Immigration Article of the Day: Migrants Resist Systemic Discrimination and Dehumanization in Private, For-Profit Detention Centers by Elvia R. Arriola and Virginia M. Raymond
Migrants Resist Systemic Discrimination and Dehumanization in Private, For-Profit Detention Centers by Elvia R. Arriola and Virginia M. Raymond, Santa Clara Journal of International Law (2017)
Abstract: In June 2014, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security initiated a policy of detaining women and children asylum-seekers in detention centers across the country, rather than releasing them after arrest to pursue their claims while living in the community with extended family members, churches, shelters run by non-profit organizations, or other private individuals. Human rights advocates at the local, national, and international levels have condemned the fact of detention, the pretense that these refugees pose any “threat to national security,” the length of detention, and the conditions of detention facilities. Moreover, many of the detention facilities are run by private, for-profit prison corporations, meaning that their operations are even less transparent than federal or state operated institutions. Despite harsh conditions, women asylum-seekers and immigrants have consistently resisted their incarceration. In explaining the origins and consequences of this policy, as well as of the burgeoning phenomenon of “crimmigration” (the intersection of criminal law with immigration law) this article argues that there is a punitive character to the supposed “civil” immigration detention process. The article argues that the punitive and inhumane aspects of for-profit based immigration detention can and should be linked to broader historical and political aspects of U.S. racial history, including the rise of the prison industrial complex and the social construction of the undocumented border crosser into a presumptive criminal identity. The article explains that once in detention arrested migrants face a range of inhumane consequences stemming from the overall impact of recent changes in Department of Homeland Security policy. The article argues that the harshest impact of these changes in law and policy by immigration authorities is on members of vulnerable groups who turn themselves in at the border and request asylum. Once in the system they must overcome obstructive, procedural barriers while also being detained and treated like presumed criminals by staff in for-profit detention centers who are not accountable for their mistreatment of detainees. The article draws upon the words of women and LGBT detainees themselves to illustrate the discriminatory effects of the government’s continued reliance on for-profit prison corporations to operate immigration detention centers. The narratives herein were gathered by the authors’ first-hand knowledge, either from Dr. Raymond’s representation of formerly detained refugees or from an educational delegation produced by Professor Arriola which included first-hand meetings and interviews with migrants at the South Texas Detention Center.
KJ