Detention Or Asylum

Before the turn of the century, few states used immigration detention. Today, nearly every state around the world has adopted immigration detention policy in some form. States practice detention as a means to address both the accelerating numbers of people crossing their borders, and the populations residing in their states without authorisation. This edited volume examines the contemporary diffusion of immigration detention policy throughout the world and the impact of this expansion on the prospects of protection for people seeking asylum. It includes contributions by immigration detention experts working in Australasia, the Americas, Europe, Africa and the Middle East. It is the first to set out a systematic comparison of immigration detention policy across these regions and to examine how immigration detention has become a ubiquitous part of border and immigration control strategies globally. In so doing, the volume presents a global perspective on the diversity of immigration detention policies and practices, how these circumstances developed, and the human impact of states exchanging individuals’ rights to liberty for the collective assurance of border and immigration control. This text will be of key interest to scholars, students and practitioners of immigration, migration, public administration, comparative policy studies, comparative politics and international political economy.

Investigating the global system of detention centers that imprison asylum seekers and conceal persistent human rights violations Remote detention centers confine tens of thousands of refugees, asylum seekers, and undocumented immigrants around the world, operating in a legal gray area that hides terrible human rights abuses from the international community. Built to temporarily house eight hundred migrants in transit, the immigrant “reception center” on the Italian island of Lampedusa has held thousands of North African refugees under inhumane conditions for weeks on end. Australia’s use of Christmas Island as a detention center for asylum seekers has enabled successive governments to imprison migrants from Asia and Africa, including the Sudanese human rights activist Abdul Aziz Muhamat, held there for five years. In The Death of Asylum, Alison Mountz traces the global chain of remote sites used by states of the Global North to confine migrants fleeing violence and poverty, using cruel measures that, if unchecked, will lead to the death of asylum as an ethical ideal. Through unprecedented access to offshore detention centers and immigrant-processing facilities, Mountz illustrates how authorities in the United States, the European Union, and Australia have created a new and shadowy geopolitical formation allowing them to externalize their borders to distant islands where harsh treatment and deadly force deprive migrants of basic human rights. Mountz details how states use the geographic inaccessibility of places like Christmas Island, almost a thousand miles off the Australian mainland, to isolate asylum seekers far from the scrutiny of humanitarian NGOs, human rights groups, journalists, and their own citizens. By focusing on borderlands and spaces of transit between regions, The Death of Asylum shows how remote detention centers effectively curtail the basic human right to seek asylum, forcing refugees to take more dangerous risks to escape war, famine, and oppression.

This volume presents a compilation of cross-disciplinary essays written by representatives of non-governmental and inter-governmental organisations, practising lawyers, academics, researchers and a psychiatrist, which reflect the heightened concern among European refugee and human rights organisations about the increasing practice of detaining asylum seekers. Topics explored include recent trends in western, central and eastern Europe; detention practice in the US, Canada and Australia; UNHCR's approach to detention of refugees and asylum seekers; and the mental health implications of detention from a psycho-medical viewpoint. In addition, the relevant European and UN legal instruments are analysed, and examples are given from the case law. The book is supplemented by detailed appendices setting out the texts of relevant international legal provisions, together with a number of other reference documents, including UNHCR's 1995 Guidelines on Detention and ECRE's 1996 and 1997 papers on detention and alternatives to detention. In addition to providing both a description of current practice and a theoretical, legal analysis of this type of administrative detention, this volume is intended to serve as a practical tool and source of reference for individuals and organisations engaged in defending the rights of asylum seekers today.

This book provides the first in-depth history of immigration detention in the United States. Employing extensive archival research to document the origins and development of immigration detention in the U.S. from 1973 to 2000, it reveals how the world's largest detention system originated in the U.S. government's campaign to exclude Haitians from American shores, and how resistance by Haitians and their allies constantly challenged the detention regime.

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This book provides a thorough legal analysis of the United States Migrant Interdiction Program, examining the United States' compliance with its obligations under municipal and international law as it interdicts individuals at sea, conducts status determinations, and returns those interdicted to their home countries. This book also examines the rights of the small number of refugees and individuals at risk of torture detained in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, awaiting resettlement in third countries. Policy-makers, students and scholars will benefit from this book's clarification of the legal obligations of nations engaged in extraterritorial status determination and detention, as well as its blueprint for compliance with international human rights and refugee law. As the first book of its kind devoted to the United States' interdiction program, this work represents an important contribution to scholarship in refugee law and policy, US constitutional law, international maritime law, and international human rights law.

“I worked in a trailer that ICE had set aside for conversations between the women and the attorneys. While we talked, their children, most of whom seemed to be between three and eight years old, played with a few toys on the floor. It was hard for me to get my head around the idea of a jail full of toddlers, but there they were.” For decades, advocates for refugee children and families have fought to end the U.S. government’s practice of jailing children and families for months, or even years, until overburdened immigration courts could rule on their claims for asylum. Baby Jails is the history of that legal and political struggle. Philip G. Schrag, the director of Georgetown University’s asylum law clinic, takes readers through thirty years of conflict over which refugee advocates resisted the detention of migrant children. The saga began during the Reagan administration when 15-year-old Jenny Lisette Flores languished in a Los Angeles motel that the government had turned into a makeshift jail by draining the swimming pool, barring the windows, and surrounding the building with barbed wire. What became known as the Flores Settlement Agreement was still at issue years later, when the Trump administration resorted to the forced separation of families after the courts would not allow long-term jailing of the children. Schrag provides recommendations for the reform of a system that has brought anguish and trauma to thousands of parents and children. Provocative and timely, Baby Jails exposes the ongoing struggle between the U.S. government and immigrant advocates over the duration and conditions of confinement of children who seek safety in America.

This volume presents a compilation of cross-disciplinary essays written by representatives of non-governmental and inter-governmental organisations, practising lawyers, academics, researchers and a psychiatrist, which reflect the heightened concern among European refugee and human rights organisations about the increasing practice of detaining asylum seekers. Topics explored include recent trends in western, central and eastern Europe; detention practice in the US, Canada and Australia; UNHCR's approach to detention of refugees and asylum seekers; and the mental health implications of detention from a psycho-medical viewpoint. In addition, the relevant European and UN legal instruments are analysed, and examples are given from the case law. The book is supplemented by detailed appendices setting out the texts of relevant international legal provisions, together with a number of other reference documents, including UNHCR's 1995 Guidelines on Detention and ECRE's 1996 and 1997 papers on detention and alternatives to detention. In addition to providing both a description of current practice and a theoretical, legal analysis of this type of administrative detention, this volume is intended to serve as a practical tool and source of reference for individuals and organisations engaged in defending the rights of asylum seekers today.

This text gives a detailed account of the inner workings of the networks by which immigrants leave their homes in Central America to start new lives in the Mission District of San Francisco.