Immigration Detention Inc.: The Big Business of Locking up Migrants in America

“Who knew that hatred driven by racism could be so lucrative? ... A resounding and meticulously researched exposé” - Ravi Ragbir, immigration activist and co-founder of New Sanctuary Coalition

“A vital and troubling look at the grotesque practices of the privatized immigration detention industry” - Reece Jones, author of Nobody is Protected and White Borders

“The most thorough breakdown of the immigration enforcement industrial complex that I have ever read” - Todd Miller, journalist and author of Build Bridges, Not Walls

The United States has the largest immigration detention system in the world. In the 1980s, it held fewer than 5,000 people each day. By 2024, that number was 39,000, and today it is increasing sharply again. While Republicans are often the loudest voices against immigration, the detention system expands no matter which party is in power.

Immigration Detention Inc. is a damning investigation of the ways immigration detention generates income while those imprisoned are starved, sickened, and exploited on a daily basis. Drawing on over a decade of research and focusing on detention centers in New Jersey and New York, Nancy Hiemstra and Deirdre Conlon follow the money to map public and private financial relationships and trace how detention contracts for food, medical care, and in-facility stores are fought over to the penny. By breaking down how immigration detention works, they reveal a profit-driven system that harms and corrupts communities across the U.S. At a decisive moment in history, the call is clear: dismantle immigration detention systems everywhere.

Nancy Hiemstra is the author of Detain and Deport: The Chaotic U.S. Immigration Enforcement Regime. She is Associate Professor at Stony Brook University in Long Island, New York, U.S. Deirdre Conlon is co-editor of Carceral Spaces and (with Hiemstra) of Intimate Economies of Immigration Detention. Working in the U.S. and U.K., she is Associate Professor at the University of Leeds, U.K.