The migrant's jail An American history of mass incarceration

Nearly two million people are incarcerated in the US--the highest rate of incarceration in any nation in the world. A major portion of this population comprises detained migrants, usually held in local jails. This carefully researched and documented study by Nofil (William & Mary) reveals a system based on "negligence, abuse, and profiteering" with no one agency in charge, little coordination, and great financial gain for profit-making private corrections companies (p. 218). In theory, local sheriffs are paid for the use and availability of their jail beds, but they complain of rarely making a profit after negotiating contracts with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and similar agencies. For reference, "data released in 2017 showed that ICE had around 850 contracts between local and federal authorities to detain migrants in 669 counties" (p. 218). This history of how the US has treated and mistreated many migrants depending on their race, nationality, social class, and politics is told with wide-ranging examples of people from China, Cuba, Central and South America, Germany, Italy, and Japan. It is a frightful story that should be better known. Notably, the text is supplemented by 72 pages of notes. Summing Up: Recommended. All readers. --Larry D. Woods, Tennessee State University

The forbidding role of imprisonment in the nation's treatment of migrants. This study examines the last century or so of migrant incarceration in the United States as it makes the case that the expansion of the government's imprisonment powers has produced human rights violations on a mass scale. Using case studies to chart this troubling history, Nofil explains how a complex network of institutions has formed in response to both real and imagined threats of an unregulated flow of migrants into the country. In chapters dedicated to such topics as the detention of Chinese immigrants in New York in the early 20th century or of Caribbean refugees in the Gulf states in the late 20th, she sets forth the human costs of a booming carceral industry. Local officials, we learn, routinely profit from relationships with federal immigration authorities, incentivizing the construction of larger and larger jails and disincentivizing alternate methods of managing undocumented migration. We come to understand how this flawed system evolved and how crucial events, such as the passing of the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act and the 1929 Undesirable Aliens Act, contributed to its cruelties and inefficiencies. Also compelling are the accounts of how those caught up in the system have used the courts, as well as the media, to petition for fairer treatment. Though immigrant jails have become "sites of coercion and neglect," Nofil explains, they have also been sites of resistance "where migrants lodged legal claims, plotted escapes, organized with aid groups, and fought for the right to stay in the United States." The American treatment of migrants, she rightly concludes, lacks basic accountability at the local, state, and federal levels and is badly in need of reform if its grievous human consequences are to be addressed. An insightful and alarming history of the nation's failures in detaining and deporting migrants. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.