Why read Migrating to Prison?

Book cover of Migrating to Prison: America's Obsession with Locking Up Immigrants

Book description

NATIONAL BESTSELLER

A powerful, in-depth look at the imprisonment of immigrants, addressing the intersection of immigration and the criminal justice system, with a new epilogue by the author

"Argues compellingly that immigrant advocates shouldn't content themselves with debates about how many thousands of immigrants to lock up, or other minor…

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Topics

Undocumented immigrants

Genres

Political

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Why read it?

1 author picked Migrating to Prison as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Nancy Hiemstra

Author

This book explicitly ties the explosion in immigration detention to goals of political gain and corporate profit, pairing careful historical and legal analysis with piercing personal stories of detention.

After laying out how U.S. foreign policy has triggered the migration patterns that now send lawmakers and the public into a nativist frenzy, legal scholar García Hernández breaks down how laws have been warped to make more people detainable.

He zeroes in on the role of private prison companies, and he explains how Latino immigrants have been turned into fodder for the detention system through lobbying and manipulation of the public…

From Nancy's list on The best books about why the U.S. has the biggest immigration detention system in the world.