Immigration Prisons Research Articles

Advancing Research To Address The Health Impacts Of Structural Racism In US Immigration Prisons.

The US is the world leader in imprisoning immigrants. Its mass immigration detention system emerged as an extension of mass incarceration, rooted in a legacy of racist US immigration and criminal laws. Immigration policy is a structural determinant of health that negatively affects the health of imprisoned immigrants, their families, and their communities. The systemic harms of "detention facilities," which we refer to as "immigration prisons," have been extensively documented, yet incrementalist reforms have failed to result in improved outcomes for immigrants. We argue that ending the practice of immigrant imprisonment is the most effective solution to mitigating its harms. Community-based programs are safer and less expensive than imprisonment, while also being effective at ensuring compliance with government requirements. We identify several priorities for researchers and policy makers to tackle the health inequities resulting from this structurally racist system. These include applying a critical, intersectional lens to studying the policies and practices that drive imprisonment, engaging affected communities in research and policy development, and creating an accountable and transparent system of data collection and release to inform health interventions. The reliance of the US on immigrant imprisonment is a policy choice with immense social and economic costs; dismantling it is critical to advancing health equity.

Cumulative Risk of Immigration Prison Conditions on Health Outcomes Among Detained Immigrants in California

ObjectivesThe USA maintains the world’s largest immigration detention system. This study examines the mechanisms by which detention serves as a catalyst for worsening health.MethodsUsing data from detained immigrants in California (n = 493) from 2013 to 2014, we assessed the prevalence of exposure to conditions of confinement hypothesized to negatively influence health; the extent to which conditions of confinement are associated with psychological stress, diagnosed mental health conditions, and/or declines in general health; and the cumulative impact of confinement conditions on these outcomes.ResultsWe found that each condition increased the likelihood of one or more negative health conditions, but there was also a cumulative effect: for each additional confinement condition, the odds of worsening general health rose by 39% and reporting good health decreased by 24%.ConclusionsConfinement conditions are associated with poor physical and mental health outcomes among immigrants detained in immigration prisons. Policies that seek to improve specific conditions in detention centers may remove some risks of harm, but alternatives to detention are likely to be most effective.

Punishing status and the punishment status quo: Solitary confinement in U.S. Immigration prisons, 2013–2017

This study provides the first systematic, nationally representative analysis of administrative records of solitary confinement placements in any carceral setting. We examine patterns in who experiences solitary confinement in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody, as well as the stated reason for, and length of, their confinement. We reveal several findings. First, cases involving individuals with mental illnesses are overrepresented, more likely to occur without infraction, and to last longer, compared to cases involving individuals without mental illnesses. Second, solitary confinement cases involving immigrants from Africa and the Caribbean are vastly overrepresented in comparison to the share of these groups in the overall detained population, and African immigrants are more likely to be confined for disciplinary reasons, compared to the average. Finally, placement patterns vary significantly by facility and institution type, with private facilities more likely to solitarily confine people without infraction, compared to public facilities. This study offers a lens through which to more precisely theorize the legal boundary-blurring of crimmigration and the relationship between prison and immigration detention policies, to better understand the practice of solitary confinement across carceral contexts, and to analyze the relationship between national-level policy and on-the-ground implementation.

Constitutional and Procedural Pathways to Freedom from Immigration Detention: Increasing Access to Legal Representation

