Immigration Detention Research Articles

“I’ve Been Hurt Every Single Day Here, You Know:” A Feminist Abolitionist Analysis of Immigration Detention

While gendered violence against women at home, in intimate relationships, and in the workplace is widely acknowledged, the relationship between border control and gendered violence has only recently been addressed, often narrowly. To address this gap, this article examines the United Kingdom immigration detention system through an abolition feminist lens. Drawing on research conducted inside and outside detention sites, experiential knowledge from lived experience and solidarity work, and secondary sources, we highlight the entangled and mutually constitutive relationships between intimate/interpersonal and institutional/state violence. Inspired by Monica Cosby’s Intimate Partner Violence and State Violence Power and Control Wheel, our analysis reveals how immigration detention constitutes a form of racist-gendered state-corporate violence. Importantly, those who travel under the sign women understand this violence as directly linked to the gendered abuses they experienced outside detention. This underscores the inseparability of post-national struggles against carceral border regimes from feminist transformative efforts to eradicate gendered violence.

Regulating mobility through detention: Understanding the new geography of control and containment at the Southern European border

The aim of this article is to describe the evolution of immigration detention policies at the Southern European border. This will be done by presenting original data on the actual functioning of immigration detention in Italy in the wake of the so-called “refugee crisis”. By shedding light on these developments, the article reveals a notable convergence of first reception and return policies, which in turn is driving a transformation of the landscape of immigration detention leading to a proliferation of detention regimes and spaces of containment. Drawing on the literature on carceral geographies, this development is analyzed within the framework of Italy's distinct role in the geopolitics of EU border control policies. The article ultimately suggests that the immigration detention system has gradually been co-opted by the border control infrastructure, becoming part of a broader and intricate control assemblage whose essential function is the regulation of human mobility.

Creating a minority threat: Assessing the spillover effect of local immigrant detention on Hispanic arrests

AbstractAmid punitive shifts in crime and immigration control during the 1980s and 1990s, Hispanic individuals comprised a growing share of the population confined in U.S. prisons and jails. Although it is widely acknowledged that the nation's wars on crime and drugs contributed to higher rates of minority arrest, limited empirical research has examined whether the merging of immigration control with criminal justice practice during this period intensified these disparities. This article uses county‐level arrest data from California between 1980 and 2004 to investigate whether intergovernmental service agreements (IGSAs) leasing jail space for immigrant detention increased rates of Hispanic arrest. Employing a quasi‐experimental design that leverages the staggered adoption of IGSAs across counties, this study finds that these agreements increased rates of Hispanic arrest but had no discernible impact on arrest rates for White or Black residents. Supplemental analyses reveal that these increases were driven by misdemeanor arrests and were particularly pronounced in counties where the Hispanic population comprised between 11 and 22 percent. These findings suggest that IGSAs may trigger minority threat concerns that increase arrests, shedding additional light on Hispanic representation in the criminal justice system.

Narratives of Harm and the case for detention abolition

This essay aims to foreground the perspectives and lived experiences of asylum-seekers, refugees and other migrants in the growing calls to abolish immigration detention. While focused on a singular case study - the Tamil maritime arrivals to Canada in 2009 and 2010, our findings shed light on the broader harms of immigration detention. We begin by briefly describing the breadth and scope of immi-gration detention and the legal framework that governs detention in Canada. The heart of the essay follows with a sampling of the narratives drawn from the case study - all of which highlight the incalculable harms produced by the carceral state. The essay concludes by underscoring the imperative for detention abolition as both an aspirational and practical goal.

A Report on the Impact of Immigration Detention on the Health and Well-being of Refugees & Asylum Seekers

The extended periods that some asylum seekers experience in immigration detention potentially compromise their mental health and physical well-being. This compromise is associated with the prevailing culture and conditions within some immigration detention facilities in Western countries, such as Australia, Canada and Germany. This review aims to synthesise the findings of studies that report on the experiences of refugees and asylum seekers while they have been held in immigration detention. A meta-ethnographic approach guided the synthesis following the eMERGe meta-ethnography reporting guidance structure. Three common storyline metaphors were identified from the synthesis of findings of seven qualitative studies: (1) treating like criminals, jail-like, prison-like, and treated like animals; (2) killing your mind and torturing your mind; and (3) feelings of hopelessness, worry, despair and fear. The findings of this review suggest that the culture and the practices of immigration detention that impact refugees and asylum seekers who are detained for sometimes extended periods need to be transformed. The time that people are held in detention and the context for that detention needs urgent review. While immigration detention is legislated and enacted differently in the countries where the included studies were located, Government policies should consider alternative approaches such as community detention. Regular monitoring of immigration detention practices by external bodies should be mandated, and ongoing staff training for workers in detention facilities should be instituted to ensure that refugees and asylum seekers are treated fairly and with dignity when detained.

