant perspectives into the curriculum. The typical political science class or history class, when they have a section or chapter about immigration, rarely covers Black undocumented experiences. Organizations like UBN and BAJI (the Black Alliance for Just Immigration) are doing good work to shed light on Black immigrant experiences. I would push educators to think about how to include Black undocumented student voices in their courses and in the programming that’s happening.

I’ll give you an example. I was giving a talk, and a student came up to me and she said, “Oh, Dr. Russell, I’m trying to figure out how to get more Black undocumented students to come to the Dreamers Club.” And I asked her what type of events they were having and what groups they were partnering with. And it was all Latinx groups. And I said, the first thing you have to do is cross-campus collaboration. So if you are the Dreamers Club, think about how to collaborate with the Black Student Union, the UndocuQueer Club, or whatever it is. Think about how to do cross-campus collaboration, and that will also help push the institutions themselves in the right direction.

So those are the four tangible steps institutions can act on.

PL: I appreciate that. So, diversifying speakers and programming, reviewing the scholarships, embedding Black immigrants in the curriculum, and making sure that Black folks are part of the planning.

PL: In your research, you also explore the intersections of race, identity, and status. How do things like having TPS or DACA shape folks’ college experience and potential sense of belonging? And how do the different positionalities within the undocumented community affect student populations?

FR: Well, there’s this concept of “master status,” which comes from Black feminist thought, which asks: If a person is female and Black, which is the most salient identity? And so in this case, if a person is Black and undocumented, what’s the most salient identity? What do people see first? What affects you the most? I argue in the book that race is always the most salient identity, but when it comes to immigration, there’s a lot of disagreement.

When we look at Black undocumented students, the intersections of race, identity, and immigration status will show up in their daily lives, but their particular experiences are distinct from the experiences of other undocumented students. Black undocumented students are constantly negotiating which part of their identity feels most defining in a given moment. Was it being Black or was it being undocumented?

For some participants, race showed up first. It’s the first thing people see. Before anyone even knows their immigration status, they assume they are African American, and so Black undocumented students are always navigating anti-Black racism and assumptions about who they are. This racialization shaped their classroom experiences because to be African American is to be Black, but to be Black does not mean you’re African American. This causes a lot of issues for Black undocumented folks, and often shows up in how faculty engage with them, how staff engage with them, other students, and ultimately in their sense of belonging.

I also had others who thought, no, absolutely not. My immigration status is more important because I experience more immediate impact to my day-to-day life. Those students would say things like, race is not going to stop me from getting a driver’s license. Race wouldn’t stop me from getting health care. Race wouldn’t stop me from opening a bank account or securing employment, but my immigration status—if I don’t have legal immigration status—it’s going to stop me from getting all of that. So for them, immigration status is more salient.

I touch on these differences a little bit in the book, but it’s a concept that I hope to touch on more in the future. I want to talk to more Black undocumented folks and see what their experience is. The point is, it’s a unique experience to be Black and undocumented. It’s a compounded identity.

PL: And I’m sure there are so many other identities—religion, sexual orientation—that layer in as well.

FR: Exactly.

PL: Beyond individual practitioners—beyond faculty, staff, advisors in academia—talking about national policy, talking about culture: What do you hope to accomplish with your research? What can people outside of higher education learn about undocumented people and inclusion?

FR: I’m hoping for people to recognize that the undocumented community is not monolithic. A lot of higher ed institutions are unintentionally—or, some might argue, intentionally—operating under the assumption that the typical undocumented student is non-Black and Latinx. This assumption shapes everything. It shapes the data we collect, the stories we tell, the programs they build, the support services they build, and who gets access and doesn’t get access to certain resources.

Again, I would go back to the need to diversify the people doing the work. I consider organizations like UBN so important. It came up so much in my research in terms of supporting persistence for students, but beyond the collegiate experience, UBN also does a lot of work to support Black immigrants. I would like to see more institutions partnering with organizations like UBN.

I would also like for more people to take the time to understand the Black undocumented experience. I would like to see institutions pay UndocuBlack scholars and practitioners and storytellers to shape trainings and strategies. And I would like to see greater diversity in storytelling. We have to think about who’s missing in our storytelling during Black History Month and Undocumented Student Action Week or Immigrant Heritage Month. How intentional are we about highlighting Black immigrant voices, Black immigrant stories?

Lastly, I hope my work will influence people to continue to dig deeper into more research, whether it’s mental health and the Black undocumented experience or what is the master status experience for Black undocumented folks. Whatever it is, I really hope that people take from this book that the immigration conversation should be a bit more nuanced, more inclusive, and smarter. It needs to not just represent one identity, one story, one experience.

I want policy folks and professors and students and faculty and all of them to walk away realizing that they need to actively and intentionally build policies that will also be beneficial for Black undocumented folks, and I want people to realize that conversations about immigration and documentation have to be bigger than they are now.