Callous Cruelty and Blow Back: Immigration and Customs Enforcement Facilities, Riskscapes, and Community Transmission of COVID-19

Abstract

This research builds on and extends critical environmental justice research into carceral spaces. Here, the focus is on U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention facilities in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Drawing on the lessons provided by the Black Lives Matter social movement and critical race theory, this research draws connections between the institutionalized racism in the criminal justice system and immigration policies. The nativist and racist rationale for harsh immigration policies asserts that callous treatment of immigrants makes U.S. society safer. However, the blow back from these policies makes U.S. society less secure and degrades the civil and political rights for all. Informed by a riskscape framework, we pursue multiscalar and empirical research into this blow back. Riskscapes encompass different viewpoints on the threat of loss across space, time, individuals, and collectives. More tangibly, in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, ICE detention facilities provided ideal conditions for the infection to spread among the people detained, visitors, and staff. The walls and fences surrounding ICE facilities did not prevent the spread of infection to nearby communities, counties, and regions. Heightened infection rates provide tangible (and tragic) evidence of the blow back from the callousness of U.S. immigration policies in general and of ICE facilities in specific. This synthesis of critical environmental justice and riskscapes literatures lays the foundation for a textured and multi-layered understanding of the unequal and institutional dimensions of risks in and around carceral facilities.