Are ICE Detention Centers Concentration Camps? Evidence Suggests So.
On September 8, 2020, whistleblower Dawn Wooten submitted a complaint to the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General, alleging that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) had engaged in a variety of dangerous and violent medical practices at the Irwin County Detention Center in Georgia. Wooten describes the detention center staff under-reporting COVID cases, ignoring positive tests, engaging in medical malpractice, and performing forced hysterectomies on detainees.
This report comes mere months after the Inland Coalition for Immigrant Justice and Freedom for Immigrants filed a complaint in May against the Adelanto ICE Detention Center in Southern California for their use of toxic “disinfectant sprays that cause bleeding, burns, and pain.” A viral tweet about the complaint on June 4th, reading “IMMIGRANTS ARE BEING GASSED” prompted outrage about the conditions of the detention center and reignited debates about ICE detention centers’ structural proximity to concentration camps.
This article seeks to establish the historical significance of concentration camps, beyond their infamous use by the Nazi regime, as well as provide a three-pronged test for determining what constitutes a concentration camp. Then, it hopes to establish that current ICE detention centers satisfy this test. Finally, it considers whether calling these centers “concentration camps” is productive in discourse.
A Brief History of the Concentration Camp
A concentration camp, according to the Oxford Dictionary and the Holocaust Encyclopedia, is “a place where large numbers of people, especially political prisoners or members of persecuted minorities, are deliberately imprisoned, without trial, in a relatively small area with inadequate facilities, sometimes to provide forced labor or to await mass execution.” While concentration camps are most famously recognized through their systematic implementation in Nazi Germany as a mechanism to imprison and kill Jews and opponents to Nazi ideology, it is important to recognize the varying applications of these types of detention centers in different historical contexts to better understand their political significance.
The existence and use of the modern concentration camp can be traced to Spain’s occupation of Cuba in the late 1890s, where the Spanish regime enforced “Reconcentration Policies” — ones that aimed to relocate over 300,000 Cubans from their rural residences into urban concentration centers in an effort to counteract the Cuban insurgency for independence. The Cuban natives were imprisoned without adequate access to food, water, medicine, or means of self-sustenance. More than 100,000 Cubans died in these prison camps.
From 1899–1902, during their occupation of the South African Boer Republics, the British used similar concentration zones to relocate the Boers and prevent civilians from supporting the revolutionary guerillas. This was in response to the British’s humiliating tactical defeats by the Boer guerillas, to which the British responded by burning about 4,000 acres of Boer residential and farming land, in turn leaving hundreds of thousands of Boers in need of relocation. According to the UCLA Historical Journal, “the conditions in the camps were severe, and prisoners lacked access to basic necessities, such as food and potable water.”
While popular American conceptualizations of concentration camps are typically ones that are established by foreign regimes, history shows us that the United States is no stranger to them. For example, in 1830, Andrew Jackson signed into law the Indian Removal Act, which called for the forceful relocation of thousands of natives into prison camps. The implementation of this legislation, famously known as the Trail of Tears, not only led to the deaths of thousands of natives on the atrocious displacement journey but their near extinction while living in the concentration camps. However, contemporary historical discourse seldomly refers to them as “concentration camps”, assuming it even chooses to acknowledge their existence.
Perhaps less popularly known is the use of concentration camps in 1864 by Civil War General James Carleton, who, according to author Brett Wilkins, “forced 10,000 Navajo people to march 300 miles (480 km) in the dead of winter from their homeland in the Four Corners region to a concentration camp at Fort Sumner, New Mexico.” Hundreds died on the trail to their prison and thousands more died while interned. This atrocity became known as The Long Walk.
About a century later in 1942, Franklin Delano Roosevelt notoriously signed Executive Order 9066, which effectively established Japanese internment camps by authorizing the Secretary of War, Henry L. Stimson, to forcibly remove any resident alien who was deemed a threat. Although not specified in the order, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had already profiled and surveilled those of Japanese ancestry as being that “threat.” These camps were notoriously upheld by the Supreme Court as being legitimate and necessary institutions to maintaining national security. In a similar vein, during the U.S occupation of Okinawa in 1945, which included the imprisonment of over 300,000 Japanese civilians, 3,000 Okinawans died from malaria — spawned and spread by the filthy prison conditions.
Similarly, the U.S government established concentration camps once again in 1950 during the onset of the Cold War with the passage of the Subversive Activities Control Act (McCarran Internal Security Act). Though never used, the concentration camps aimed to imprison those identified as “communists”, activists, civil rights advocates, and protestors. In ironic agreeance with the popular phrase “history repeats itself”, the Supreme Court, also upheld the Subversive Activities Control Act in United States v Robel.
