Books

In Targeted, award-winning radio journalist Deepa Fernandes weaves together original research with history, political analysis, and powerful first person narratives. From the deadly desert crossing to the jail cells holding detainees, she documents the hidden human struggle behind the immigration debate. She arms readers with the facts and takes them on the harrowing journey that is everyday life for the hundreds of thousands who've dreamed of America--then follows the shocking corporate profits won in the business of Homeland Security.

An exhaustive nationwide account of the US immigrant detention system, including detention conditions and accounts of abuse, bureaucracy and secrecy, and power dynamics and forces for change. Dow’s detailed investigations mixed with personal stories told by detainees make clear how corrupt and abusive the system truly is. One of the very best books to learn about detention, but read it slowly; it’s a lot to take in.

These stories, highlighting the varied reasons people seek refuge in the US and their subsequent experiences of immigration proceedings and detention, are each powerful testaments on their own and together offer a collective immigrant voice for the need for humane alternatives to a detention system that is extraordinarily ineffective and destructive.

This is Kassindja’s memoir of her struggle for freedom, beginning with a narrow escape from forced marriage and female genital mutilation as a young woman in Togo to seeking asylum in the US and suffering 14 months in the Elizabeth Detention Center and other jails, before winning the very first asylum case based on FGM. Her story is both terrifying and inspiring, one of those you cannot believe until you read.

“Drawing on declassified government documents and interviews with more than 3,000 Central American refugees, Kahn portrays the chilling reality of daily life in immigration prisons during the 1980’s and reveals how the Department of Justice and the Immigration and Naturalization Service intentionally violated federal laws and regulations to deny protection to refugees fleeing wars in Central America financed by U.S. military aid.” (amazon.com)

Beautifully narrative and yet deeply investigative simultaneously, Nguyen explores immigration detention and deportation specifically post 9/11 and the subsequent loss of civil liberties, human families and whole communities, as US policies and practices on every level hinged on fear and discrimination. A small book (~150 pgs) with a big message—indeed, no one is exempt from being a suspect now.

Attached is "Undue Process: Racial Genealogies of Immigrant Detention," by DWN member David Hernandez, professor at UCLA.

This article is a chapter of the book, CONSTRUCTING BORDERS/CROSS BOUNDARIES: RACE, ETHNICITY, AND IMMIGRATION, edited by Caroline B. Brettell and published in 2007.

A compelling account of U.S. immigration and border enforcement told through the journey of one man who perished in California’s Imperial Valley while trying to reunite with his wife and child in Los Angeles. At a time when Republicans and Democrats alike embrace increasingly militaristic border enforcement policies under the guise of security, and local governments around the country are taking matters into their own hands, Dying to Live offers a timely confrontation to such prescriptions and puts a human face on the rapidly growing crisis. Moreover, it provides a valuable perspective on the historical geography of U.S.-Mexico relations, and immigration and boundary enforcement, illustrating its profound impact on people's lives, and deaths. In the end, the author offers a provocative, human-rights-based vision of what must be done to stop the fatalities and injustices endured by migrants and their loved ones.