Case Study: Urgent Medical Care for Asylum-Seeking Infant at US-Mexico Border

A 22-month-old male presented at a triage facility within an immigration shelter with wounds, inflammation, and swelling across legs and arms; bloody and pus-filled discharge; skin discoloration, scaling, and swelling; and significant pain. His family had been released from immigration detention after migrating from Central America to the U.S. southern border. The attending triage nurse-midwife immediately transferred the patient to a local hospital for emergency care, in addition to signing the patient’s family into Specialty Care Action Network (SCAN), a pediatric component of Health Network, a virtual system for medical care coordination. After transfer to another hospital for higher level care, where he received a diagnosis of Carvajal syndrome, the patient was sufficiently stable for transport to a hospital in California, his family’s final destination. The resident physician in San Antonio, a SCAN case manager, a network of clinicians, and the medical director in California arranged for his extensive and diverse subspecialty care, through nonprofit funding and charity care in the absence of case management or care for migrants provided by federal immigration and/or health systems.

Robodeport or surveillance fantasy?: how automated is automatic visa cancellation in Australia?

Australia has been widely condemned for its harsh and comprehensive external border controls that seek to control the inward mobility of would-be asylum seekers through visa denial, interdiction and offshore detention. Less widely discussed is the fact that internal controls have been repeatedly ramped up over the past two decades. This includes the administrative removal of lawfully-present non-citizens following visa cancellation on character grounds under s501 of the Migration Act 1958 (Cth). Automatic visa cancellation was introduced in 2014 for non-citizens sentenced to a prison term of 12 months or more, or for certain offences, bypassing individualised decision-making and raising the spectre of a visa cancellation pipeline feeding a highly automated deportation machinery. In an age of increasingly automated forms of governance, a key question that arises is the role that has been played by automated systems in achieving what has been a seismic shift in practice, and the normative implications of any developments towards automation within the visa cancellation and removal systems. This paper outlines the shift towards automation in other systems of governance in Australia-most notably the notorious Robodebt scheme-before examining automation in Australia's visa cancellation system. Documentary analysis of recent parliamentary inquiries, independent reports and government policy is used to piece together the development of inter-agency data exchange practices and automation over three specific periods-historical practice pre-2014, post-2014 to the present, and proposed future developments. We conclude that Australia's s501 visa cancellation system is neither automated nor automatic. Rather, the 2014 law reform gave rise to a 'surveillance fantasy' with immense consequences for non-citizens, particularly those who face long days in immigration detention at the conclusion of their prison sentence. We show that while concerns about increasing automation are well-founded, systems based on less sophisticated forms of information handling and reliant on human decision-making nevertheless continue to raise age-old questions concerning efficiency, accuracy and fairness.

“On Their Own Terms”: Agency, Advocacy and Representation in Refugee Webcomics

ABSTRACT In Australia, refugees remain on the margins of the public imaginary as subjects of aversion, erasure and suspicion. The unknowability of the foreign Other carries sharp political dimensions borne out in policies of strict border control and mandatory detention that have restricted public access to the voices and stories of refugees for over two decades. However, recent life narratives by refugees provide an antidote to this dominant discourse, by testifying to the traumatic precariousness of living in detention and confronting readers with unflinching visual displays of subjects often silenced and invisible. Safdar Ahmed’s Walkley Award–winning documentary webcomic, Villawood: Notes from an Immigration Detention Centre (2015), documents the lives, experiences and drawings of detainees in Sydney’s Villawood Immigration Detention Centre. This article reads Villawood as an example of the vital rhetorical and representative work done by webcomics to expose the violences of Australia’s border spaces and put the personal stories of detainees in dialogue with vast audiences online. By attending to the collaborative and mediated process of its construction, this article maps the critical literacies needed to interpret webcomics as testimony and considers what this medium might offer life narrative studies and the project of ethical witnessing more broadly.

