Detention Empire - (Justice, Power, and Politics) by Kristina Shull (Hardcover)

About the Book

"The early 1980s marked a critical turning point for the rise of modern mass incarceration in the United States. The Mariel Cuban migration of 1980, alongside increasing arrivals of Haitian and Central American asylum-seekers, galvanized new modes of covert warfare in the Reagan administration's globalized War on Drugs. Using newly available government documents, Shull demonstrates how migrant detention operates as a form of counterinsurgency at the intersections of U.S. war-making and domestic carceral trends. As the Reagan administration developed retaliatory enforcement measures to target a racialized specter of mass migration, it laid the foundations of new forms of carceral and imperial expansion"--

Book Synopsis

The early 1980s marked a critical turning point for the rise of modern mass incarceration in the United States. The Mariel Cuban migration of 1980, alongside increasing arrivals of Haitian and Central American asylum-seekers, galvanized new modes of covert warfare in the Reagan administration's globalized War on Drugs. Using newly available government documents, Shull demonstrates how migrant detention operates as a form of counterinsurgency at the intersections of US war-making and domestic carceral trends. As the Reagan administration developed retaliatory enforcement measures to target a racialized specter of mass migration, it laid the foundations of new forms of carceral and imperial expansion.

Reagan's war on immigrants also sowed seeds of mass resistance. Drawing on critical refugee studies, community archives, protest artifacts, and oral histories, Detention Empire also shows how migrants resisted state repression at every turn. People in detention and allies on the outside--including legal advocates, Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coalition, and the Central American peace and Sanctuary movements--organized hunger strikes, caravans, and prison uprisings to counter the silencing effects of incarceration and speak truth to US empire. As the United States remains committed to shoring up its borders in an era of unprecedented migration and climate crisis, reckoning with these histories takes on new urgency.

Review Quotes

"An urgent, insightful, and deeply researched study that assesses immigrant detention and control during Ronald Reagan's presidency. . . . [A] deeply impressive book. . . . Detention Empire is a vital contribution to critical literatures on the carceral state, immigrant detention, and the unabating struggles for justice in the Reagan years and beyond."--H-Diplo

"Despite Detention Empire's focus on Reagan's foundational actions during the 1980s, it offers a bipartisan critique. . . . Shull's highly personal experiences and deep political commitments are made explicit, making this book an unusually passionate and successful presentation of this important topic."--Journal of American History