How to Close a Camp

A call to action to defend immigrants and push back against the unprecedented rise of migrant incarceration

How to Close a Camp is a polemic and political field guide for dismantling the immigrant detention system in the United States. Grounded in concrete victories of local communities and directly impacted people and drawing on interviews with dozens of veterans of the immigrant rights movement, award-winning journalist and translator John Washington distills strategies from successful campaigns that have closed camps, blocked or slowed new ones from opening, and chipped away at the carceral infrastructure.

The stakes couldn't be higher: through conversations with the most impacted-the people currently or historically caged in the camps-Washington describes the cruel impacts of the exploding budget for ICE, the rapid militarization of American streets under the guise of immigration enforcement, and the surge in detention beds.

But since the inception of immigrant detention in the United States, there has always been a line of resistance: from the early Chinese targeted and detained in the 19th century, the Mexicans and Japanese rounded up in the mid-20th century, and the rise of family detention under Obama, those inside and out have coalesced, stood up, fought back, and often won their freedom. Despite the decades-long growth of immigrant detention, victories have been won in individual cases, as well as at the municipal, state, and national levels. Recognizing and learning from these victories is the only way to stave off increasing xenophobic and authoritarian violence.

How to Close a Camp outlines how to confront the current wave of oppression. It is a call not only to combat the camp, but to build something better in its place.