Perceived Detention Environment and Mental Health of Detainees in Immigration Detention Centers in Spain.

The increase in migratory flows worldwide has led to the creation of detention centers as a form of control of irregular migration. Recipient countries are responsible for protecting detainees' right to mental health, but the literature suggests that immigration detention centers are environments associated with complex mental health needs among the detainees. This study aims to approach the mental health of people detained in the immigration detention centers in Spain, a southern border of Europe. Eighty-seven migrants coming from different Latin American and African countries were interviewed using an adaptation of the Measure of Quality of Life in Detention (MQLD; Bosworth & Gerlach, 2020) to measure the perceived detention environment and The Hopkins Symptom Checklist-25 (HSCL-25; Derogatis et al., 1974) to assess mental health. The results show a high prevalence of detainees with significant levels of anxiety and depression (69%) and attempts at self-harm within the detention centers (19.5%). A more positive perception of the detention environment-especially concerning institutional decency and the relationship with officers-is related to a lower degree of negative mental health symptoms. Finally, people detained for more than 2weeks assess the detention environment more negatively than those detained for less time. Scientific contributions and social implications to ensure the mental health of detainees from a human rights-based approach are discussed.

Only YOU Can Prevent Immigration Detention: Analyzing the Ways Environmental Laws Can Close or Prevent the Opening of Toxic and Dehumanizing Immigration Detention Centers

Only YOU Can Prevent Immigration Detention: Analyzing the Ways Environmental Laws Can Close or Prevent the Opening of Toxic and Dehumanizing Immigration Detention Centers

An Overview of Prison Rape Elimination Acts (Prea) 2003

The main objective of this paper is to briefly focus on a reform related to prison called PREA which stands for Prison Rape Elimination Act, 2003. Prison Rape Elimination Act is a US federal law that was implemented in 2003 to eradicate rape in prisons. PREA created principles for recognizing, preventing, and responding to sexual abuse and harassment in correctional settings such as prisons, jails, juvenile facilities, and immigration detention centers. The law also requires data collecting and reporting on incidences of sexual abuse within these facilities, as well as staff training to avoid such incidents. However, PREA 2003 could not meet all the criteria included in its principles to eliminate rape culture in the prison. From this concern, the main aim of this paper is to focus on a reform related to prisons called Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) 2003, the reasons why this act was put into place, the current status of prison rape, the positive, and negative impact of PREA 2003, probable strategies that can be helpful for the appropriate implementation of PREA 2003. To accomplish this endeavor, this research followed systematic literature review methods due to the availability of scholarly work in this field. Although PREA 2003 has some positive aspects, the overall analysis of this study has uncovered that PREA 2003 was not implemented accurately due to some of the practical problems related to it. There are still some improvements that need to be accomplished for the appropriate implementation of PREA 2003 for the prisoners. Some suggested ways were discussed in this study to improve the implementation of PREA 2003.

Innocence and danger at the border: migrants, “Bad” mothers, and the nation’s protectors

Media and political discourse in the USA often depict migration as an invasion and people who cross borders as criminals dangerous to the nation. Through ethnographic fieldwork conducted in two places on the USA-Mexico Southern border, we want to analyze how invasion narratives influence practices on-the-ground. We first explore how these narratives inform the views of a border militia who see themselves as protectors of the nation and understand people who cross borders as threats. We then argue that migrant women’s presence in areas where the militia operates disrupts the dominant narrative that defines migrants as dangerous, as militia members come to understand migrant women as victims of the Cartel. Despite their innocence, to maintain the narrative’s consistency, militia members still consider migrant women criminals for crossing the border “illegally.” Finally, we move on to explore the materiality of these xenophobic discourses by examining how migrant women are mistreated at a family immigration detention center. Using the militias as an example, we highlight why political narratives circulate and have meaning for individuals and how discourses have material consequences.

