Detention and deportation have become keystones of immigration and border enforcement policies around the world. The United States has built a massive immigration enforcement system that detains and deports more people than any other country. This system is grounded in the assumptions that national borders are territorially fixed and controllable, and that detention and deportation bolster security and deter migration. Nancy Hiemstra’s multisited ethnographic research pairs investigation of enforcement practices in the United States with an exploration into conditions migrants face in one country of origin: Ecuador. Detain and Deport’s transnational approach reveals how the U.S. immigration enforcement system’s chaotic organization and operation distracts from the mismatch between these assumptions and actual outcomes. Hiemstra draws on the experiences of detained and deported migrants, as well as their families and communities in Ecuador, to show convincingly that instead of deterring migrants and improving national security, detention and deportation generate insecurities and forge lasting connections across territorial borders. At the same time, the system’s chaos works to curtail rights and maintain detained migrants on a narrow path to deportation. Hiemstra argues that in addition to the racialized ideas of national identity and a fluctuating dependence on immigrant labor that have long propelled U.S. immigration policies, the contemporary emphasis on detention and deportation is fueled by the influence of people and entities that profit from them.

Focuses on stories of people who were wrongly denied access to the U.S., or were deported.

An intimate look at the people ensnared by the US detention and deportation system, the largest in the world On a bright Phoenix morning, Elena Santiago opened her door to find her house surrounded by a platoon of federal immigration agents. Her children screamed as the officers handcuffed her and drove her away. Within hours, she was deported to the rough border town of Nogales, Sonora, with nothing but the clothes on her back. Her two-year-old daughter and fifteen-year-old son, both American citizens, were taken by the state of Arizona and consigned to foster care. Their mother’s only offense: living undocumented in the United States. Immigrants like Elena, who’ve lived in the United States for years, are being detained and deported at unprecedented rates. Thousands languish in detention centers—often torn from their families—for months or even years. Deportees are returned to violent Central American nations or unceremoniously dropped off in dangerous Mexican border towns. Despite the dangers of the desert crossing, many immigrants will slip across the border again, stopping at nothing to get home to their children. Drawing on years of reporting in the Arizona-Mexico borderlands, journalist Margaret Regan tells their poignant stories. Inside the massive Eloy Detention Center, a for-profit private prison in Arizona, she meets detainee Yolanda Fontes, a mother separated from her three small children. In a Nogales soup kitchen, deportee Gustavo Sanchez, a young father who’d lived in Phoenix since the age of eight, agonizes about the risks of the journey back. Regan demonstrates how increasingly draconian detention and deportation policies have broadened police powers, while enriching a private prison industry whose profits are derived from human suffering. She also documents the rise of resistance, profiling activists and young immigrant “Dreamers” who are fighting for the rights of the undocumented. Compelling and heart-wrenching, Detained and Deported offers a rare glimpse into the lives of people ensnared in America’s immigration dragnet.

Detention and deportation have become keystones of immigration and border enforcement policies around the world. The United States has built a massive immigration enforcement system that detains and deports more people than any other country. This system is grounded in the assumptions that national borders are territorially fixed and controllable, and that detention and deportation bolster security and deter migration. Nancy Hiemstra's multisited ethnographic research pairs investigation of enforcement practices in the United States with an exploration into conditions migrants face in one country of origin: Ecuador. Detain and Deport's transnational approach reveals how the U.S. immigration enforcement system's chaotic organization and operation distracts from the mismatch between these assumptions and actual outcomes. Hiemstra draws on the experiences of detained and deported migrants, as well as their families and communities in Ecuador, to show convincingly that instead of deterring migrants and improving national security, detention and deportation generate insecurities and forge lasting connections across territorial borders. At the same time, the system's chaos works to curtail rights and maintain detained migrants on a narrow path to deportation. Hiemstra argues that in addition to the racialized ideas of national identity and a fluctuating dependence on immigrant labor that have long propelled U.S. immigration policies, the contemporary emphasis on detention and deportation is fueled by the influence of people and entities that profit from them.

This book provides the first in-depth history of immigration detention in the United States. Employing extensive archival research to document the origins and development of immigration detention in the U.S. from 1973 to 2000, it reveals how the world's largest detention system originated in the U.S. government's campaign to exclude Haitians from American shores, and how resistance by Haitians and their allies constantly challenged the detention regime.

Without strong proof, policy advocates along with some scholars have causally linked declines in juvenile offending and incarceration with evidence-based and rehabilitation-oriented policy reform. Such studies have called for a shift back to rehabilitative ideals augmented by innovative strategies that emphasize cultures of care, and in the cases of system-involved girls, ‘gender-responsive’ programs, anchored in feminist literature. These programs have also caught the attention of feminist scholars who cast doubt on both their design and implementation. Gendered Injustice offers a unique contribution to the latter line of scholarship, and critically examines claims of innovation, empowerment, and gender-responsivity in youth correction that currently dominate the field. Drawing on rich ethnographic data, this book uncovers the reality of, and gives voice to, the experiences and continued mistreatment of marginalized girls housed in locked institutions in the US State of California. By providing detailed insight into the detention experiences and the pathways of several young women, this book draws stark comparisons between the lived experience of young women in detention with the official rhetoric of empowerment that dominates public discourse. This book reveals the ways in which institutional policies and practices are designed to neglect and, in many instances, re-victimize inmates. This is essential reading for those engaged in corrections, juvenile justice, gender and crime, and feminist criminology.