On any given day nearly 3000 foreign national citizens are detained under immigration powers in UK detention centres alone. Around the world immigrants are routinely detained in similar conditions. The institutions charged with immigrant detention are volatile and contested sites. They are also places about which we know very little. What is their goal? How do they operate? How are they justified? Inside Immigration Detention lifts the lid on the hidden world of migrant detention, presenting the first national study of life in British immigration removal centres. Offering more than just a description of life behind bars of those men and women awaiting deportation, it uses staff and detainee testimonies to revisit key assumptions about state power and the legacies of colonialism under conditions of globalization. Based on fieldwork conducted in six immigration removal centres (IRCs) between 2009 and 2012, it draws together a large amount of empirical data including: detainee surveys and interviews, staff interviews, observation, and detailed field notes. From this, the book explores how immigration removal centres identify their inhabitants as strangers, constructing them as unfamiliar, ambiguous and uncertain. In this endeavour, the establishments are greatly assisted by their resemblance to prisons and by familiar racialized narratives about foreigners and nationality. However, as staff and detainee testimonies reveal, in their interactions and day-to-day life women and men find many points of commonality. Such recognition of one another reveals the goal and effect of detention to be incomplete. Denial requires effort. In order to minimize the effort it must expend, the state 'governs at distance', via the contract. It also splits itself in two, deploying some immigration staff onsite, while keeping the actual decision-makers (the caseworkers) elsewhere, sequestered from the potentially destabilizing effects of facing up to those whom they wish to remove. Such distancing, while bureaucratically effective, contributes to the uncertainty of daily life in detention, and is often the source of considerable criticism and unease. Denial and familiarity are embodied and localized activities, whose pains and contradictions inhere in concrete relationships.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER A powerful, in-depth look at the imprisonment of immigrants, addressing the intersection of immigration and the criminal justice system, with a new epilogue by the author “Argues compellingly that immigrant advocates shouldn’t content themselves with debates about how many thousands of immigrants to lock up, or other minor tweaks.” —Gus Bova, Texas Observer For most of America’s history, we simply did not lock people up for migrating here. Yet over the last thirty years, the federal and state governments have increasingly tapped their powers to incarcerate people accused of violating immigration laws. Migrating to Prison takes a hard look at the immigration prison system’s origins, how it currently operates, and why. A leading voice for immigration reform, César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández explores the emergence of immigration imprisonment in the mid-1980s and looks at both the outsized presence of private prisons and how those on the political right continue, disingenuously, to link immigration imprisonment with national security risks and threats to the rule of law. Now with an epilogue that brings it into the Biden administration, Migrating to Prison is an urgent call for the abolition of immigration prisons and a radical reimagining of who belongs in the United States.

Immigration is among the most prominent, enduring, and contentious features of our globalized world. Yet, there is little systematic, cross-national research on why countries "do what they do" when it comes to their immigration policies. Rights, Deportation, and Detention in the Age of Immigration Control addresses this gap by examining what are arguably the most contested and dynamic immigration policies—immigration control—across 25 immigrant-receiving countries, including the U.S. and most of the European Union. The book addresses head on three of the most salient aspects of immigration control: the denial of rights to non-citizens, their physical removal and exclusion from the polity through deportation, and their deprivation of liberty and freedom of movement in immigration detention. In addition to answering the question of why states do what they do, the book describes contemporary trends in what Tom K. Wong refers to as the machinery of immigration control, analyzes the determinants of these trends using a combination of quantitative analysis and fieldwork, and explores whether efforts to deter unwanted immigration are actually working.

Before the turn of the century, few states used immigration detention. Today, nearly every state around the world has adopted immigration detention policy in some form. States practice detention as a means to address both the accelerating numbers of people crossing their borders, and the populations residing in their states without authorisation. This edited volume examines the contemporary diffusion of immigration detention policy throughout the world and the impact of this expansion on the prospects of protection for people seeking asylum. It includes contributions by immigration detention experts working in Australasia, the Americas, Europe, Africa and the Middle East. It is the first to set out a systematic comparison of immigration detention policy across these regions and to examine how immigration detention has become a ubiquitous part of border and immigration control strategies globally. In so doing, the volume presents a global perspective on the diversity of immigration detention policies and practices, how these circumstances developed, and the human impact of states exchanging individuals’ rights to liberty for the collective assurance of border and immigration control. This text will be of key interest to scholars, students and practitioners of immigration, migration, public administration, comparative policy studies, comparative politics and international political economy.

