Immigration Detention Inc.
The Big Business of Locking up Migrants
Nancy Hiemstra author Deirdre Conlon author
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Pluto Press
Publishing:20th Jun '25
£16.99
This title is due to be published on 20th June, and will be despatched as soon as possible.
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.
'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 between public and private sectors'
-- 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'The most thorough breakdown of the immigration enforcement industrial complex that I have ever read. With meticulous research and analysis, Hiemstra and Conlon not only delve into the everyday horrors people face in detention—including horrible food and faulty medical care—but also reveal the tentacles of power and finance behind immigration control. In other words, if you want to know what’s really going on, and what you might do about it, you will find no book more important than this one'
-- Todd Miller, journalist and author of Build Bridges, Not Walls: A Journey to a World Without Borders'In this shocking exposé of conditions in US immigration detention facilities, Conlon and Hiemstra reveal the high costs of privatisation—most obviously for those who are detained but also for the wider US society. Much of what is described is unfathomable: rotting food; failure to treat basic medical problems; gynaecological procedures undertaken without consent. Such matters are not exceptional, they are 'business as usual', the system working as designed. As states around the world turn with ever greater enthusiasm to immigration detention, this book offers a stark warning of all that will be lost in the process'
-- Mary Bosworth, Professor of Criminology, University of OxISBN: 9780745349466
Dimensions: 216mm x 140mm x 16mm
Weight: unknown
224 pages