The Criminalization of Immigrants & the Immigration-Industrial Complex
The MIT Press is proud to present From the Archive Friday (FTAF). Each Friday, we select an article from the depths of our online Journals archive and make it freely available for one week. Check back here each Friday for a new current events-related gem from our journals.
We chose this week’s selection in response to news surrounding the Trump administration’s family separation policy as part of “zero tolerance” at the United States border. Authors Karen Douglas (Sam Houston State University, Huntsville, TX) and Rogelio Sáenz (University of Texas at San Antonio) provide an overview of the context and policies that have produced the rising criminalization of immigrants and the business of detention centers.
The Criminalization of Immigrants & the Immigration-Industrial Complex
Dædalus
Volume 142 | Issue 3
Summer 2013
“Anxiety over the immigrant ‘other’–the alien–is an enduring characteristic of the American experience. So, too, are efforts to exclude those deemed “undesirable” (historically, poor people and people of color) from immigrating to the United States.”
Abstract:
Over the last few decades, and particularly after 9/11, we have witnessed the increasing criminalization of immigrants in the United States. Changing policies have subjected immigrants to intensified apprehension and detention programs. This essay provides an overview of the context and policies that have produced the rising criminalization of immigrants. We draw on the institutional theory of migration to understand the business of detention centers and the construction of the immigration-industrial complex. We link government contracts and private corporations in the formation of the immigration-industrial complex, highlighting the increasing profits that private corporations are making through the detention of immigrants. We conclude with a discussion of how the privatization of detention centers is part of a larger trend in which basic functions of societal institutions are being farmed out to private corporations with little consideration for basic human rights.
Excerpt:
“Though the path of the immigrant in the United States has never been easy, the costs of being an undocumented immigrant are higher today than ever before. Not only is the always-risky journey into the United States much more treacherous now than it was in the past, but blending in once here is becoming increasingly difficult. The attitude of U.S. natives toward undocumented immigrants (particularly if they are from Latin American countries) is increasingly hostile and inhospitable. Even gainful employment offers little insulation from the rabid xenophobia that has engulfed some segments of the U.S. population in the post-9/11 era. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials have raided and rounded up people who, but for their lack of documentation, would be viewed no differently from the millions of hardworking Americans trying to make a living for themselves and their families. They are seized from their workplaces, shackled, and hauled off to detention centers–jails and prisons–where they are thrown into a shadow world with few protected human and legal rights. Despite numerous media accounts describing the deplorable conditions of the detention centers and the inhumane treatment of the detainees, the bureaucrats in charge seem indifferent, as does the larger public to whom they must answer. Few seem even to be asking questions.
The criminalization of undocumented immigrants has been heightened by the establishment and endorsement of punitive actions–both individual-based and government-sponsored–against undocumented groups and those who assist them. Furthermore, prisons are being rapidly erected to detain more inclusive segments of the undocumented immigrant population. Several detention centers have recently been constructed and designated to house immigrant families; and perhaps still operating under the framing of youths as ‘super predators,’ an image that dominated criminal justice thinking during the 1980s and 1990s, undocumented juvenile immigrants are not exempt from this immigration-industrial complex.
The contracts that link government, which supplies immigrant detainees to prison facilities, with the private industry responsible for building, maintaining, and administering such prisons signal the emergence of a new type of prison-industrial complex. This essay identifies this trend as part of a larger privatization movement in the United States and around the world. Broadly, this movement is characterized by the dominance of market liberalization and the transition from a market economy to a market society; the fracturing of U.S. society; the death of the liberal class; ‘winner take all’ politics that have redistributed resources upward; and the reestablishment of Jim Crow-like policies in the criminal justice system that ensnare poor and vulnerable populations, including immigrants, in their web.
How has a nation once perceived as a beacon of democracy and justice evolved to grossly abuse these very principles? This essay seeks to answer that question by first describing the rising detention rate of immigrants and illustrating the context in which this growth has occurred. Toward this end, we provide an overview of the policies and the environment that have helped criminalize immigrants. Next, we draw on the institutional theory of migration to understand the ascension of the business of detention centers. We draw links between government contracts and private corporations in the formation of the immigration-industrial complex, while highlighting the increasing profits that private corporations are making through the detention of immigrants. And we conclude with a discussion about how the privatization of detention centers is part of a larger trend in which basic functions of societal institutions are being farmed out to private corporations with little consideration for basic human rights.” (pp. 199–200)
“The Criminalization of Immigrants & the Immigration-Industrial Complex” is free to read on the MIT Press website through June 28th.