From a historical analysis of these concentration camp implementations and using the definition of a concentration camp, we can derive three criteria that would qualify a detention center as a concentration camp: 1) a large group of persecuted peoples (typically minorities) being detained in small areas 2) these small areas have inadequate facilities (access to sufficient and clean food, water, and living space) and 3) these detentions are without adequate due process.
Are ICE Detention Centers Concentration Camps?
Evidence suggests so.
Let’s focus on the first criterion, the requirement for a large group of persecuted peoples being detained in small areas. On an average day, according to the Global Detention Project, approximately 44,631 immigrants are detained in roughly 200 detention facilities that include privately and publicly owned jails (although ICE reports 39,322 people as the average).
The aforementioned centers house 11,786 immigrant children, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. In the El Paso detention center, according to the inspector general for the Department of Homeland Security, in a cell that was designed to hold 35 people — 155 people were crowded inside. According to the Texas Tribune, in another cell, “76 women are crouched side-by-side on the floor in a cell designed for 12.”
In response to the conditions of the immigrant detention centers, the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law filed a motion asking a federal judge to order the Trump administration to take immediate action to improve the sanitary and safety conditions of these facilities. According to the motion, “children are held for weeks in deplorable conditions, without access to soap, clean water, showers, clean clothing, toilets, toothbrushes, adequate nutrition, or adequate sleep. The children, including infants and expectant mothers, are dirty, cold, hungry and sleep-deprived.”
This brings us to the second criterion, inadequate facilities. In the U.S immigrant detention centers, according to the Human Rights Watch (HRW), US Border Patrol is holding many children, “including some who are much too young to take care of themselves, in border facilities for sometimes weeks at a time without contact with family members, regular access to showers, clean clothes, toothbrushes, or proper beds.” HRW also confirmed that many are sick and are not given access to medical facilities. According to a group of lawyers with the Associated Press, in this same facility in El Paso, there’s a gross lack of access to food, water, and sanitation for the “250 infants, and other children and teens at the Border Patrol station.”
And expectedly, these detentions are without adequate due process — the third criterion. According to the American Immigration Council, immigrants in detention were the least likely to obtain representation. Only 14 percent of detained immigrants acquired legal counsel. More than half of immigrants facing removal in immigration court during the six years covered in the American Immigration Council’s report (2007–2012) spent their entire case (the entire time they were waiting for trial) in government custody. Additionally, almost 56 percent of immigrants were “detained” in prisons, jails, and detention centers across the country as they awaited the decision of an immigration judge. Only 10% of immigrants that started in detention were released from custody before their cases were decided.
Should We Call ICE Detention Centers “Concentration Camps”?
Those opposed to classifying ICE Detention Centers as concentration camps often argue that these detention centers lack the death count, degree of atrocity, and, unlike “typical” concentration camps, have the option for detainees to leave.
Concerning death count, a reported 24 ICE detainees have died in custody from 2016–2019. However, according to a report by the ACLU, ICE officers routinely ignore and fail to report detainee deaths, so the death toll may be higher than reported. Regardless, implying the need for a death threshold is not something that has ever been required as consideration for concentration camp classification — nor should it be. Doing this creates a gross lack of consideration for the pain and suffering of detainees who live through their horrid experiences. Additionally, it sets the precedent that we should consider death as the requirement for acknowledging atrocity, which is both unproductive and dangerous.
Regarding the detainees’ option to leave detainment, it’s cruel to frame this as a voluntary choice. Detainees have the option to apply for voluntary departure, which requires them to return to their “host” state. According to the Marshall Project, “voluntary departure is a last resort for many undocumented immigrants because it means leaving their longtime homes and often their families in the United States without any clear prospect for returning. And those who take the option usually have to pay their own way. Those flights can cost thousands of dollars, because immigration officials require a special kind of ticket that can be changed at any time.” Additionally, immigrants in detention are often fleeing political persecution and instability from their home countries. According to the United States Center for Immigration Services, the U.S received 84,000 applications for affirmative asylum status for the 2019 fiscal year while only 6,304 applications from individuals outside of the U.S were accepted. Among these 84,000 applications, 53% of them were made up by applicants from Venezuela, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras — countries that comprise some of the most dangerous regions in Latin America.
Semantics aside, discourse around the issue has proven that “concentration camp” is a deeply personal and inflammatory term for some. Some have even called for the term to be retired completely. This being the case, it can create a disconnect between individuals trying to engage in productive discourse. However, more than ever, with historical lessons in mind, it is important to acknowledge that detention centers, prison camps, prison centers, concentration camps, detention camps, or whatever you feel is the most appropriate term, are products of an authoritarian, ethnonationalist, and sadistic system of governance that must be immediately abolished.
