In May 2018, Fernando Arredondo and his 12-year-old daughter, Andrea, reached the U.S.-Mexico border. The two had fled Guatemala after gang members killed his son, Marco, and threatened the rest of the family.
Weeks earlier, the Trump administration had introduced the zero-tolerance policy: Adult migrants who were caught crossing the border without permission were to be prosecuted and imprisoned, and the children traveling with them taken away and detained separately.
Mr. Arredondo was not aware of the new policy, but it should not have mattered. He did not cross the border illegally. He and Andrea walked to a Border Patrol processing center in Laredo, Texas, and asked for asylum, a right guaranteed by U.S. law. Still, an immigration official took Andrea from Mr. Arredondo and placed them in different cells. Hours later, the officials lined up a group of children, including Andrea, and drove them away without explanation.
The next day, Mr. Arredondo was transported to a different facility. When he arrived, his eyes fell on the vastness of the complex, which was surrounded by razor wire and policed by guards. Even though he had not broken the law, he now found himself at the Rio Grande Detention Center, a holding facility for men that was run by the GEO Group, a private prison corporation.
The United States was founded on the notion that it welcomes “huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” but it is also a nation of prisoners. Mr. Arredondo’s story sheds light on how immigrant detention overlaps with America’s prison system.
In theory, the purposes of detention and imprisonment are distinct. Unlike people held by the criminal justice system, detained immigrants are not being penalized for breaking the law; they are being held while they wait for permission to enter the country or until they are removed or deported. Nonetheless, the nation’s detention and prison systems have grown side by side, buttressed by the same logic and practice.
In 1882, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, which barred Chinese labor immigrants from entering the country. At the time, there were no federal immigrant detention centers to hold immigrants whose eligibility was in question or who were slated for deportation. In San Francisco — where a significant portion of Chinese immigrants landed — some were detained in the county jail.
These immigrants — many of whom had the right to enter the United States — were caged while they waited for inspectors to decide whether they could enter the country. Their race, rather than their actions, determined whether they spent time behind bars.
Ellis Island opened its doors a decade later. While it is commonly thought of as the gateway to America, the site also detained immigrants for health or legal reasons. By then, immigration law prohibited entry not only to Chinese laborers but to multiple groups of “undesirable people” among whom were those deemed “insane,” “idiots,” or “likely to become a public charge.” Some were held in overcrowded, lice-infested compartments that had wire for walls and windows that were boarded shut.
Immigrant detention changed dramatically in 1980, after the arrival of nearly 125,000 Cubans from the port of Mariel. Thousands of Cubans were placed in military bases while they waited to be processed. Approximately 400 men who could not find sponsors willing to take financial responsibility for them while they settled into life in the United States were sent to the maximum-security federal penitentiary in Atlanta.
Others, like Pedro Prior-Rodriguez, ended up in the prison for reasons that would be incomprehensible to most Americans. Soon after he arrived, he was mugged and severely beaten on the streets of Rochester, N.Y. During the attack he lost one of his eyes and ended up in the hospital. But when it became clear that Mr. Prior-Rodriguez “required a treatment not available,” immigration officials revoked his parole and instead sent him to the Atlanta penitentiary.
The Reagan administration used immigrant detention to expand the prison system. In 1982 the deputy attorney general, Edward C. Schmults, recommended the construction of both an immigration detention center and a federal prison by stating that the Cuban exiles “put great additional pressure on our already overcrowded federal prison system.” Legislators upheld the idea that more facilities were needed because of Mariel Cubans.
Immigrant detention also played a key role in the development of one of the most criticized parts of the carceral system: its reliance on private prisons. In 1984 the Corrections Corporation of America opened the first completely privately run prison in the United States. It was a detention center. Today the Corrections Corporation, rebranded as CoreCivic, is one of the largest private prison contractors in the United States. Along with other for-profit prison companies, it has spent large sums in lobbying and campaign distributions.
In 2022, 8 percent of state and federal prisoners were caged in private prisons. As of July 2023, more than 90 percent of people detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement were held in facilities owned or operated by private prison corporations.
Like the nation’s prisons, immigrant detention centers tend to be located far from urban hubs, beyond the easy reach of scrutiny. As such, few Americans are aware of the terrible abuses that happen inside some of these facilities. Reports written by experts hired by the Department of Homeland Security found that detainees were held in unsanitary and unsafe conditions, received negligent medical care and were subject to racist abuse.
Immigrant detention does not make us safer. Rather than caging migrants and refugees, the government should allow them to reside with friends, family or community members in the United States while it examines their cases.
Mr. Arredondo and Andrea now live in Los Angeles with the rest of their family. They were lucky; not only was the family reunited, but they have been granted asylum. But he and his family deserved better. So do all those who are currently entrapped in our vast detention system. Immigrant detention should have no place in our society.
Ana Raquel Minian is a professor of history at Stanford. This essay has been adapted from their new book, “In the Shadow of Liberty.”
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