Introduction

Abstract

Abstract The introduction provides an overview of the contemporary US immigration detention system and lays out the book’s main arguments by defining key concepts such as empire, resistance, counterinsurgency, the Reagan imaginary, and critical refugee studies. By analyzing various forms of public and personal resistance to immigration enforcement and detention in the 1980s, the book argues that the Reagan administration adopted a set of new immigration detention policies in alignment with Cold War foreign policy goals and theorizes that detention operates as a form of counterinsurgency under the Reagan administration’s War on Drugs. The introduction also discusses the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 as a pivotal moment for the rise of mass incarceration in US history.