Current LSR Issue

In a recent article, I called for the development of a systematic field of study devoted to investigating the causes, conditions, and the consequences of immigration detention (Ryo 2019).  The two articles in this special issue are cutting-edge studies that answer that call.  They leverage multiple methods to overcome enormously difficult data challenges that plague this area of research.  As I have argued, “immigration detention . . . is shrouded in secrecy and bureaucratic barriers that obstruct researchers’ access to government data and detention facilities” (Ryo 2019: 98).  The studies presented in this special issue illustrate how researchers can rise to this challenge with creativity and persistence to shine a light on largely hidden but critical aspects of immigration detention.

This article introduces the concept of collective liminality, a shared condition of heightened threat and uncertainty experienced by immigrant detainees and their families, as they wait, caught between two possible outcomes: their loved one’s (temporary or permanent) release into the US or deportation. Drawing on 2 years of ethnographic data collection between 2015 and 2017 that included accompanying families to visitation at three Southern California detention facilities, and in‐depth interviews with former detainees and their relatives, I demonstrate the broader “collateral consequences” that immigration detention inflicts on detainees’ loved ones. I find that not only does the detained individual experience liminality, but the detention of a loved one places the family in a state of shared liminality, which is experienced at two levels: material and emotional. These hardships materialize even before the detainees’ deportation and can persist even after their release back into the US. This research extends scholarship on the impacts of detention on detainees, and on the consequences of deportation for families. The concept of collective liminality highlights how immigration detention functions as a critical tool of immigrant surveillance, punishment, and exclusion.

This article presents the findings of the first research study of the Institutional Hearing Program (IHP), a prison‐based immigration court system run by the U.S. Department of Justice. Although the IHP has existed for four decades, little is publicly known about the program’s origin, development, or significance. Based on original analysis of archival records, this study makes three central contributions. First, it traces the origin and growth of the IHP within federal, state, and municipal correctional facilities. Notably, although the IHP began in 1980 as a program to deport Cuban asylum seekers held in civil detention in an Atlanta prison, it now operates to deport noncitizens serving prison sentences in twenty‐three federal prisons, nineteen state prison systems, and a few municipal jails. Second, this article uncovers the crucial role that prison‐based immigration courts have played in shaping the design of carceral institutions around the priorities of an immigration system that primarily targets Latinos for deportation. Third, this article shows how immigration courts embedded in carceral spaces have served as influential, yet overlooked, incubators of changes to immigration law and practice that today apply to all immigration courts, not just the IHP. These findings have important implications for contemporary understandings of the relationship between immigration detention, racialized control of migration, and penal punishment.