The Violence of Immigration Deterrence
As soon as I learned about the family separations policy this past spring 2018, I got on the phone. I called all the numbers on the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) website for my area. I called shelters rumored to hold unaccompanied and separated children. I called immigration lawyers. I called City Council members. I called everyone I know who works on asylum, refugee, and immigration issues so that I could provide logistical support or connect trauma specialists and doctors to those who were seeking those services. I have spent the past 20 years learning about the experiences of asylum seekers and undocumented migrants as they cross into or live inside U.S., have been asked to serve as an expert witness on asylum cases, and maintain connections to migrants’ rights organizations with which I volunteered when I was a college student in Texas. I am well aware of the byzantine nature of the U.S. immigration system. So, I should have known better.
No one answered their phones. Voicemail boxes were full. The few times people did pick up the phone, they were absolutely overwhelmed and in triage mode. More importantly, the network of shelters and private citizens housing separated and unaccompanied children is notoriously opaque. I saw many of my lawyer/doctor/therapist colleagues and friends face roadblock after roadblock when they tried to offer pro bono services to separated families.
Then, one day, someone in one my advocacy networks posted a link to Torn Apart/Separados. And that is when I finally found a way to think through my response to the separated families crisis.
Three particular pages on the site caught my attention.
First, in Volume 1, there is a visualization of the locations of ORR sites that house immigrant children. To represent the sites, the page uses black circles, some in clusters, of varying sizes. When one places the mouse over the circle, it moves. The text explains:
As of November 2017, the Office of Refugee Resettlement has 113 redacted sites which reportedly average daily populations greater than zero. Each site is related to a Docket Control Office, which lets us guess more or less where each site is, at least at the scale you see here. But these sites are sneaky and always slip out of view.
Indeed, the team behind Torn Apart/Separados engaged in impressive detective work to track down these sites, as the government does not readily share this information.
Second, also in Volume 1, is the visualization of the borderland between the U.S. and Mexico. One sees the map of the U.S. and Mexico, the border shaded red and labeled “the trap.” The text explains:
The border is a trap. Begun in 2005, Operation Streamline has criminalized border crossing. Authorized ports of entry, tiny holes shown here as 15-miles wide, turn back asylum seekers, pushing them into the 100-mile-wide border zone, where they are exposed to harsh conditions from both the environment and law enforcement.
The final page is from Volume 2, which focuses on how the immigration system is financed. This particular page is a visualization of removals and deportations from the U.S. The text explains:
ICE removed over 220,000 people in the United States in 2017. Each person was removed through a port of entry, or, more appropriately, a port of removal. The lines represent this stream of re-displaced people.
Volumes 1 and 2, together, illustrate that the more the team at Torn Apart/Separados uncovers, the more we are able to see that the U.S. immigration deterrence regime disappears migrant bodies. Families cannot track down separated children. They wonder what happened to loved ones who crossed into the U.S.; did they die in the Sonoran desert? And what happened to migrants upon removal from the U.S.? Are they habitual border crossers, and will they get back into the U.S.? Did they end up returning to their home country, only to get killed or to continue to suffer from the structural violence of poverty?
Volumes 1 and 2 show us that the immigration deterrence regime also requires violence and harm to migrants. Innumerable studies have shown that deterrence, whether funneling migrants into the dangerous and deadly terrain of the desert, detaining migrants in inhumane conditions, deporting as many people as possible, or separating children and parents, does not actually prevent migration. Thus, the point of deterrence mechanisms is not to deter but rather to punish migrants for crossing without papers and to exercise sovereign power. This intricate, vexing immigration system is meant to show that the U.S. can indeed “defend” its borders.
Volume 2 specifically shows that the immigration deterrence regime is also a neoliberal regime. Deterrence commodifies the disappearance, detention, harm, and death of migrants. As we see, scrolling through the data, numerous businesses are thriving and profiting from the governmental treatment of migrants.
The profitability of deterrence is not limited to U.S. territory. The U.S. has been pouring money and resources into the Mérida Initiative and Programa Frontera Sur (Southern Border Plan), which assist Mexico in fighting drug trafficking and enforcing its southern border to prevent Central American migration. These programs ultimately escalate Mexican cartel and gang power, which are then able to target Central American migrants with impunity, and target migrants with the same tactics as in the U.S. An interesting next step might be to map the U.S. financing of immigration deterrence in Mexico.
But what is absolutely beautiful about this project is that while carceral geographies and financing are visualized only in the U.S., what is listed/visualized in both the U.S. and Mexico are allies, groups that are working on the frontlines of supporting migrants’ rights. And perhaps that is a lesson; some of us are very good at critiquing how power operates. We need to get better at seeing the possibilities of solidarity around us for resisting and reworking that power.
Meghana V. Nayak is Professor of Political Science, Affiliate Faculty of Women’s and Gender Studies, Pace University. Author of Who Is Worthy of Protection? Gender-Based Asylum and U.S. Immigration Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015).