Elizabeth Detention Center

Ulla D. Berg is an associate professor of anthropology and Latino and Caribbean studies at Rutgers University. She is a socio-cultural and visual anthropologist by training, her research focuses on migration, (im)mobility, detention, and deportation in Latin America and among US Latinx populations. She is the author of Mobile Selves: Race, Migration, and Belonging in Peru and the U.S. (NYU Press, 2015).Carolina Sánchez Boe is an adjunct lecturer at Brown University in Paris. A sociologist and anthropologist, her research focuses on confinement, deportation, and illegalization in the United States and France. She has worked in the nonprofit sector for over a decade. She has directed the documentary Digital Detention (2025).

"The range of authorial voices, which offer multiple different understandings of detention from legal, social, economic, and first-person perspectives, create a robust and informative scholarship. Through two dozen brief chapters written by journalists, academics, lawyers, activists, and former detainees, this book offers readers remarkable insights into the U.S. detention system today." - Ruth Gomberg, author of Labor and Legality: An Ethnography of a Mexican Immigrant Network"Where immigration scholarship often focuses on legal frameworks and systems, this collection of essays and reflections reminds us of the people caught in the machinery and those working collectively to stop the system from running as intended. The intimate focus brings us into the New Jersey immigrant rights ecosystem, and we feel in community with lawyers, faith leaders, teachers, visitors, students, and immigrants. There is so much to learn from them." - Elissa C. Steglich, coauthor of The Unending Floods: Disaster Recovery and Immigration Policy

• List of FiguresList of TablesAcknowledgementsList of AbbreviationsForewordNina BernsteinIntroductionUlla D. Berg and Carolina Sánchez BoePART I: The Early Years: From Esmor to CCA, 1993-1998Chapter 1: Abraham Zuma's Preventable Death, or Why Immigration Detention Must be AbolishedAmy GottliebChapter 2: Shackled in the Land of Hope: Asylum Seekers Held for MonthsElizabeth LlorenteChapter 3: The First Lawsuit Using International Human Rights Law to Protect Detained Immigrants in the United StatesPenny VenetisChapter 4: Riot!Fauziya Kassindja (with Layli Miller Bashir)Chapter 5: "You're Giving Them Too Much Hope."Will ColeyPART II: Mandatory Detention, Crimmigration, and the National Security StateChapter 6: How a Good Immigrant/Bad Immigrant Binary Fuels the Modern Deportation RegimeSarah ToshChapter 7: A Journey to Freedom: My First Steps in the United StatesAbdulai BahChapter 8: "It's not like you're ever going to see this guy after he gets released today..."Marguerite É. Marty, Esq.Chapter 9: We Are IRATE!: Seven People in a New Jersey Diner and the Power of AccompanimentWilliam WestermanChapter 10: A New Jersey Teenager Caught in the War on Terror and Detained at EDC'Bilal' (with Carolina Sanchez Boe)PART III: Structures of Support, Advocacy, and AccompanimentChapter 11: A Permanent Executive Order from God: The Reformed Church of Highland Park's Ongoing Response to EDC's Systemic SinRev. Seth Kaper-DaleChapter 12: Bed 26: Becoming a Refugee and Claiming AsylumEdafe OkporoChapter 13: Touring the Elizabeth Detention Center: A Diary ComicKristyn ScorsoneChapter 14: Due Process Army at the Elizabeth Immigration CourtPina N. CirilloChapter 15: Know Where You Stand and Stand ThereKathy O'LearyPART IV: Economies of DetentionChapter 16: Anti-Detention Laws, the EDC, and How New Jersey Became a Private-Detention-Only StateKatherine M. SastreChapter 17: Big Business and Bad Care: The Sick Economics Behind the Elizabeth Detention CenterDeirdre Conlon and Nancy HiemstraChapter 18: From EDC to e-Carceration and Digital Surveillance: My Experience with Libre by NexusJulio Oseguera (with Ulla D. Berg)Chapter 19: Who Are the Criminals? The Licit and Illicit Monetary Flows and State-Corporate Interests Fueling Migrant Detention in New Jersey and BeyondK. Sebastian LeónChapter 20: Do You Want to Come Back? A Transgender Woman's Story Between Honduras and the EDCXiomara Flores (with Ulla D. Berg)PART V: The End of Immigration Detention in New Jersey?Chapter 21: Towards Abolition: Fighting Detention in Trump-Era New JerseyMary Rizzo and Whitney StrubChapter 22: "Daddy, this China?": Ibrahim's Experience in EDC During the COVID-19Ibrahim (with Ulla D. Berg)Chapter 23: Aganan v. Rodriguez and the Fight to #FreeThem AllJessica RoféChapter 24: Asylum Granted, Peace Denied: Fearing a New Era in January 2025Ivo and Gabriel (with Gloria d'Alessio)Chapter 25: The Detention Ban Ripple Effect: Defending Community Wins and Sustaining National MomentumGabriela VieraAfterwordSilky ShahNotes on ContributorsIndex