The Development of US Regimes of Disappearance: The War on Terror, Mass Incarceration, and Immigrant Deportation

Abstract

Following 9/11, hundreds of individuals in the USA were detained on suspicion of engaging in terrorism and subjected to a “hold until cleared” policy which permitted their indefinite detention while authorities vindicated them of terrorist connections. However, these experiences of detention are not unique to the post-9/11 era. Drawing on a critical analysis of prominent Supreme Court cases concerning the War on Terror, mass incarceration, and immigrant deportation, I argue that the US state has developed a series of institutions that operate to effectively “disappear” people from public and political life. While discussions of disappearance often focus on a specific type of state violence, several important features of state-enforced disappearance characterize all three of the cases considered here. First, disappearances focus on particular communities on the basis of sociological categories such as gender, age, race and ethnicity, and religion, among others. Second, disappearances foster a sense of uncertainty regarding why someone has been disappeared, and render it difficult to ascertain information about the individual. And lastly, disappearance has protracted and extended effects—psychological, social, economic—on the families and friends of the disappeared person. In the USA, capitalism plays a critical role in the development of institutions that disappear individuals.

Malleable detention: The restructuring of carceral space within U.S. immigration detention

“…Immigration detention has served various purposes throughout history, from temporarily holding migrants to serving as a form of state sponsored disappearance (Zarrugh, 2020;Zarrugh and Romero, 2019). Detention in the United States was first justified through medical scares surrounding immigrants; many European migrants were detained and sometimes returned to their country of origin if they were diagnosed with various diseases like fungal infections and trachoma.…”

La descapitalización de los sujetos migrantes: el caso de las mujeres mexicanas indocumentadas en Phoenix-Arizona

“…El barrio de Maryvale concentra a la mayor población latina de Phoenix por lo que el incremento de la vigilancia y control está direccionado a este tipo de barrios, diversas investigaciones muestran que en barrios pobres y de clase media trabajadora es común encontrar estas prácticas en comparación con suburbios de población blanca (Golash-Boza, 2019; Gilman y Romero, 2018;Zarrugh, 2019). Durante los dos primeros años de la SB1070, la competencia de la policía de tránsito y la de los sheriffs, estaba difuminada.…”

Immigration Policy and Justice in the Era of COVID-19

“…Many have argued that because immigration detention centers are private, the lack of transparent policy health procedures and practices contribute to poor health conditions and services common in these detention centers (Ackerman and Furman 2013;Hernández et al 2018). Others suggest that poor health conditions and services are common in immigration detention centers because of the social, political, and cultural construction as undocumented or "illegal" immigrants are inherently "criminal" who do not warrant public healthcare, attention, and care (Ackerman and Furman 2013;Miller and Peguero 2018;Zarrugh 2020). This leads us to our question for this section: are immigration dentition centers a shrouded hotspot for COVID-19?…”