The Immigrant-Industrial Complex: An Analysis of Post-9/11 Immigration Enforcement and the Detention of Immigrants in the United States
By Ikram Mohamed, Spring 2023 Barbara Harlow Intern in Human Rights & Social Justice
As of March 2023, 26,898 immigrants were being detained in US Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention centers, representing a concerning trend over recent years.[1] Comparisons have been drawn between current immigration-enforcement practices and the Fugitive Slave Acts of the 19th century, connecting immigration detention of today to U.S. histories of slavery.[2] Due to the increase in detainment, detention facilities are the fastest growing incarceration system in the United States, resulting in the “immigrant-industrial complex,” in effect a new prison boom.[3] Echoes of these chilling similarities to slavery, horrific practices occur within detention centers, such as abuse, solitary confinement, and medical neglect.[4] Therefore our society should not tolerate the existence of immigration detention centers.
Researching the issue of immigrant incarceration, I drew a lot of inspiration from Professor Barbara Harlow, a scholar and advocate for human rights, as I was interested in the intersection between human rights and journalism, which also inform my career prospects. Professor Harlow always advocated for paying more attention to news articles and journalism, and argued for scholars to “pay critical attention to (them) and subject them to close readings as they do literary texts.”[5] Following this advice, I turned to journalism as a primary source to obtain firsthand accounts from detainees. Harlow’s writing primarily focused on the struggles of oppressed and marginalized communities, so I followed her approach as it applies to my own research on immigrant incarceration. This approach means using close reading and analysis of reports and journalism as my main methodology for this research project.
The inception of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) marked a significant turning point in the United States’ approach to immigration enforcement. Created in the aftermath of the September 11th terrorist attacks, ICE was established by the Homeland Security Act as part of a larger effort to consolidate 22 different agencies and bureaus into an umbrella government organization. Immigration enforcement was previously handled by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) and the U.S. Customs Service. However, following criticism of the agencies’ insufficient response to immigration, ICE was developed as a “unique combination of civil and criminal authorities to protect national security and strengthen public safety.”[6] The creation of ICE marked a significant shift in the U.S. approach to immigration enforcement with a renewed emphasis on border security and the detainment and removal of immigrants within the nation’s borders. However, the agency’s methods for implementing immigration laws have been highly questionable. The agency’s practices are direct violations of immigrants’ human rights and ICE has faced criticism for its use of violence against immigrants, separation of families, and a lack of access to legal representation. Furthermore, ICE detention centers have been described as a “living hell,”[7] with detainees subjected to inhumane conditions, physical and psychological abuse. However, despite the backlash, ICE remains a key player in the nation’s war against immigrants.
In recent years, there has been a significant surge in the number of immigrants being detained in detention centers, reflecting a broader trend of intensified immigration enforcement in the US. According to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), there was a staggering 22% increase in the number of individuals held in ICE detention centers between 2016 and 2018.[8] This surge is partially attributed to the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration; however this issue existed long before Trump’s presidency. Therefore, the rise in the detention of immigrants is not solely due to the policies of one administration, but rather reflects a broader trend of utilizing detention centers as a means of immigration enforcement. Furthermore, it is part of a larger effort in the criminalization of immigration that has been steadily growing for decades within the United States. Organizations such as the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Immigrant Justice Center have contributed research and reporting on the history of detention centers, noting that most immigrants were not detained until the 1980s.[9] Despite this research, I would argue that these organizations often focus more on contemporary issues rather than what brought us to this point. Although I acknowledge the importance of this type of reporting, it is necessary to provide sufficient background on how immigration policy has evolved up to the present day. Such work is important as individuals must understand how deeply ingrained anti-immigration rhetoric and policy is in the United States.
