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American Gulag: Inside U.S. Immigration Prisons, by Mark Dow
Wilensky, Julie
Wilensky, Julie
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Abstract
In the wake of stringent 1996 federal immigration laws and post-9/11 terrorism concerns, the number of immigrants held in administrative detention in the U.S. has increased at an alarming rate. The Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (formerly the Immigration and Naturalization Service) currently detains around 200,000 noncitizens each year, and the federal government plans to expand the number of detention beds by 40,000 in the next five years.1 Some detainees are held in agency centers, but most are held in public and private corrections facilities alongside criminals serving sentences.2 Mark Dow documents this lucrative and expanding system of immigration detention in American Gulag: Inside U.S. Immigration Prisons. Drawing on ten years of research and interviews with detainees, advocates, immigration officials, government bureaucrats, and prison personnel, Dow provides a compelling account of the arbitrariness, secrecy, and abuse that pervades the U.S. immigration detention system.