The Migrant's Jail: An American History of Mass Incarceration

In The Migrant's Jail, Brianna Nofil offers a timely and detailed examination of the relationship between federal immigration officials and state and local law enforcement. Using immigration as a lens, she shows how the federal response to incoming migrants over the span of a century helped create the massive carceral system the United States has today. By tracing the evolution of this relationship, Nofil reveals the irony of how a nation built on immigration created the largest system of migrant incarceration in the world.Her study begins in northern New York in the early 1900s, where federal immigration officials needed facilities to house Chinese immigrants who were entering through Canada to circumvent the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1888. With the bulk of their resources deployed in the nation's port cities, federal officials turned to local law enforcement to expand their reach without the financial burden of building additional federal jails. Utilizing county jails to house detained immigrants benefited both federal and local officials—localities received much-needed revenue, and the federal government gained flexibility in detaining immigrants where they entered rather than transporting them to federal facilities. In exchange for a nightly fee, county jails housed immigrants until they could appear before a judge or be deported.Given this unexpected source of revenue, local officials soon saw the advantages of building additional facilities to house immigrants. Despite the popularity of the arrangement, as evidenced by its continued use over the twentieth century, however, cracks soon began to appear in the system. Overcrowding was rampant, and immigrants were detained together with criminals. Both immigrants and their attorneys fought against this system of detention as their cases worked through the legal system. And while some local residents had concerns about the state of the jails and the conditions in which the immigrants were housed, they had no desire for these detainees to reside within their communities while they awaited their hearings or deportations.As Nofil shows throughout the book, local officials were quick to point out the benefits of housing immigrants for the federal government. The per-immigrant nightly fee swelled local coffers, which lowered taxes, provided jobs, and supplied much-needed funds for community improvements. But while this relationship between local and federal officials was mutually beneficial, it also pitted them against one another. Federal immigration enforcement mandated deportation, which they wanted to happen quickly, while localities anxious to maintain their revenue stream were happy to house migrants for as long as possible.Nofil details in subsequent chapters the incarceration experiences of Europeans, Japanese, Latin Americans, Cubans, and Haitians. With each succeeding decade, the number of detained immigrants grew as legislation tightened in response to the swelling numbers of immigrants coming to the United States. Increased scrutiny, both domestically and from abroad, revealed that little changed over these years regarding the conditions in which immigrants were housed and their access to due process. The government's response to these concerns has remained consistent even to the present day: officials quietly move immigrants to new locations, both to make it difficult for the detained to remain in contact with counsel, family, and friends, and as a way to take pressure off specific locales that become volatile, such as when conditions become overcrowded, unsanitary, or unsafe.Despite the system arrayed against detained immigrants, Nofil is quick to point out that they have not been passive actors in this story. In addition to her careful examination of governmental records, she shows the human side of the process through first-hand accounts from detained individuals as well as from those who sought to keep both federal and local officials accountable, all of which highlight the immigrants’ agency. Whether we are learning about early Chinese efforts to sidestep deportation orders, mid-century Ellis Island detainees undertaking a hunger strike to protest their living conditions, or Haitian refugees in the 1980s and 1990s who faced extended detentions in substandard conditions and who drew comparisons between their situations and those of incarcerated criminals, Nofil's research shows the myriad ways that immigrants and their allies pushed back against their detainment as well as the government's attempts to deny them their right to due process.There is no easy answer that we can take from The Migrant's Jail to solve the immigration crisis the United States faces today, but Nofil's important book provides greater understanding as to why immigration enforcement officials are taking the actions they are and why they think they can successfully avoid questions of due process; she also shows us ways we can push back against their actions.