Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement : AZ IMC

Mark Dow
American Gulag
Inside U.S. Immigration Prisons

Through the eyes and ears of immigration prisoners, their lawyers, and their jailers, Mark Dow sheds light on the netherworld of immigration detention, and compels us to confront how we treat the most vulnerable and voiceless among us. His work is a clarion call for justice from behind bars by those who have been sentenced to serve time without having ever committed a crime." David Cole, author of Enemy Aliens: Double Standards and Constitutional Freedoms in the War on Terrorism

DESCRIPTION

Before September 11, 2001, few Americans had heard of immigration detention, but in fact a secret and repressive prison system run by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service has existed in this country for more than two decades. In American Gulag, prisoners, jailers, and whistle-blowing federal officials come forward to describe the frightening reality inside these INS facilities. Journalist Mark Dow's on-the-ground reporting brings to light documented cases of illegal beatings and psychological torment, prolonged detention, racism, and inhumane conditions. Intelligent, impassioned, and unlike anything that has been written on the topic, this gripping work of investigative journalism should be read by all Americans. It is a book that will change the way we see our country.

American Gulag takes us inside prisons such as the Krome North Service Processing Center in Miami, the Corrections Corporation of America's Houston Processing Center, and county jails around the country that profit from contracts to hold INS prisoners. It contains disturbing in-depth profiles of detainees, including Emmy Kutesa, a defector from the Ugandan army who was tortured and then escaped to the United States, where he was imprisoned in Queens, and then undertook a hunger strike in protest. To provide a framework for understanding stories like these, Dow gives a brief history of immigration laws and practices in the United States--including the repercussions of September 11 and present-day policies. His book reveals that current immigration detentions are best understood not as a well-intentioned response to terrorism but rather as part of the larger context of INS secrecy and excessive authority.

American Gulag exposes the full story of a cruel prison system that is operating today with an astonishing lack of accountability.

CONTENTS

Prologue: "Let This Be Home"
1. Invisibility, Intimidation, and the INS
2. September 11: Secrecy, Disruption, and Continuity
3. Another World, Another Nation: Miami's Krome Detention Center
4. "Enforcement Means You're Brutal"
5. The World's First Private Prison
6. "Keeping Quiet Means Deny": A Hunger Strike in Queens
7. The Art of Jailing
8. "Criminal Aliens" and Criminal Agents
9. Siege, Shackles, Climate, Design
10. "Speak to Every Media": Resistance, Repression, and the Making of a Prisoner
11. Good and Evil in New England
12. Out West: Philosophy and Despair
13. Dead Time
14. Mariel Cubans: Abandoned, Again and Again
Acknowledgments
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mark Dow is a freelance writer and poet whose work has appeared in the Miami Herald, The Progressive, Boston Review, Index on Censorship, Prison Legal News, and numerous literary publications. He is coeditor of Machinery of Death: The Reality of America's Death Penalty Regime (2002).

AWARDS
Gustavus Myers Outstanding Books Award, Gustavus Myers Awards

RELATED BOOKS

Total Confinement: Madness and Reason in the Maximum Security Prison, by Lorna A. Rhodes
Man Is Wolf to Man: Surviving the Gulag, by Janusz Bardach and Kathleen Gleeson
The Great Wall of Confinement: The Chinese Prison Camp through Contemporary Fiction and Reportage, by Philip F. Williams and Yenna Wu
Annihilating Difference: The Anthropology of Genocide, edited by Alexander Laban Hinton
Voices from S-21: Terror and History in Pol Pot's Secret Prison, by David Chandler
Violence Workers: Police Torturers and Murderers Reconstruct Brazilian Atrocities, by Martha K. Huggins, Mika Haritos-Fatouros, and Philip G. Zimbardo
Tortured Confessions: Prisons and Public Recantations in Modern Iran, by Ervand Abrahamian

RELATED WEB SITES
interview with Mark in MotherJones.com