Unsafe by Design: The Brutal and Deadly Impact of Policing and ICE on Black and Brown Women in America - Statement submitted the Un for CSW 70
Black and Brown women in the United States face systemic harm through policing, incarceration, and immigration enforcement. These harms are gendered, racialized, and rooted in histories of colonial control, slavery, and patriarchal governance. From lethal police encounters to immigration raids, women’s bodies, labor, and behavior are subject to state violence. The crisis of gendered state violence in the United States falls squarely within multiple human rights frameworks.
The UN Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent (A/HRC/54/71, 2023) warns of persistent police impunity for violence against people of African descent globally. The Beijing Platform for Action (1995) urges governments to hold state agents accountable for violence against women and to ensure women’s participation in justice and policy processes. The Durban Declaration and Programme of Action (2001) links racial discrimination and gender inequality to the legacies of slavery and colonialism, calling on states to dismantle institutional racism. Finally, Sustainable Development Goal 16 commits nations to promoting inclusive societies, ensuring access to justice, and building accountable institutions.
Together, these frameworks affirm that the United States has both moral and legal obligations to address the racialized and gendered harms perpetuated by its policing and immigration systems.
Policing and immigration enforcement in the United States do not operate neutrally; they are built upon racial hierarchies embedded in law and policy. For women, these systems generate gender-specific harms—sexual assault, custodial neglect, the criminalization of poverty, and trauma arising from family separation. Black and Brown women are both hyper-visible to the state as subjects of surveillance and control, and invisible within justice and reform policy processes while being negatively portrayed in media narratives. Their experiences reveal how patriarchy and racism intersect to determine whose lives are valued, whose pain is ignored, and whose deaths are rationalized as inevitable outcomes of “public safety.”
The policing of women of color reflects a broader societal design that treats protection and punishment as opposites divided by race and class. In this context, Black and Brown women are rarely regarded as individuals to be protected; they are instead perceived as potential threats, caretakers to be exploited, or collateral damage. The outcome is a pattern of violence that is not accidental but structural—a predictable result of institutions designed to maintain harmful control rather than deliver care.
The city of New Brunswick, New Jersey, illustrates how patterns of racialized policing persist for decades. In 1996, Carolyn “Sissy” Adams was killed by police officer James Consalvo. Her death became a rallying point for local demands for justice that went largely unanswered. Nearly thirty years later, in 2025, Deborah Terrell, a 68-year-old grandmother experiencing a mental health crisis, was killed by New Brunswick police. Despite the passage of the Seabrooks-Washington Community-Led Crisis Response Act (2023)—a policy meant to create non-police crisis response teams—its failure to be implemented left that protection unrealized.
Each generation inherits the unresolved failures of the last. Without accountability, communities of color remain trapped in recurring cycles of violence and grief—where state promises of reform consistently fall short. The following dimensions of harm reveal how these systemic failures manifest in the lives of Black and Brown women across the United States.
Dimensions of Harm:
Lethal Force and Deaths in Custody
Women such as Breonna Taylor, Rekia Boyd, and Sandra Bland were killed through preventable police actions—no-knock raids, off-duty shootings, and traffic-stop detentions. Deaths like Sheneque Proctor’s in custody expose a parallel crisis of neglect and impunity within detention systems.
Sexual Violence by Law Enforcement
The conviction of former officer Daniel Holtzclaw for sexually assaulting multiple Black women revealed how authority and coercion intersect. Survivors rarely report abuse due to disbelief, retaliation, or lack of legal recourse.
Misuse of Force During Mental Health Crises
Cases such as Tanisha Anderson in Cleveland and Deborah Terrell in New Brunswick show the criminalization of mental distress.
Economic Harms
Municipal reliance on fines and fees disproportionately targets poor Black women, transforming poverty into a revenue stream for local governments and deepening cycles of criminalization.
Technological Policing
Facial recognition and predictive policing systems misidentify Black women at higher rates, embedding algorithmic bias into law enforcement practices.