The utilization of detention centers as a tool for immigration enforcement raises important questions regarding the ethics behind these systems. In recent years, there have been numerous reports highlighting ICE’s direct breaches of immigrants’ human rights. Fifty interviews with formerly detained individuals conducted by Physicians for Human Rights revealed that ICE detainees were medically neglected, retaliated against for complaining, and lacked basic hygiene and sleeping supplies.[10] There were further reports of detainees being abused by ICE agents, including “allegations of assault, sexual abuse . . . denial of medical care, harsh detention conditions, and dehumanizing treatment.”[11] In particular, the use of family separation under the Trump administration is one practice that garnered a lot of attention. The separation of families has resulted in irreversible trauma for both parents and children, with infants and toddlers being torn away from their parents and placed in detention centers with little to no proper care or supervision. Warren Binford, a law professor at Willamette University and the director of its Clinical Law program, found after conducting interviews at a detention center in Clint, TX that once a new infant or toddler enters the center, guards will ask other children “who wants to take care of this little boy [or] . . . girl?”[12] . Other children have been left to fill the role of caregivers, despite being parentless themselves.[13]
With the rise in private detention centers in recent years, several issues regarding the lack of transparency and control in these facilities due to their increased prominence in immigration enforcement have been highlighted. Private detention centers are not held to the same levels of compliance as government-run centers, making them the “most difficult to monitor and regulate.”[14] Private companies running these centers often prioritize profit over the well-being of detainees, leading to cost-cutting measures that compromise the health and safety of those in their care. It has also resulted in immigrants providing their labor for the essential work to keep these centers running. A New York Times article describes these jobs as including “cooking, serving and cleaning up food, janitorial services, laundry, haircutting, painting, floor buffing, and even vehicle maintenance,” with immigrants only being paid a dollar per day, or in some cases, nothing.[15]
These practices have had devastating consequences on the health and well-being of immigrants in detention, leading to inadequate medical care, lack of access to basic necessities such as food and water, and prolonged detention that exacerbates trauma and mental health issues. The conditions faced by immigrants in detention centers in the United States are deeply troubling and raise serious concerns about the country’s commitment to human rights and dignity. In many cases, the treatment of immigrants in detention centers can be compared to the brutal practices from the slavery era. Rooted in the legacy of slavery, the same ideologies which created the conditions for enslavement have morphed into the system of incarceration that the United States utilizes today.[16] Rather than being seen as human beings with inherent rights and dignity, immigrants are often treated as property that can be exploited for profit. Immigrants in detention centers are often seen as expendable, with their value determined solely by their ability to generate profit for those who run the facilities. Despite this, detention centers have found a way for their practices to be deemed constitutional. Stevens notes that forced labor, “a carve-out in the slavery prohibitions of the 13th Amendment,”[17] is seen to be constitutional when utilized as punishment. Since the 13th Amendment permits slavery as punishment for a crime, it does not view immigration detention as a violation due to it being a “civil, not criminal, confinement.”[18]
Immigration-related crimes are the leading cause of imprisonment within the United States today.[19] The rise in the incarceration of immigrants began in the 1980s, when policymakers “added mass incarceration to their strategy of mass deportation of low-status, low-wage workers.”[20] However, the rapid rise of immigration detention in recent years has had a profound impact on the United States’ prison system, giving birth to the “immigrant-industrial complex.” The term was possibly coined by Deepa Fernandes in her 2007 book Targeted, which focused on the issue of security and immigration post-9/11. Fernandes stated that “[there] is big money to be made as the government dramatically increases its reliance on the private sector to help carry out its war on terror.”[21] The immigrant-industrial complex is fueled by the for-profit prison industry, which in turn has seen a significant increase in revenue due to the use of private detention facilities. The Sentencing Project notes that between 2002 and 2017, the number of people confined in privately detention facilities rose by 442%.[22] The increased use of detention facilities by ICE and other immigration enforcement agencies has been a key driver of this growth, with private prison companies benefiting greatly from the federal government’s tough stance on illegal immigration. These companies have made billions of dollars by incarcerating immigrants, often subjecting them to inhumane and dangerous living conditions. Core Civic (previously the Corrections Corporation of America), the largest owner and operator of private detention centers and prisons in the United States, reported a total revenue of $1.85 billion in 2022.[23]
The issue of immigration incarceration in the United States is deeply troubling and requires immediate action. With individuals dying, rights being stripped away, and immigrants psychologically and physically tormented, detention centers should have no place in our society. A perverted and exploitative system, the immigrant-industrial complex of detention centers has a twisted history that will only worsen as it lives on. And the only way to stunt its rapid growth is abolition.
Bibliography
[1] “ICE Custody,” Immigration, Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, accessed March 2023, https://trac.syr.edu/immigration/.
