ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses the spatial politics of US immigration detention from few angles. It provides an overview of the US immigration enforcement system in order to situate detention in the broader regime of spatial practices used to control transboundary mobility. The chapter focuses on the series of discretionary decisions US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) officers make about noncitizens' individual cases. It analyses how detention visitation programs seek to challenge detention's isolation, containment and banishment. A series of high-profile refugee arrivals from Central America and the Caribbean stoked a growing public perception in some political quarters that the US' southern borders were out of control'. Immigration officials have relied primarily on the prison system for both detention expertise and infrastructure to meet the needs of mandatory detention. A number of legal mechanisms structure noncitizens' pathways into and out of detention.
