Untangling MF DOOM’s Lifelong Struggle With the U.S. Immigration System

These are the opening lyrics to DOOM’s 2012 collaborative track “Banished” with Jneiro Jarel, released months before what would apparently be the masked rapper’s final attempt to enter the United States. Born in the United Kingdom, the rapper otherwise known as Daniel Dumile, or MF DOOM, was denied entry to America for the first time in 2010 upon returning from an international tour, and by 2012, he seemed to have accepted the reality of life abroad. In an interview with Q magazine that year, he said it outright: “I’m done with the United States, it’s no big deal.”

DOOM passed away on October 31, 2020, though the news wasn’t made public until December. Weeks later, an official “inauguration playlist” made for the Biden-Harris White House featured one of his songs. Fans roundly criticized the inclusion, pointing to the rapper’s denial of entry to the country under the previous Democratic administration. But the details of his immigration situation, like almost everything else about him, have long been shrouded in rumor and mystery. Now a collection of previously unreported documents amassed by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS)—acquired by Pitchfork via the Freedom of Information Act—newly reveal some portion of DOOM’s decades-long endeavor for legal status. It was a struggle that began in his infancy and was exacerbated by the complex U.S. immigration system and his occasional brushes with the law as a young man. The documents map out only a partial outline of DOOM’s life, shining light on some of the circumstances that led to his eventual rejection from the country he grew up in. (Representatives for DOOM’s estate declined to give comment for this story.)

According to his birth certificate, Dumile was born in Hounslow, a borough of West London, on July 13, 1971. (The certificate lists his birth name as Dumile Daniel Thompson, and his name appears in various other configurations in other documents, including Daniel Dumile Thompson and Dumile Thompson Dumile. This piece will refer to him as Daniel Dumile, the name most commonly used for him.) The following month, on August 27, he would journey to Long Beach, New York, using a B2 tourist visa with an expiration date of February 26, 1972. As he grew up, he would spend years in that city but also live in other locations around the state with his mother and father—immigrants from Trinidad and Zimbabwe, respectively.

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