[2] Karla M. McKanders, “Immigration Enforcement and the Fugitive Slave Acts: Exploring Their Similarities,” Catholic University Law Review 61, no. 4 (2012): 921–50, https://scholarship.law.edu/lawreview/vol61/iss4/1.
[3] Gretchen Gavett, “Map: The U.S. Immigration Detention Boom,” Frontline, October 18, 2011, https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/map-the-u-s-immigration-detention-boom/.
[4] Mizue Aizeki, Ghita Schwarz, Jane Shim, and Samah Sisay, Cruel by Design: Voices of Resistance from Immigration Detention, (New York: Immigrant Defense Project and the Center for Constitutional Rights, 2022), https://www.immigrantdefenseproject.org/wp-content/uploads/Cruel-By-Design-IDP-CCR-Feb-2022.pdf.
[5] Kamran Asdar Ali, “Barbara Harlow,” Middle East Research and Information Project, December 12, 2018, https://merip.org/2016/10/barbara-harlow/.
[6] “History of ICE,” Immigration and Customs Enforcement, last modified March 22, 2023, https://www.ice.gov/features/history.
[7] Joseph Nevins, “U.S. Immigration Detention System: ‘A Living Hell,’” North American Congress on Latin America, February 11, 2022, https://nacla.org/us-immigration-detention-system-living-hell.
[8] “ICE Focus Shifts Away from Detaining Serious Criminals,” Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, June 25, 2019, https://trac.syr.edu/immigration/reports/564/.
[9] “Analysis of Immigration Detention Policies,” American Civil Liberties Union, August 18, 1999, https://www.aclu.org/other/analysis-immigration-detention-policies.
[10] Kevin Short, “U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Endangered Detained Immigrants, Violated Human Rights during Pandemic: Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) Investigation,” Physicians for Human Rights, January 12, 2021, https://phr.org/news/u-s-immigration-and-customs-enforcement-ice-endangered-detained-immigrants-violated-human-rights-during-pandemic-physicians-for-human-rights-phr-investigation/.
[11] Clara Long, “‘They Treat You like You Are Worthless,’” Human Rights Watch, October 21, 2021, https://www.hrw.org/report/2021/10/21/they-treat-you-you-are-worthless/internal-dhs-reports-abuses-us-border-officials.
[12] Isaac Chotiner, “Inside a Texas Building Where the Government Is Holding Immigrant Children,” New Yorker, June 22, 2019, https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/inside-a-texas-building-where-the-government-is-holding-immigrant-children.
[13] Chotiner.
[14] James Austin and Garry Coventry, Emerging Issues on Privatized Prisons, (Washington DC: Bureau of Justice Assistance, 2001), xi, https://www.ojp.gov/pdffiles1/bja/181249.pdf.
[15] Jacqueline Stevens, “When Migrants Are Treated like Slaves,” New York Times, April 4, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/04/opinion/migrants-detention-forced-labor.html.
[16] Kica Matos and Jamila Hodge, “The Chains of Slavery Still Exist in Mass Incarceration.” Vera Institute of Justice, June 17, 2021, https://www.vera.org/news/the-chains-of-slavery-still-exist-in-mass-incarceration.
[17] Stevens, “Treated like Slaves.”
[18] Victoria Law, “Investigation: Corporations Are Profiting from Immigrant Detainees’ Labor. Some Say It’s Slavery,” In These Times, May 29, 2019, https://inthesetimes.com/features/ice_immigrant_detention_centers_forced_prison_labor_investigation.html
[19] Torrie Hester, “Deportability and the Carceral State,” Journal of American History 102, no. 1 (June 2015): 141–51, https://doi.org/10.1093/jahist/jav230.
[20] Hester, 146.
[21] Deepa Fernandes, Targeted: Homeland Security and the Business of Immigration (New York: Seven Stories, 2007).
[22] Kara Gotsch and Vinay Basti, “Capitalizing on Mass Incarceration: U.S. Growth in Private Prisons,” Sentencing Project, August 2, 2018, https://www.sentencingproject.org/reports/capitalizing-on-mass-incarceration-u-s-growth-in-private-prisons/.
[23] CoreCivic Corporation, CoreCivic Reports Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2022 Financial Results, February 2023, https://ir.corecivic.com/news-releases/news-release-details/corecivic-reports-fourth-quarter-and-full-year-2022-financial.