Human rights
Immigration detention in America: a history of its expansion and a study of its significance
Contradictory justifications in the US immigration detention system
Authors:
S.J. Silverman
Publisher:
The Centre on Migration, Policy and Society at the University of Oxford, 2010
This working paper investigates the legislative origins of the US immigration detention system. The document explains who has been subject to immigration detention, where the practice takes place, and what has lead to its rapid enlargement.
The author demonstrates that the system has been expanding by the executive branch in response to periods of increasing politicisation of immigration, particularly concerning the category of resident non-citizens. Furthermore, the system has been developed without public oversight or public accountability.
As a result, the document identifies three key characteristics in the legislative development of the US immigration detention system: the increasingly restrictive nature of the system; the fact that the system is like a package of contradictory justifications rather than a coherent assemblage of policies; and the criminalisation of immigrants and resident non-citizens.
The author concludes that there has been inconsistency throughout the system’s development, despite the fact that there have been few attempts to streamline the system into a managed, goal-directed one. In addition, the paper presents these two conclusions:
- the fact that immigration detention is usually considered one step towards either deportation or naturalisation has disguised the real pain that the US system has hurt the lives of hundreds of thousands of people
- there should be more concern with the practical and theoretical significance of implementing an immigration detention system in the US.