This book builds a compelling picture of injustices inside immigration detention centers, within the context of the rise of the use of immigration detention in the Global North. The author presents the rarely heard voices of refugees, bringing their perspectives to light and personalising and humanising a global political issue. Based on in-depth interviews with formerly detained refugees who were involved in a wide range of protests, such as sit-ins and non-compliance, hunger strikes, lip sewing, escapes and riots, Human Rights, Refugee Protest and Immigration Detention presents a comprehensive insight into immigration detention and protest. Drawing on the work of Michel Foucault and Hannah Arendt, the book challenges contemporary human rights discourses which institutionalise power and will be a must-read for scholars, advocates and policymakers engaged in debates about immigration detention and forced migration.

The freelance writer and poet takes an unprecedented look inside the secret and repressive world of U.S. immigration prisons.

The liberal legal ideal of protection of the individual against administrative detention without trial is embodied in the habeas corpus tradition. However, the use of detention to control immigration has gone from a wartime exception to normal practice, thus calling into question modern states' adherence to the rule of law. Daniel Wilsher traces how modern states have come to use long-term detention of immigrants without judicial control. He examines the wider emerging international human rights challenge presented by detention based upon protecting 'national sovereignty' in an age of global migration. He explores the vulnerable political status of immigrants and shows how attempts to close liberal societies can create 'unwanted persons' who are denied fundamental rights. To conclude, he proposes a set of standards to ensure that efforts to control migration, including the use of detention, conform to principles of law and uphold basic rights regardless of immigration status.

Bounded by desert and mountains, El Centro, California, is isolated and difficult to reach. However, its location close to the border between San Diego and Yuma, Arizona, has made it an important place for Mexican migrants attracted to the valley's agricultural economy. In 1945, it also became home to the El Centro Immigration Detention Camp. The Shadow of El Centro tells the story of how that camp evolved into the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Service Processing Center of the 2000s and became a national model for detaining migrants—a place where the policing of migration, the racialization of labor, and detainee resistance coalesced. Using government correspondence, photographs, oral histories, and private documents, Jessica Ordaz reveals the rise and transformation of migrant detention through this groundbreaking history of one detention camp. The story shows how the U.S. detention system was built to extract labor, to discipline, and to control migration, and it helps us understand the long and shadowy history of how immigration officials went from detaining a few thousand unauthorized migrants during the 1940s to confining hundreds of thousands of people by the end of the twentieth century. Ordaz also uncovers how these detained migrants have worked together to create transnational solidarities and innovative forms of resistance.

This book provides a thorough legal analysis of the United States Migrant Interdiction Program, examining the United States' compliance with its obligations under municipal and international law as it interdicts individuals at sea, conducts status determinations, and returns those interdicted to their home countries. This book also examines the rights of the small number of refugees and individuals at risk of torture detained in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, awaiting resettlement in third countries. Policy-makers, students and scholars will benefit from this book's clarification of the legal obligations of nations engaged in extraterritorial status determination and detention, as well as its blueprint for compliance with international human rights and refugee law. As the first book of its kind devoted to the United States' interdiction program, this work represents an important contribution to scholarship in refugee law and policy, US constitutional law, international maritime law, and international human rights law.

International migration has been described as one of the defining issues of the twenty-first century. While a lot is known about the complex nature of migratory flows, surprisingly little attention has been given to one of the most prominent responses by governments to human mobility: the practice of immigration detention. Intimate Economies of Immigration Detention provides a timely intervention, offering much needed scrutiny of the ideologies, policies and practices that enable the troubling, unparalleled and seemingly unbridled growth of immigration detention around the world. An international collection of scholars provide crucial new insights into immigration detention recounting at close range how detention’s effects ricochet from personal and everyday experiences to broader political-economic, social and cultural spheres. Contributors draw on original research in the US, Australia, Europe, and beyond to scrutinise the increasingly tangled relations associated with detention operation and migration management. With new theoretical and empirical perspectives on detention, the chapters collectively present a toolbox for better understanding the forces behind and broader implications of the seemingly uncontested rise of immigration detention. This book is of great interest to those who study political economy, economic geography and immigration policy, as well as policy makers interested in immigration.