The Intersection of Race, Immigration Status, and Environmental Justice

David Pellow,Jasmine Vazin

doi:10.3390/su11143942

Abstract

Environmental injustice occurs when marginalized groups face disproportionate environmental impacts from a range of threats. Environmental racism is a particular form of environmental injustice and frequently includes the implementation of policies, regulations, or institutional practices that target communities of color for undesirable waste sites, zoning, and industry. One example of how the United States federal and state governments are currently practicing environmental racism is in the form of building and maintaining toxic prisons and immigrant detention prisons, where people of color and undocumented persons are the majority of inmates and detainees who suffer disproportionate health risk and harms. This article discusses the historical and contemporary conditions that have shaped the present political landscape of racial and immigration conflicts and considers those dynamics in the context of the literature on environmental justice. Case studies are then presented to highlight specific locations and instances that exemplify environmental injustice and racism in the carceral sector. The article concludes with an analysis of the current political drivers and motivations contributing to these risks and injustices, and ends with a discussion of the scale and depth of analysis required to alleviate these impacts in the future, which might contribute to greater sustainability among the communities affected.

Highlights

The fact that populations that experience social, economic, political, and cultural marginalization frequently experience disproportionate environmental risk from a range of government and industry-driven facilities, policies, and practices has led to the development of the field of environmental justice studies (Bullard 2000 [1]; Bullard and Wright 2012 [2]; Taylor 1997 [3])
Since the early 1970s, scholars, community activists, and policy researchers have documented that communities with large percentages of people of color, low-income persons, indigenous people, and immigrants are more likely to host hazardous waste sites; more likely to be hit the hardest by climate change, experience extreme heat and “natural” disasters; and more likely to be in spaces where air, water, and land are contaminated at levels that constitute significant threats to public health (Fothergill and Peek 2004 [4]; Harlan et al 2006 [5]; Crowder and Downey 2010 [6]; Downey 2006 [7]; Mennis and Jordan 2005 [8]; Mohai and Saha 2007 [9]; Pauli 2019 [10])
The way that environmental justice struggles unfold in indigenous communities is often the result of histories of violent settler colonialism, which is frequently experienced through energy extraction regimes that contribute to climate change as well (Hoover 2017 [16]; Malin 2015 [17]; Voyles 2015 [18]; Whyte 2017 [19])

Summary

Introduction

The fact that populations that experience social, economic, political, and cultural marginalization frequently experience disproportionate environmental risk from a range of government and industry-driven facilities, policies, and practices has led to the development of the field of environmental justice studies (Bullard 2000 [1]; Bullard and Wright 2012 [2]; Taylor 1997 [3]). There are confirmed reports that dozens of prisons, jails, juvenile detention prisons, and immigrant detention prisons across the nation are located on or in close proximity to toxic superfund sites and other hazardous land uses, are infested with mold and other air contaminants, have significant water contamination, are marked by food injustices, are institutions where inmates and detainees* are being forced to take harmful pharmaceuticals, and are spaces where toxic and dangerous work is routine (see Braz and Gilmore 2006 [45]; PEJP 2017 and 2018 [46,47]; Perdue 2018 [48]) This is a problem that environmental justice scholars should pay more attention to because of the following reasons: The U.S imprisons more people than any other nation on earth, and the vast majority of inmates in the prison and jail system are people of color and low-income persons; the fastest growing group of prisoners is women (Alexander 2012 [49]; Cole 1999 [50]; Pellow 2017 [51]); and foreign nationals (immigrants) are being detained in prisons throughout the nation where environmental threats abound as well (Vazin 2018 and 2019 [52,53]). Owned corporations are profiting from the unethical detention of a largely Latinx population (Vazin 2018 [52]); they, along with ICE and the federal government, are the perpetrators of some of the most severe environmental and social injustices in contemporary American history

Overview of EJ Issues in Immigrant Detention Prisons *

Brief Case Studies

Northwest Detention Center

Findings

Discussion