The private harms of detention: why Serco’s violence is not criminalised

ABSTRACT Immigration detention centres in Australia have been managed by corporations for the Commonwealth government for the last 25 years. Complaints of officers’ violence, including the use of tear gas and batons on detainees, have continued throughout. In recent years, reports suggest that officers tend to use force as a first resort to manage detainees’ conduct and routinely handcuff detainees for medical and other appointments outside detention. This article is titled ‘the private harms of detention’ not because officers’ use of force in detention is always hidden, but because few officers have faced criminal prosecution. I argue that flaws in the design and operation of risk assessments unduly heighten the risks posed by detainees. By justifying a greater level of force as reasonable, risk assessments mitigate the potential for officers to be held criminally culpable, and thereby diminish understandings of the seriousness of officers’ harmful use of force. The privatised nature of detention and ongoing controversy over the extent of power private detention operators should wield make it important to explore how such actors might influence forums of accountability.

The prevalence of food insecurity amongst refugees and asylum seekers during, and prior to, their early resettlement period in Australia: A cross-sectional analysis of the ‘Building a New Life in Australia’ data

With over 100 million humanitarian migrants globally, there is increasing pressure on high-income countries to offer resettlement opportunities. Humanitarian migrants face many challenges during pre-settlement and resettlement. One challenge is food insecurity (FI). The Building a New Life in Australia (BNLA) longitudinal cohort study gathered data from migrating units, that is, a group of humanitarian migrants included on the same visa application (n = 1599). Data were gathered in five annual waves (2013–2018). Data included food security status in four pre-settlement situations and during resettlement. The results of this secondary analysis of BNLA Wave One indicate that FI was highest in refugee camps (71%), followed by bridging visas (30%), community detention (17%), immigration detention (11%), and during early resettlement (9%). During early resettlement, respondents who were male, those from Afghanistan or Iran, and those living in a single person household reported the highest prevalence of FI. An association was found between having spent time on a bridging visa and FI during early resettlement (p < 0.01). This study's results are an important step in understanding the scale of FI and which sub-groups are most vulnerable, so the resources and policies of high-income countries can better meet food security needs during resettlement.

Mitigating the Violence of Mass Immigration Detention Through Community-Based Case Management

Immigration detention causes psychological, physiological, and financial harm, primarily to noncitizens of color. Following a mass release of “lower-priority" individuals, responses to the COVID-19 pandemic provide an opportunity to envision a system more focused on freedom and pragmatism rather than retributive and ineffective notions of human warehousing and deterrence. Utilizing community-based case management (CBCM), a majority of detained noncitizens could be immediately returned to their families and communities under agency discretion. While some alternatives to incarceration serve as extensions of the carceral state, CBCM maintains required court appearances and preserves occupational and familial obligations at a fraction of detention costs without the need for intensive surveillance or restrictions. Drawing upon available research, theories of violence, and strengths-based case management, this article critically examines the emergence of mass immigration detention in the United States and considers a noncarceral approach to mitigate such state violence against detained noncitizens, as well as their families and communities. The profession of social work is uniquely positioned to implement CBCM to address the mass detention crisis and the grand challenge of smart decarceration. Social workers are well-equipped to 1) advocate for sensible decarceration policy, 2) conduct action-oriented scholarly research on the impacts of detention and outcomes of CBCM, and 3) provide integrated case management for noncitizens in immigration removal proceedings.

Reviewing Review: Administrative Justice and the Immigration Assessment Authority

The Immigration Assessment Authority (‘IAA’) provides the final merits review mechanism for people seeking asylum by boat in Australia. For fast-track applicants, the outcome of IAA review is incredibly significant, with consequences ranging from resettlement in Australia, removal to an applicant’s country of origin or indefinite immigration detention in harsh conditions. Eight years since its introduction, this article asks whether the IAA has realised the goal of promoting efficient review whilst meeting other important administrative objectives. The article takes a novel approach, applying a pre-formulated theory of administrative justice to analyse whether the IAA has balanced administrative justice properties. In so doing, this article offers a unique lens to critically reflect on the role of the IAA and whether, once its mandate is ended, this new model of review should be abandoned or revived for future merits review of asylum claims.

Expanding Knowledge About Music and Well-Being in Carceral Settings: A Methodological Review.

This methodological review includes literature (1987-2022) concerning the role and influence of musical practices-including music therapy and participatory music interventions-on well-being in carceral settings such as jails, prisons, and immigration detention centers. We provide a thorough description of key methodological procedures used in 55 studies: (1) Key Elements of Research Questions; (2) Types of Musical Practices; (3) Musical Genres; (4) Methodologies and Designs; (5) Locations; (6) Theoretical Frameworks; and (7) Samples. Our review indicates that there is difficulty in conducting research in prisons due to limitations imposed on researchers, a paucity of randomized-control trials, and limited generalizability of results due to the heterogeneity of methodological approaches. We suggest that the literature base would benefit from increased attention to issues related to sampling procedures, research questions related to race and gender identity, as well as the delineation between the types of musical practices utilized by music interventions.

