ABSTRACT
Contemporary history is recalcitrant to the optimism that Immanuel Kant expressed about an international environment that would provide a welcome context for a growing “concord” among “men” and an increasing hospitality to those crossing borders from one state to another.1 Since 2004 at least 62 people have died in the United States in administrative custody as “the immigration detention system balloons to meet demands for stricter enforcement of immigration laws.”2 The “balloon effect” is a pervasive part of contemporary immigration policy in the most developed capitalist countries. In the United States it is part of an immigration policy that concentrates on the flow of bodies rather than looking at the demands for them. Powerful interests run the demand side of immigration flows. As one analyst puts it, “it appears that development and wealth discrepancies are too great, the profits too large, the desire for undocumented labor and illegal drugs too strong . . . to be controlled given the level and style of border enforcement to date.”3 Not surprisingly, the administration of immigration control targets the vulnerable rather than the powerful. Horror stories abound as of late the Department of Homeland Security’s “Operation Return to Sender” has intensified surveillance and the enforcement of immigration laws. Here’s a “Father’s Day” rundown of some of the horror stories:
There is the father from Honduras who was imprisoned and then deported after a routine traffic stop on Miami. He was forced to leave behind his wife, who was also detained by immigration officials, and his 5-and 7-year-old sons,
. moves his wife and children from house to house hoping to remain one step ahead of the immigration raids. And the Guatemalan, Mexican and Chinese fathers who have quietly sought sanctuary from deportation at churches across the United States. There’s the Haitian father who left for work one morning, was picked up outside his apartment and was deported before he had a chance to say goodbye to his infant daughter and wife.4
