Agents wearing military gear arrest an immigrant. This kind of ‘security theater’ is one of the government’s tactics to portray immigrants as ‘criminal’ and immigration as an ‘invasion.’ Source: DHS.
“Immigration policy is frequently shaped more by fear and stereotype than by empirical evidence. As a result, immigrants have the stigma of ‘criminality’ ascribed to them by an ever-evolving assortment of laws and immigration-enforcement mechanisms. Put differently, immigrants are being defined more and more as threats. Whole new classes of ‘felonies’ have been created which apply only to immigrants, deportation has become a punishment for even minor offenses, and policies aimed at trying to end unauthorized immigration have been made more punitive…. In short, immigrants themselves are being criminalized.”
Source: Walter Ewing, et al. The Criminalization of Immigration in the United States, 2015.
Overcrowding, abuse, and other inhumane conditions are rife in immigrant detention facilities. Source: DHS Office of the Inspector General.
Criminalization leads to detention, big profits for prison companies#
“In Fiscal Year (FY) 2023, the United States government detained over 273,000 people in a sprawling system of approximately 200 detention centers, jails, and prisons across the country run by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)….
“The 1990s brought on a paradigm shift in immigration policy, leading to detention being a primary means of immigration enforcement. In 1996, the U.S. enacted legislation that dramatically expanded the use of detention. The Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA) and the Illegal Immigrant Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA) increased the scope of who could be subject to mandatory detention. The 1996 laws also rendered any non-U.S. citizen, including legal permanent residents, vulnerable to detention and deportation…. Under the Obama administration, the implementation of the detention bed quota and the expansion of deportation programs…funneled thousands of immigrants into detention centers….”
Source: Detention Watch Network, “Immigration Detention 101.”
Bluebonnet Detention Center, a private prison in Texas operated by the Management and Training Corporation for ICE. Credit: Tedder, Wikimedia Commons, CC-BY-SA 4.0.
“Financial incentives are the bedrock of our current immigration detention system. Local governments detain immigrants in exchange for huge sums of money, attempting to fill gaps in shrinking local budgets. Private prison companies run entire facilities. Other private companies provide a myriad of services inside the facilities. At every turn, there are clear incentives to detain more people while always reducing per-person costs—a combination that has helped create a sprawling, abusive, and unaccountable system of mass detention.”
Source: Detention Watch Network, “Financial Incentives.”