Throughout the presidency of Donald Trump, it was common for political commentators to contrast his ferocious anti-immigrant rhetoric and policies with those of Ronald Reagan, who, in a series of speeches during his time in office, had welcomed immigrants to the United States. Yet Reagan's present-day reputation as a proponent of immigration is unearned. Rather, as Kristina Shull shows in her remarkable book, the Reagan administration was responsible for transforming key elements of US immigration policy, notably the same system of detention that so many Americans objected to under Trump. Far from an exception, then, Trump's actions have been in keeping with decades of American policy meant to punish migrants in the hopes of deterring further migration.
As Shull documents in shocking detail, this policy of detention emerged early on in the Reagan years amid an influx of migrants from the Caribbean and Central America. Here, the catalyst was the 1980 Mariel boatlift of Cubans—many of them racialized migrants in contrast to the largely “white” Cubans who had fled the Communist revolution two decades earlier. This migration prompted a strong pushback from US Americans. For the Reagan administration, it became vital to avoid “another Mariel.” And it is here where there is an important parallel with broader US foreign policy, which was premised on avoiding “another Cuba.” To this end, Reagan and his team waged a proxy war in Central America, where brutal violence drove waves of migrants north across the Rio Grande. As Shull contends, the overlap between immigration policy and foreign policy is a reflection of the nature of US empire. Yet, she also notes how these new policies implemented in the 1980s were rooted in what she terms the “Reagan imaginary” (1), a process of white nationalist state-making rooted in neoliberal economics, neoconservative policies, and long-rooted settler colonialism.
The book looks, in part, at actors in Washington and how they responded to three major waves of migration: from Cuba, Haiti, and then Central America. Crafted by administration figures such as Rudy Giuliani and Kenneth Starr, that response—spelled out in a Mass Immigration Emergency Plan of 1982—included the detention of asylum-seekers, maritime immigration interdiction, and border militarization. A panoply of agencies implemented the plan, including the Drug Enforcement Agency, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Central Intelligence Agency, Immigration and Naturalization Service, and Border Patrol. As Shall shows, the unfolding of a punitive system meant to deter further migration paralleled the entrenchment of the carceral state throughout the United States, with the rise of private-run prisons and increasingly militarized police forces.
However, the book is not only about the government officials who oversaw these policies, but also migrants themselves as well as activists who fought against these measures. Indeed, Shull places a welcome emphasis on the voices of those who were victimized by punitive immigration measures, testifying to the lived reality of asylum-seekers.
Shull marshals a broad array of archival documents from government departments and private individuals and groups, as well as other material from news outlets and activist groups. This impressive mixture of printed material is complemented with interviews and oral histories. The result is a book that sheds much needed light on a dark area of the American empire.
