MIGRATING TO PRISON :: César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández

A version of this review previously appeared in Shelf Awareness and is republished here with permission.

The U.S. is obsessed with locking up immigrants, says César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández, lawyer and University of Denver professor, who has extensive knowledge about U.S. immigration and imprisonment. Migrating to Prison provides an eye-opening look at the origins of the system and how it operates, with family detention somehow viewed as a humanitarian response to family separation; particularly infuriating when separations result from the targeting of "criminal aliens." These fellow humans range from asylum seekers fleeing hardships to soldiers dealing with PTSD after fighting for the country that now disowns them.

García Hernández presents an abundance of facts and history in a passionate yet credible fashion that should raise the hackles of everyone. The tale isn't a new one. Targeted confinement dates back to anti-Chinese sentiment of 1800s California. It's no coincidence that selective imprisonment escalated following the civil rights movement--a substitution for racism that could no longer be expressed as openly. García Hernández posits that the system isn't broken, but is intended to marginalize minorities for political and financial gain.

The author argues that immigration law is like "a bouncer at a trendy nightclub" and Americans have "always used fear and race to imprison those we see as threats," allowing "white racists [to] find comfort against the prevailing winds of change." García Hernández makes a solid case for the situation as a "humanitarian catastrophe." By any stretch, "the promise that the United States welcomes 'anyone with the will and heart to get here' is flat out false."