Abstract In the United States, unaccompanied migrant children are detained in a social service sector composed of shelter‐like facilities funded by the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR). This article examines the experiences of Latina social workers recruited to provide therapeutic care inside these facilities. Drawing on twenty‐five interviews with Latina social workers and parallel autoethnographic reflections from my own experience working inside ORR‐funded shelters, I analyze how detention governance structures shape everyday care work. I argue that ORR shelters function as sites of necropolitical reproduction, where migrant children's lives are governed through institutionalization, surveillance, and state‐sanctioned family separation. At the same time, Latina care workers develop everyday practices that challenge what feminist anthropologist Megan Carney calls “necropolitics‐as‐usual.” Through acts such as bending institutional rules, offering emotional care that exceeds policy guidelines, and maintaining concern for children after their release, workers attempt to create life‐affirming forms of care within a system structured by detention and separation. By examining both the governance mechanisms of ORR shelters and the practices through which workers attempt to humanize care, this article highlights how necropolitical regimes are simultaneously reproduced and contested in everyday life inside immigration detention.
Michelle Rascón-Canales (Thu,) studied this question.