The Transformation of Noncitizen Detention in the United States
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From Exclusion to State Violence: The Transformation of Noncitizen Detention in the United States and Its Implications in Arizona, 1891-present by Judith Irangika Dingatantrige Perera A Dissertation Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy Approved March 2018 by the Graduate Supervisory Committee: Jack Schermerhorn, Chair Leah Sarat Julian Lim ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY May 2018 ABSTRACT This dissertation analyzes the transformation of noncitizen detention policy in the United States over the twentieth century. For much of that time, official policy remained disconnected from the reality of experiences for those subjected to the detention regime. However, once detention policy changed into its current form, disparities between policy and reality virtually disappeared. This work argues that since its inception in the late nineteenth century to its present manifestations, noncitizen detention policy transformed from a form of exclusion to a method of state-sponsored violence. A new periodization based on detention policy refocuses immigration enforcement into three eras: exclusion, humane, and violent. When official policy became state violence, the regime synchronized with noncitizen experiences in detention marked by pain, suffering, isolation, hopelessness, and death. This violent policy followed the era of humane detentions. From 1954 to 1981, during a time of supposedly benevolent national policies premised on a narrative against de facto detentions, Arizona, and the broader Southwest, continued to detain noncitizens while collecting revenue for housing such federal prisoners. Over time increasing detentions contributed to overcrowding. Those incarcerated naturally reacted against such conditions, where federal, state, and local prisoners coalesced to demand their humanity. Yet, when taxpayers ignored these pleas, an eclectic group of sheriffs, state and local politicians, and prison officials negotiated with federal prisoners, commodifying them for federal revenue. Officials then used federal money to revamp existing facilities and build new ones. Receiving money for federal prisoners was so deeply embedded within the Southwest carceral landscape that it allowed for private prison companies to casually take over these relationships previously i held by state actors. When official policy changed in 1981, general detentions were used as deterrence to break the will of asylum seekers. With this change, policy and reality melded. No longer needing the pretext of exclusionary rationales nor the fiction of humane policies, the unencumbered state consolidated its official detention policy with a rationale of deterrence. In other words, violence. Analyzing the devolution of noncitizen detention policy provides key insights to understanding its historical antecedents, how this violent detention regime came to be within the modern carceral state, and its implications for the mass incarceration crisis. ii For those who survived, lived, thrived. And for those who hoped to. iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am grateful to Calvin Schermerhorn for the guidance during my time at ASU. Thank you for responding to my initial email and giving me the chance to pursue graduate school. I am likewise grateful to Leah Sarat for introducing me to the world of noncitizen detention. It was your class in 2015 that began this journey and there was no looking back. I am similarly grateful to Julian Lim and Alexander Aviña for their guidance and mentoring. I was fortunate to take informative graduate seminars under the direction of Donald Fixico, Catherine O’Donnell, and Matthew Delmont, who helped guide my thinking early on. I am thankful to Jennifer Merry, Wendi Goen, and Carlos Lopez at the Arizona State Library in Phoenix for sharing their wealth of knowledge. I am grateful to Stacey Gama and Berenice Pelayo for their help in transcribing and translating. I am thankful for the SHPRS University Graduate Fellowships and the Max Millett Family Grant for History Graduate Students that provided funding for this project. I am grateful for the many teachers and mentors I have known over the years. For Andrew Adanto and Sean Regan who taught history with contagious excitement. For Mona and Mike Amerine who taught me so much more than tennis and for continuing to be there for me. For Margaret Fullinwider who was a phenomenal teacher and mentor all through high school. For Kim Kadletz who taught me how to write in high school. For Joan Waugh who taught and advised me during my college years. For Al Sturgeon for his kindness and mentoring in law school. For Nancy McGinnis who taught me how to write in law school and who wrote letters for me many years later. Thank you all. I am grateful for