Full Description
The United States detains and deports several hundred thousand migrants every year. Many spend significant amounts of time in immigration detention as they await adjudication of their immigration cases. The Elizabeth Detention Center in New Jersey is located in a converted warehouse, managed by a private, for-profit prison company. Over three decades, migrants and asylum seekers have been brought to EDC directly from Newark Airport or have been transferred to the site from elsewhere in the United States, including from the US-Mexico border region.
Through a longitudinal, site-specific study unique in its kind, this volume unites the voices and perspectives of formerly detained migrants, scholars, journalists, lawyers, and social and faith movement leaders, who share their experiences of Elizabeth Detention Center and reconstruct its social history, its location in New Jersey's political economy, and in the changing legal landscapes of immigration detention in the USA.
Contents
List of Figures
List of Tables
Acknowledgements
List of Abbreviations
Foreword
Nina Bernstein
Introduction
Ulla D. Berg and Carolina Sánchez Boe
PART I: The Early Years: From Esmor to CCA, 1993-1998
Chapter 1: Abraham Zuma's Preventable Death, or Why Immigration Detention Must be Abolished
Amy Gottlieb
Chapter 2: Shackled in the Land of Hope: Asylum Seekers Held for Months
Elizabeth Llorente
Chapter 3: The First Lawsuit Using International Human Rights Law to Protect Detained Immigrants in the United States
Penny Venetis
Chapter 4: Riot!
Fauziya Kassindja (with Layli Miller Bashir)
Chapter 5: "You're Giving Them Too Much Hope."
Will Coley
PART II: Mandatory Detention, Crimmigration, and the National Security State
Chapter 6: How a Good Immigrant/Bad Immigrant Binary Fuels the Modern Deportation Regime
Sarah Tosh
Chapter 7: A Journey to Freedom: My First Steps in the United States
Abdulai Bah
Chapter 8: "It's not like you're ever going to see this guy after he gets released today..."
Marguerite É. Marty, Esq.
Chapter 9: We Are IRATE!: Seven People in a New Jersey Diner and the Power of Accompaniment
William Westerman
Chapter 10: A New Jersey Teenager Caught in the War on Terror and Detained at EDC
'Bilal' (with Carolina Sanchez Boe)
PART III: Structures of Support, Advocacy, and Accompaniment
Chapter 11: A Permanent Executive Order from God: The Reformed Church of Highland Park's Ongoing Response to EDC's Systemic Sin
Rev. Seth Kaper-Dale
Chapter 12: Bed 26: Becoming a Refugee and Claiming Asylum
Edafe Okporo
Chapter 13: Touring the Elizabeth Detention Center: A Diary Comic
Kristyn Scorsone
Chapter 14: Due Process Army at the Elizabeth Immigration Court
Pina N. Cirillo
Chapter 15: Know Where You Stand and Stand There
Kathy O'Leary
PART IV: Economies of Detention
Chapter 16: Anti-Detention Laws, the EDC, and How New Jersey Became a Private-Detention-Only State
Katherine M. Sastre
Chapter 17: Big Business and Bad Care: The Sick Economics Behind the Elizabeth Detention Center
Deirdre Conlon and Nancy Hiemstra
Chapter 18: From EDC to e-Carceration and Digital Surveillance: My Experience with Libre by Nexus
Julio Oseguera (with Ulla D. Berg)
Chapter 19: Who Are the Criminals? The Licit and Illicit Monetary Flows and State-Corporate Interests Fueling Migrant Detention in New Jersey and Beyond
K. Sebastian León
Chapter 20: Do You Want to Come Back? A Transgender Woman's Story Between Honduras and the EDC
Xiomara Flores (with Ulla D. Berg)
PART V: The End of Immigration Detention in New Jersey?
Chapter 21: Towards Abolition: Fighting Detention in Trump-Era New Jersey
Mary Rizzo and Whitney Strub
Chapter 22: "Daddy, this China?": Ibrahim's Experience in EDC During the COVID-19
Ibrahim (with Ulla D. Berg)
Chapter 23: Aganan v. Rodriguez and the Fight to #FreeThem All
Jessica Rofé
Chapter 24: Asylum Granted, Peace Denied: Fearing a New Era in January 2025
Ivo and Gabriel (with Gloria d'Alessio)
Chapter 25: The Detention Ban Ripple Effect: Defending Community Wins and Sustaining National Momentum
Gabriela Viera
Afterword
Silky Shah
Notes on Contributors
Index