Each day, tens of thousands of noncitizens are caged in immigration prisons and jails across the United States. Locked up and separated from their families and the outside world, detained noncitizens experience the pain and suffering associated with criminal incarceration without many of the same salient procedural safeguards. One of the most crucial missing protections is access to legal representation. Empirical studies show that legal representation makes all the difference in allowing noncitizens to challenge their imprisonment and gain freedom. Yet, the vast majority of detained noncitizens never receive legal representation. As a result, for many people in immigration detention, the only conceivable exit options are those worse than detention itself: deportation or death.Despite legal scholarship arguing for a right to appointed counsel in removal proceedings, comparatively little attention has been devoted to access to legal representation for the specific purpose of seeking freedom from detention. This Article aims to fill that gap by examining two structural pathways to increasing access to legal representation for people seeking release from immigration detention. First, the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment demands a right to appointed counsel for the purpose of challenging detention (the “constitutional pathway”). A direct application of the procedural due process test established in Mathews v. Eldridge and expounded in Turner v. Rogers provides sufficient justification to extend the right to appointed counsel to individuals in immigration detention. Although courts have yet to recognize a constitutional right to appointed counsel in criminal bail hearings, the comparative dearth of procedural protections in immigration detention proceedings justifies identifying the right in that context. Second, “legal representation” is not limited to each detainee getting her own lawyer: the class action, a device that allows a small group of detained noncitizens to litigate on behalf of a larger group of detainees, is a powerful, but underappreciated, tool for allowing detained noncitizens their day in court (the “procedural pathway”). Two recent developments—specifically Justice Alito’s dicta on the viability of the class device in Jennings v. Rodriguez and debates over whether the Immigration and Nationality Act prohibits classwide injunctions—threaten the existence and efficacy of class actions in the context of immigration detention. The first, questioning the class device’s viability, mistakenly conflates the flexible nature of due process with the requirements for class certification. The second, doubting the permissibility of classwide injunctions, reveals that the only relief available for the class may be declaratory in nature, which often falls short of the relief detainees most need.Immigration detention is unique among the crises currently plaguing the U.S. immigration system. The impact of the coronavirus pandemic on people in detention has only made this problem more apparent. Access to legal representation is crucial to prevent unlawful imprisonment, lessen the economic and human costs of detention, and fight forces of xenophobia and racial prejudice that have influenced immigration law’s understanding of “who belongs” for far too long. In tandem, the constitutional and procedural pathways chart two broad solutions, present benefits and limitations, and raise further ideas for roads to a fairer, more just system.

Exploring the Concept of Torture: An Analysis of Kashmir Valley

AbstIndia is considered as world’s largest democracy. The country has a civil society, free media, and independent judiciary. Still, the country is engaged in quotidian violence like torture, which is widely prevalent in the name of national security, investigation crimes, extracting information and punishing criminals. Torture is an instrument of state power in an authoritarian system which applies all means to silence the political opponents or bend them towards rule of law. Nevertheless, torture occurs in the democratic countries in which rule of law is highly respected likely in maintaining peace and public order, national security and fight against terrorism. It is clear that in democracy when the rights of an individual have been weakened and are on the mercy of those who are in power, the result is that quotidian violence and other cruel punishments can occur. Torture is a brutal method of social and political control which relies on complex networks of technology, training, facilitators and perpetrators. It demands classified structures located within enclaves of barbarism in order to achieve its aim of inducing terror. Modern states have built burgeoning detention facilities like immigration centers, prisons and police cells that engage in torture and other cruel, inhuman treatments. The law enforcement agencies engage in torture and other cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment in the name of counter-terrorism, security threats and soon. The states use violence like methods to control and terrorize its people to maintain the status quo or to destroy internal or external political, ideological or military threats. The state uses torture and makes it clear that enhanced interrogation techniques make a person from kidnapping to extraordinary rendition, from citizen to unlawful enemy combatant and from human to terrorist. The valley of Kashmir faces torture and other cruel inhuman treatments since the insurgency began in 1990’s, with the violent uprising and have elicited terrorism. Methods of torture are used as a tool of counter-insurgency by Indian security forces. The government of India used all efforts to crush the movement of self-determination of Kashmir. The strong response from India violates the human rights and international humanitarian laws. The law enforcement agencies, army, and para-military forces have engaged in reprisal attacks against civilians resulting in indiscriminate firing, search operations, gang-rapes and burning of houses in the valley. After 1990, the situation in the Kashmir valley deteriorated and Kashmir was declared a disturbed area and laws like Disturbed Area Act (DAA) 1990, Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) 1990 and Public Safety Act (PSA) 1978 were imposed. The purpose of the paper is to examine the concept of Torture in Kashmir.

Crisis heterotopias and border zones of the dead

In this essay, I examine transnational relations of biopower and colonialism in the context of two islands, Lampedusa and Christmas Island. By examining the manner in which both islands have been mobilized by Fortress Europe and Fortress Australia as frontline spaces that must thwart, through imprisonment and deportation, the landfall of asylum seekers and refugees on their shores, I mark their faultline status in the geopolitics of North/South relations. Even as both islands are sites marked by the harrowing presence of immigration prisons, they are also places that are destinations for luxury holidays. Drawing on Michel Foucault's concept of crisis heterotopias, as spaces that can simultaneously accommodate often violently contradictory differences, I attempt to theorize the biopolitical relations that inscribe and organize such sites. Situating them along the faultline of the border, I conclude by bringing into focus the border zones of the refugee dead that inscribe both islands.

