Immigration Article of the Day: The Perverse Logic of Immigration Detention: Unraveling the Rationality of Imprisoning Immigrants Based on Markers of Race and Class Otherness by César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández

The Perverse Logic of Immigration Detention: Unraveling the Rationality of Imprisoning Immigrants Based on Markers of Race and Class Othernessby César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández Capital University Law SchoolAugust 21, 20121 Columbia Journal of Race and Law 353 (2012) Abstract: Mass incarceration has long featured the imprisonment of vast numbers of people of color. Today’s immigration incarceration regime emblematizes these characteristics of mass incarceration. In recent years, almost 400,000 individuals, mostly people of color, have cycled through immigration prisons annually. The modern state of immigration imprisonment, this Essay argues, should not come as a surprise. It is the perversely rational extension of the nation’s decades-old criminal policing emphasis that resulted in penal mass incarceration paired with a more recent emphasis on sorting desirable and non-desirable immigrants through the lens of criminality.

KJ