The emotional governance of immigration controls

ABSTRACT Emotions produce the borders between the self and other. They are also constitutive of national border practices and politics. This article considers the ‘affective governance’ of the UK’s immigration system, arguing that an emotional register that is both splenetic and indifferent is evident across migration policy, decision-making, and operational practice. It draws on 15-years of research on immigration administration, detention, and judicial spaces to explore the circulation and management of emotion by immigration practitioners. It argues that four emotions (anger, disgust, suspicion, fear) dominate across spaces, scales, and actors. Simultaneously, migrants’ purported emotions and affective lives are met with disinterest and disbelief, their emotional displays are ignored or punished, and immigration practitioners engage in their own emotional detachment. The article argues that by examining the emotional government of immigration systems, we can interrogate the role of affect in techniques of subjectification and the creation of deportable and disposable Others.

Deaths in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention: A Fiscal Year (FY) 2021-2023 update.

This study describes the deaths of individuals in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention between FY2021-2023, updating a report from FY2018-2020, which identified an increased death rate amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. Data was extracted from death reports published online by ICE. Causes of deaths were recorded, and death rates per 100,000 admissions were calculated using population statistics reported by ICE. Reports of individuals released from ICE custody just prior to death were also identified and described. There were 12 deaths reported from FY2021-2023, compared to 38 deaths from FY2018-2020. The death rate per 100,000 admissions in ICE detention was 3.251 in FY2021, 0.939 in FY2022, and 1.457 in FY2023, compared with a pandemic-era high of 10.833 in FY2020. Suicide caused 1 of 12 (8.3%) deaths in FY2021-2023 compared with 9 of 38 (23.7%) deaths in FY2018-2020. COVID-19 was contributory in 3 of 11 (25%) medical deaths in FY2021-2023, compared with 8 of 11 (72.7%) in the COVID-era months of FY2020 (p = 0.030). Overall, 4 of 11 (36.3%) medical deaths in FY2021-2023 resulted from cardiac arrest in detention facilities, compared with 6 of 29 (20.3%) in FY2018-2020. Three deaths of hospitalized individuals released from ICE custody with grave prognoses were identified. The death rate among individuals in ICE custody decreased in FY2021-2023, which may be explained in part by the release of vulnerable individuals following recent federal legal determinations (e.g., Fraihat v. ICE). Identification of medically complex individuals released from ICE custody just prior to death and not reported by ICE indicates that reported deaths underestimate total deaths associated with ICE detention. Attentive monitoring of mortality outcomes following release from ICE custody is warranted.

Peripheral Detention, Transfer, and Access to the Courts

In the last forty years, immigration detention in the U.S. has grown exponentially, largely concentrated in the southern states and outside of the country’s metropoles. In turn, federal immigration officials routinely transfer immigrants from their communities to remote jails and prisons hundreds, if not thousands, of miles away, often in jurisdictions where the law is more favorable to the government. These transfers are conducted without notice or process and frequently occur on weekends or in the predawn hours, when offices are closed and interested parties are lucky to access voicemail. Federal immigration officials’ use of peripheral detention and transfer significantly affects immigrants’ access to the courts and their ability to raise detention challenges. Lurking beneath these issues lies a seemingly technical Supreme Court decision relied on by the government to seek dismissal of habeas actions filed by immigrant petitioners who have been ferried to faraway jails and prisons. In Rumsfeld v. Padilla, the Supreme Court held that the “default rule” in a habeas action challenging present physical confinement is that it must be brought in a petitioner’s “district of confinement” and that a petitioner can only name a single respondent: their “immediate custodian.” However, the history and development of immigration detention and of the habeas statute offer important insights into present debates about the primacy of Padilla in the context of transfer. A mining of these histories unravels the foundational premises on which Padilla relied and encourages us to question mechanical rules that silo immigrant habeas actions in faraway fora, away from evidence, witnesses, community, counsel, and the events giving rise to the detentions themselves.