Migrating to Prison, Cesar Cuauhtemoc Garcia Hernandez
Migrating to Prison, Cesar Cuauhtemoc Garcia Hernandez
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Migrating to Prison
America’s Obsession with Locking Up Immigrants

Author: César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández

Narrator: Timothy Andrés Pabon

Unabridged: 5 hr 58 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 12/03/2019


Synopsis

For most of America's history, we simply did not lock people up for migrating here. Yet over the last thirty years, the federal and state governments have increasingly tapped their powers to incarcerate people accused of violating immigration laws. As a result, almost 400,000 people annually now spend some time locked up pending the result of a civil or criminal immigration proceeding.

In Migrating to Prison, leading scholar César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández takes a hard look at the immigration prison system's origins, how it currently operates, and why. He tackles the emergence of immigration imprisonment in the mid-1980s, with enforcement resources deployed disproportionately against Latinos, and he looks at both the outsized presence of private prisons and how those on the political right continue, disingenuously, to link immigration imprisonment with national security risks and threats to the rule of law.

Interspersed with powerful stories of people caught up in the immigration imprisonment industry, including children who have spent most of their lives in immigrant detention, Migrating to Prison is an urgent call for the abolition of immigration prisons and a radical reimagining of the United States: who belongs and on what criteria is that determination made?

Reviews

Migrating to Prison traces American’s predilection for locking up immigrants. It didn’t start with Trump and it didn’t start with Obama. In fact, even the famed Ellis Island entry included a detention center. However, we are locking up more people for longer for more specious reasons than ever befor......more

Goodreads review by Candice

Wow. What an in depth and phenomenal review about immigration detention and its place within the prison industrial complex. In conversation and many readings, folks have a tendency to separate migrant detention from that of prisons and local jails, but the author reminds us of the inexplicable link......more

Goodreads review by Jade

“Despite the common refrain that immigration law is ‘broken’, immigration imprisonment is a sign that the United States immigration policy is working exactly as designed. The system hasn’t malfunctioned. It was intended to punish, stigmatize, and marginalize - all for political and financial gain.” O......more

Goodreads review by Maheema

Came away having learned a lot, angrier (in a good way).......more