UCLA

In this article-based dissertation, I present three distinct but interrelated articles to expose the harms that immigration detention inflicts on immigrants, their families, and communities. My dissertation, “Life Under Detention: Understanding the Consequences of Heightened Immigration Enforcement on Immigrants, Families, and Communities,” analyzes 34 months of ethnographic data and 95 qualitative interviews with detainees and their family members to investigate how the legal construction of “illegality” has been weaponized against immigrants in the contemporary United States. The dissertation’s introduction frames the rise of “crimmigration” and engages with previous literature on the construction of immigrant exclusion and legal violence against immigrants. This chapter also presents the research questions, introduces the theoretical innovations of the empirical chapters, summarizes the research methodology, and outlines the structure of the dissertation. Chapter two chronicles the experiences of former detainees and how they were able to acquire (or not acquire) justice through multiple means. I argue that immigrants are routinely denied access to justice within the immigration legal system because they are deprived of fundamental support including legal counsel, language translation, and access to the law library. To win their freedom from detention, immigrants engaged in precarious legal patchworking, where they haphazardly cobbled together legal resources and assistance from multiple sources including pro-bono aid, jailhouse lawyers, and other detainees. In chapter three, published in the journal of Law & Society Review, I address the question: How do immigrant families experience the indeterminate confinement of detained loved ones under the intensified threat of deportation? I find that family units endure collateral consequences when they are suspended in a heightened state of liminality due to their loved one’s indeterminate detention. A conceptual contribution of this chapter is the development of collective liminality to show how being suspended in this state of purgatory harms both detained immigrants and their loved ones. In chapter four, published in the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, I demonstrate how intensive state surveillance creates a condition of “extended punishment” that shapes the daily experiences of immigrants shackled to an electronic monitor (EM). The EM marks its wearer with a criminal stigma, leading that person to become shunned, including by previously supportive members of their co-ethnic community. Under this regime, EMs become tools of legal violence that yield a new axis of stratification among immigrants. Because EMs unequally allocate autonomy, privacy, and resources, wearers find themselves more vulnerable and constrained than other immigrants. In chapter five, I conclude by synthesizing the analyses, reflecting on the contributions and implications of the dissertation, and offering directions for future research. Foremost, I am proud to give voice to immigrant detainees and their families whose experiences are important for future scholarship. Overall, my research finds that life in and after detention continues to be shaped by the apparatus of immigration detention. Former detainees suffer the repercussions of trauma and material hardship long after release, and the harms of detention radiate out to many more people than just the detained.