The United States has the most extensive immigration detention system in the world, expanding from a capacity of less than 5,000 detainees per day in the 1980s to 52,000 by 2019. While the most vociferous anti-immigrant rhetoric may be attributed to Republicans, US detention infrastructure has grown exponentially regardless of the political party in power, as reports of abysmal detention conditions pile up. Nancy Hiemstra and Deirdre Conlon provide a damning exposé of the ways immigration detention generates income while those detained are starved, sickened, and exploited as a matter of routine detention operation. Drawing on over a decade of research and focusing on detention centers in New Jersey and New York, the authors map public-private financial relationships and trace how detention contracts for food, medical care, and in-facility stores are fought over to the penny. By dissecting the inner workings of immigration detention, they show a system governed by a capitalist logic that produces sickening and corrupting dependencies in communities across the US. Coming at a pivotal social and political moment, Immigration Detention Inc. makes the case for dismantling immigration detention regimes everywhere.
"'A revealing overview of the American business of for-profit migrant incarceration ... [Immigration Detention Inc.] shines an urgent spotlight on an inhumane system'"
'Publishers Weekly'
"'Who knew that hatred driven by racism could be so lucrative? Hiemstra and Conlon's Immigration Detention Inc. answers this with a resounding and meticulously researched exposé of the political and economic forces driving the expansion of immigrant detention. This book is essential reading for policymakers, activists, and anyone concerned with immigration justice and the deeply rooted connections
Ravi Ragbir, immigration activist and co-founder of New Sanctuary Coalition
"'A vital and troubling look at the grotesque practices of the privatized immigration detention industry, whose soaring profits are dependent on inflicting extreme suffering. This book is a microcosm of what ails America in an era of rampant capitalism and exclusionary nationalism'"
Reece Jones, author of 'Nobody is Protected' and 'White Borders'
