“Despite the common refrain that immigration law is ‘broken,’ immigration imprisonment is a sign that the United States immigration policy is working exactly as designed,” Garcia Hernandez writes. “The system hasn’t malfunctioned. It was intended to punish, stigmatize, and marginalize—all for political and financial gain. Politicians get elected, local governments receive revenue, corporations profit, and white racists find comfort against the prevailing winds of change that bring different languages, different people, and new challenges to old communities. That is exactly what is happening.”

Interspersed with powerful stories of people caught up in the immigration imprisonment industry, including children who have spent most of their lives in immigrant detention, Migrating to Prison is an urgent call for the abolition of immigration prisons and a radical reimagining of the United States: who belongs and on what criteria is that determination made?

César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández is a professor of law at the University of Denver and an immigration lawyer. He runs the blog Crimmigration.com and regularly speaks on immigration issues. He has appeared in the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, NPR, the BBC, and many other media outlets. A native of McAllen, TX, a city at the heart of the American immigration debate, he now lives in Denver.