The Perverse Logic of Immigration Detention: Unraveling the Rationality of Imprisoning Immigrants Based on Markers of Race and Class Otherness

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.

Number of Pages in PDF File: 12

Keywords: immigration, prison, incarceration, race, class, Marx, racial profiling

Accepted Paper Series