Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here

Detention centers symbolize the punitive way the U.S. government deals with immigration, as well as how the government deprives immigrants of human rights. Many prospective migrants to the United States get held in detention centers operated by Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) or later Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The focus of these detention centers is typically undocumented migrants, like Keldy, who becomes one of the first migrants to be forcibly separated from her children (Erick and Patrick) by the immigration enforcement policies of the Trump administration. Although it is possible she broke immigration law (which is complicated in the U.S., particularly for people seeking asylum), she is given little opportunity to defend herself, being held without a trial and not initially being given access to a lawyer due to her unusual legal status.

Defenders of anti-immigration policies counter that detention centers are a necessary deterrent, providing harsh conditions intended to discourage other migrants from making a similar trip. While Blitzer does not deny that detention centers could act as a deterrent, his book challenges the humanity of practices like detention centers and family separation, arguing that any potential gain from these policies is negligible compared to the suffering they create. Blitzer does not sensationalize, noting that even the worst ICE detainment centers don’t quite rise to the same level as the torture or death squads that Juan Romagoza endured in El Salvador. Still, by highlighting the practices of immigration detention centers and humanizing the suffering of people inside them, Blitzer argues that the cruelty of the American immigration system is an issue that, while most associated with conservatism, in fact transcends individual presidential administrations and requires a new, more compassionate and comprehensive solution.