The Tutelary Architecture of Immigration Detention Prisons and the Spectacle of ‘Necessary Suffering’

In this essay, I address Debord's concept of the spectalist society in the context of the transmutation of the trauma of the refugees incarcerated in Australia's immigration prisons into telegenic spectacle. I argue that the razor wire fences of these prisons generate a double movement of both enclosure and exposure. The potential for exposure is what enables refugee trauma to be telegenically transmitted as spectacle. The architecture of Australia's immigration prisons, I conclude, functions as a type of tutelary architecture that dispenses object lessons on deterrence whilst simultaneously generating the production of refugee trauma-as-spectacle.

Book Review: American Gulag: Inside U.S. Immigration Prisons

Book Review: American Gulag: Inside U.S. Immigration Prisons

American gulag: inside U.S. immigration prisons

Prologue: Let This Be Home 1. Invisibility, Intimidation, and the INS 2. September 11: Secrecy, Disruption, and Continuity 3. Another World, Another Nation: Miami's Krome Detention Center 4. Enforcement Means You're Brutal 5. The World's First Private Prison 6. Keeping Quiet Means Deny: A Hunger Strike in Queens 7. The Art of Jailing 8. Aliens and Criminal Agents 9. Siege, Shackles, Climate, Design 10. Speak to Every Media: Resistance, Repression, and the Making of a Prisoner 11. Good and Evil in New England 12. Out West: Philosophy and Despair 13. Dead Time 14. Mariel Cubans: Abandoned, Again and Again Acknowledgments Notes Selected Bibliography Index

Book Review: Other People's Blood: U.S. Immigration Prisons in the Reagan Decade

Book Review: Other People's Blood: U.S. Immigration Prisons in the Reagan Decade

Refugees in a Carceral Age: The Rebirth of Immigration Prisons in the United States

Refugees in a Carceral Age: The Rebirth of Immigration Prisons in the United States

Book Review: Other People's Blood: U.S. Immigration Prisons in the Reagan Decade

Book Review: Other People's Blood: U.S. Immigration Prisons in the Reagan Decade

Other People's Blood: U.S. Immigration Prisons in the Reagan Decade.

During the 1980s thousands of refugees from Central America, who sought safe haven in the United States, found themselves incarcerated in immigration prisonsabused by their jailors and deprived of the most basic legal and human rights. Drawing on declassified government documents and interviews with more than 3,000 Central American refugees, Kahn portrays the chilling reality of daily life in immigration prisons and reveals how the Department of Justice and the Immigration and Naturalization Service intentionally violated federal laws and regulations to deny protection to refugees fleeing wars financed by U.S. military aid. }During the 1980s hundreds of thousands of refugees fled civil wars and death squads in Central America, seeking safe haven in the United States. Instead, thousands found themselves incarcerated in immigration prisonsabused by their jailors and deprived of the most basic legal and human rights. Drawing on declassified government documents and interviews with prison officials, INS staff, and more than 3,000 Central American refugees, Robert S. Kahn reveals how the Department of Justice and its dependent agency, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, intentionally violated federal laws and regulations to deny protection to refugees from El Salvador and Guatemala who were fleeing wars financed by U.S. military aid.Kahn portrays the chilling reality of daily life in immigration prisons in Texas, Arizona, and Louisiana. Behind the razor-topped prison walls, refugees were not simply denied political asylum; they were beaten, robbed, sexually assaulted, and sometimes tortured by prison guards. Other Peoples Blood traces the ten-year legal struggle by volunteer prison workers and attorneys to stop the abuse of refugees and to force the Justice Department to concede in court that its treatment of immigrants had violated U. S. laws and the Geneva Convention for over a decade. Yet the case of American Baptist Churches v. Thornburgh, which overturned more judicial decisions than any other case in U.S. history, is still virtually unknown in the United States, and today the debate over illegal immigration is being carried on with little awareness of the government policies that contributed so shamefully to this countrys immigration problems. }

Other People's Blood: U.S. Immigration Prisons in the Reagan Decade.

Other People's Blood: U.S. Immigration Prisons in the Reagan Decade.

Other people's blood: U.S. immigration prisons in the Reagan decade

Other people's blood: U.S. immigration prisons in the Reagan decade