Violence Against Girls
School discipline and zero-tolerance policies, often enforced by School Resource Officers, disproportionately penalize Black girls
Trans Women
Transgender women of color, like Mya Hall, face compounded vulnerability as targets of both transphobia and anti-Blackness.
Black Women as Outcry Witnesses
Beyond direct violence, Black women carry the ongoing burden of witnessing, documenting, and demanding justice for others harmed or killed by police. They become outcry witnesses for the entire community, absorbing grief and transforming it into advocacy.
Mothers such as Sybrina Fulton, Portia Auten, and Samaria Rice embody this role—leading foundations, campaigns, and vigils that keep state violence in public consciousness. Their labor transforms mourning into movement yet exacts immense emotional, physical, and financial tolls. This secondary victimization rarely appears in official statistics but is central to understanding gendered state violence. Black women sustain the movements for justice.
Immigration enforcement mirrors and magnifies domestic anti-Black policing. The 2025 ICE raid in Chicago’s South Shore neighborhood brought Federal agents, militarized tactics—flash grenades, forced entry, and aerial surveillance—within a largely Black community. Residents reported detentions of both migrants and U.S. citizens, blurring the line between immigration control and racial policing. This operation reinforced global hierarchies of race, subjecting Black and Brown migrants—as well as citizens—to the same surveillance and disposability. Families were traumatized, and trust in public institutions further eroded.
Reform efforts in the United States remain fragmented, inconsistent, and often symbolic. In New Jersey, Senate Bill S1551 (withdrawn) and Assembly Bill A3441 (pending) sought to create civilian review boards with investigative power, but political resistance has stalled progress. The Seabrooks-Washington Act, though widely praised, remains unimplemented in some areas, underscoring the gap between legislative promise and operational practice.
In the absence of meaningful reform, community movements continue to lead. #SayHerName and New Jersey Communities for Accountable Policing (NJCAP) are examples of grassroots organizing that center the experiences of women and families affected by state violence. These initiatives collect data, provide emotional support, and build non-police safety models grounded in dignity and care. Their leadership demonstrates that those most harmed by policing are also the most capable of reimagining safety—yet the emotional and economic toll of this widely unpaid labor remains heavy. The international community must stand in solidarity with these women and ensure justice for those who continue to bear the weight of systemic violence.
It is imperative to:
Mandate Comprehensive Race-, Gender-, and Disability-Disaggregated Data
Require transparent, standardized reporting of killings, detentions, and assaults to expose intersecting inequalities.
Implement Non-Police Crisis Response Systems
Fully fund and enforce programs like the Seabrooks-Washington Act to ensure compassionate, community-based alternatives to armed response.
Establish Independent Civilian Oversight
Empower community-led review boards with subpoena power.
Restructure Migration Policy
Migration must be reframed not as a crisis but as an opportunity—to connect people and their talents with the places that need them most. The international community must work to transform movement into momentum while safeguarding dignity.
Invest in Community-Led Safety and Care Infrastructure
Redirect enforcement budgets toward basic needs, housing, healthcare, education, and trauma recovery.
Regulate Surveillance Technology
Suspend the use of facial recognition and predictive policing tools until independently verified as equitable and non-discriminatory.
The persistence of gendered state violence is in part the result of entrenched systems of power. Symbolic reforms without enforcement perpetuate harm and breed cynicism. Real transformation demands structural change—reducing the footprint of policing, redefining safety as care, and aligning domestic practice with global human rights commitments. Black and Brown women live at the intersection of race, gender, and state control. They endure violence directly and bear it collectively—as survivors, caregivers, organizers, and outcry witnesses. The deaths of Breonna Taylor, Sandra Bland, Deborah Terrell, and countless others reveal a system that devalues life and denies accountability. Immigration raids like those in Chicago expand this violence, embedding anti-Black practices into yet another arm of law enforcement.
The path forward requires courage and coordination: dismantling structures that criminalize poverty and migration, enforcing international standards, and investing in the communities most affected. Justice for Black and Brown women demands more than reform—it demands transformation. When their safety is secured, the broader promise of equality and human dignity moves closer to realization.