friends and family without whom this would not have happened. I am indebted to Marcos and Lori Williamson who took me inside detention centers. I iv learned so much from you during those many car rides. For Travis Cook, who edited drafts with unparalleled insight, who saw connections in my work eons before I did and guided me to them, and who showed me the West in deserts, mountains, and rivers. I am continually inspired by how you see the world. For Monika Bilka, for your friendship, guidance, and mentoring. For John Horan and Jon England for your genuine friendship that made graduate school in Arizona more bearable. I am grateful for the many laughs. For Ammi, my first teacher, for everything. There was one birthday where you casually changed my life. Thank you for always being the first one to listen and support me in whatever (often crazy) plan I come up with. Thank you for teaching me kindness. Thank you for showing me strength. Thank you for your love. For my siblings, Viranga and Virangika. You both continually inspire and challenge me. Thank you for putting up with me. Thank you for your love and support through the ups and downs of this ride. From Stace, to Brent, to Huntington, to now, growing up with you has been one of the greatest blessings of my life. For Sudu and Uncle Sam who remain consistent role models in my life. Thank you for allowing me to lean on you for love, guidance, and advice. You continue to enrich my life in more ways than I could possibly say. Finally, I am grateful to the Stormmaster, who delivered gales that blew away old contradictions and new light that helped rebuild the world in color; who removed blinders of naïveté; who told tales of pigs and coyotes; who shared music that made heaven and fixed frequencies; and who explained all that I did not know. When you jumped twice, I had to jump once. That and for the many firsts. Life has been remarkably different since our paths crossed. It is no exaggeration to say this would never have happened without your patience, wisdom, and kindness in the aftermath. To you, I’m grateful the most. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Page LIST OF TABLES……………………………………………………………………...viii CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………..1 A Century of Captivity and Confinement…………………………………….36 Sovereignty, Plenary Power, and Noncitizen Detention……………………...45 Detentions in the U.S. Southwest…………………………………………….50 2 EXCLUSIONARY DETENTIONS, 1891-1954………………………………..55 Introduction…………………………………………………………………..55 Detentions at Ellis and Angel Islands………………………………………..69 Detentions in Arizona………………………………………………………..85 End of an Era……………………………………………………………….103 3 HUMANE DETENTIONS, 1954-1981………………………………………..112 A New Era?.....................................................................................................115 Federal Prisoners in Arizona………………………………………………...134 Detention for Deterrence…………………………………………………….182 4 VIOLENT DETENTIONS, 1981-PRESENT………………………………….187 Introduction………………………………………………………………….187 Haitians and Cubans………………………………………………………...203 Detentions in Arizona……………………………………………………….215 Eloy Detention Center……………………………………………………….253 5 CONCLUSION………………………………………………………………...282 vi Page BIBLIOGRAPHY………………………………………………………………………293 APPENDIX A ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY INSTITUTIONAL REVIEW BOARD APPROVAL……………………………………….331 vii LIST OF TABLES Table Page 1. INS Detentions in Service and Non-Service Facilities, 1962-79……………….124 2. Yavapai County, Arizona Board of Supervisor Minutes, 1949-73……………..137 3. Pima County, Arizona Board of Supervisor Minutes, 1948-74………………...150 viii CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION It is not prison. It is not punishment. Policy said so. Reality disagreed. Thirteen-year-old Benjamin Choy was detained for two weeks in 1930. Decades later, Choy reflected on that experience: “I don’t know how to describe it. Just a place of confinement, that’s all. Because I was away over there, only two weeks. You just sleep, and eat, and play. That’s all, there’s nothing else.”1 Stefan Weissing, 21 years old at the time, was detained in 1953. He later echoed a similar sentiment, “When we looked out of the window, we couldn’t go outside. You know, they were at the machine, the gun towers there still. They had the electric fence there still… there were searchlights all night going around. That I remember. Like in prison, you were in prison.”2 About his prolonged confinement in the late 1990s, Marlon Rajigah recalled, “Like you want to get out of there. You have anxiety attacks. You just try to lay down and sleep and pretend that you’re somewhere else most of the time…The world seems so small. And you want to walk. You can’t even walk around.”3 In 2015, when Juan Miguel Cornejo spoke out against inadequate medical care where he was detained, officials placed him in solitary 1 Benjamin Choy,