Each year the US government holds almost 200,000 people, including refugees and asylum seekers, in jails, detention facilities, and private prisons. For many, the only crime they committed was an attempt to enter the United States, fleeing from their misery and fear of persecution. This oppressive regime has detained these unfortunate people longer, afforded them fewer rights, and treated them more brutally than ever before. How did this trend emerge? When did this practice become standard? These important questions prompted Lindskoog to explore the history of dark-skinned Haitian refugees, which had much to do with the rise of the punitive US detention regime. He examines the intersection of race, migration, and citizenship, as well the multilayered social, legal, and political struggle over the US government's detention policy.
According to Lindskoog, the contemporary US immigration detention system appeared in the 1970s, when the US government dealt with an influx of Haitian boat people. The Haitians have been easy targets of unfair treatment. During the Cold War, the US government rarely considered them refugees because the regime in Haiti was a key anticommunist ally. Light-skinned residents of South Florida, where many boat people arrived, also had negative stereotypes of dark-skinned Haitians as the uneducated, unskilled, and disease-ridden poor. Under these circumstances, the US government summarily jailed these black asylum seekers, demanded bond for their release, and denied them work permits. These types of punishments were intended to deter further arrivals.
The US government's systematic efforts to block Haitians’ entry paved the way for the rise of the increasingly more inhumane migration regime. In the wake of the 1980 Caribbean migration crisis, when approximately 125,000 Cubans and 15,000 Haitians reached US shores, Ronald Reagan launched a new interdiction program that targeted Haitians in the name of state sovereignty. In the first ten years after 1982, only 28 of 25,000 Haitians intercepted at sea were allowed to continue their voyage and file asylum applications. For those who bypassed maritime interdiction, the government prepared notoriously ill-equipped detention centers. Aware of the program's weak constitutionality, Reagan's advisers turned to the president's authority in the field of foreign relations and circumvented the limitations imposed by law. In subsequent years, the government expanded its imprisonment policy for all unauthorized migrants.
This book narrates not only the development of state power, but also the story of resistance against it. This campaign for human rights, which involved nationwide African American and civil rights groups, took the form of protests, hunger strikes, and legislative efforts in the US Congress. The most important challenge to the detention regime took place in courts, where the activists won several important cases in favor of the Haitian asylum seekers. Whenever they achieved a major legal victory, however, it was short-lived. The government found ways to circumvent newly imposed limits on its policy with a more resilient legal, political, and economic rationale for its existence.
The underlying logic that shaped the abuse of state power, and the advocacy for the rights of asylum seekers, continue to outline the contemporary US detention policy. Based on his careful reading of US sources, Lindskoog sets up his questions well and makes his points clearly and strongly. His research findings are most impressive regarding US policy toward the Haitians in the 1980s. The writing style is handsome, and this book will be especially suitable for classroom discussion. It can be hoped that this book will provoke further debates over the global spread of the US immigration detention model after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, as well as the contemporary movement against immigration detention and its inherited challenges.
