Elizabeth Detention Center
A Social History of Immigration Detention in New Jersey and the United States
Will be published approx. on 14. July 2026
Book
Hardback
290 pages
978-1-9788-4584-8 (ISBN)
Description
The United States detains and deports several hundred thousand migrants every year. Many spend significant amounts of time in immigration detention as they await adjudication of their immigration cases. The Elizabeth Detention Center in New Jersey is located in a converted warehouse, managed by a private, for-profit prison company. Over three decades, migrants and asylum seekers have been brought to EDC directly from Newark Airport or have been transferred to the site from elsewhere in the United States, including from the US-Mexico border region.
Through a longitudinal, site-specific study unique in its kind, this volume unites the voices and perspectives of formerly detained migrants, scholars, journalists, lawyers, and social and faith movement leaders, who share their experiences of Elizabeth Detention Center and reconstruct its social history and its location in New Jersey's political economy and in the changing legal landscapes of immigration detention in the United States.
Through a longitudinal, site-specific study unique in its kind, this volume unites the voices and perspectives of formerly detained migrants, scholars, journalists, lawyers, and social and faith movement leaders, who share their experiences of Elizabeth Detention Center and reconstruct its social history and its location in New Jersey's political economy and in the changing legal landscapes of immigration detention in the United States.
Reviews / Votes
"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
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
New Brunswick NJ
United States
Target group
Professional and scholarly
College/higher education
Product notice
Laminated cover
Illustrations
6 color and 35 B-W images
Dimensions
Height: 235 mm
Width: 156 mm
Thickness: 23 mm
Weight
454 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-9788-4584-8 (9781978845848)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Persons
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, and 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. (2015).
Carolina Sanchez Boe is an adjunct lecturer at Brown University in Paris. She is a sociologist and anthropologist, and 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).
Carolina Sanchez Boe is an adjunct lecturer at Brown University in Paris. She is a sociologist and anthropologist, and 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).
Content
List of Figures
List of Tables
Acknowledgements
List of Abbreviations
Foreword
Nina Bernstein
Introduction
Ulla D. Berg and Carolina Sanchez Boe
PART I: The Early Years: From Esmor to CCA, 1993-1998
Chapter 1: Abraham Zuma's Preventable Death, or Why Immigration Detention Must be Abolished
Amy Gottlieb
Chapter 2: Shackled in the Land of Hope: Asylum Seekers Held for Months
Elizabeth Llorente
Chapter 3: The First Lawsuit Using International Human Rights Law to Protect Detained Immigrants in the United States
Penny Venetis
Chapter 4: Riot!
Fauziya Kassindja (with Layli Miller Bashir)
Chapter 5: "You're Giving Them Too Much Hope."
Will Coley
PART II: Mandatory Detention, Crimmigration, and the National Security State
Chapter 6: How a Good Immigrant/Bad Immigrant Binary Fuels the Modern Deportation Regime
Sarah Tosh
Chapter 7: A Journey to Freedom: My First Steps in the United States
Abdulai Bah
Chapter 8: "It's not like you're ever going to see this guy after he gets released today..."
Marguerite E. Marty, Esq.
Chapter 9: We Are IRATE!: Seven People in a New Jersey Diner and the Power of Accompaniment
William Westerman
Chapter 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 Accompaniment
Chapter 11: A Permanent Executive Order from God: The Reformed Church of Highland Park's Ongoing Response to EDC's Systemic Sin
Rev. Seth Kaper-Dale
Chapter 12: Bed 26: Becoming a Refugee and Claiming Asylum
Edafe Okporo
Chapter 13: Touring the Elizabeth Detention Center: A Diary Comic
Kristyn Scorsone
Chapter 14: Due Process Army at the Elizabeth Immigration Court
Pina N. Cirillo
Chapter 15: Know Where You Stand and Stand There
Kathy O'Leary
PART IV: Economies of Detention
Chapter 16: Anti-Detention Laws, the EDC, and How New Jersey Became a Private-Detention-Only State
Katherine M. Sastre
Chapter 17: Big Business and Bad Care: The Sick Economics Behind the Elizabeth Detention Center
Deirdre Conlon and Nancy Hiemstra
Chapter 18: From EDC to e-Carceration and Digital Surveillance: My Experience with Libre by Nexus
Julio 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 Beyond
K. Sebastian Leon
Chapter 20: Do You Want to Come Back? A Transgender Woman's Story Between Honduras and the EDC
Xiomara 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 Jersey
Mary Rizzo and Whitney Strub
Chapter 22: "Daddy, this China?": Ibrahim's Experience in EDC During the COVID-19
Ibrahim (with Ulla D. Berg)
Chapter 23: Aganan v. Rodriguez and the Fight to #FreeThem All
Jessica Rofe
Chapter 24: Asylum Granted, Peace Denied: Fearing a New Era in January 2025
Ivo and Gabriel (with Gloria d'Alessio)
Chapter 25: The Detention Ban Ripple Effect: Defending Community Wins and Sustaining National Momentum
Gabriela Viera
Afterword
Silky Shah
Notes on Contributors
Index
List of Tables
Acknowledgements
List of Abbreviations
Foreword
Nina Bernstein
Introduction
Ulla D. Berg and Carolina Sanchez Boe
PART I: The Early Years: From Esmor to CCA, 1993-1998
Chapter 1: Abraham Zuma's Preventable Death, or Why Immigration Detention Must be Abolished
Amy Gottlieb
Chapter 2: Shackled in the Land of Hope: Asylum Seekers Held for Months
Elizabeth Llorente
Chapter 3: The First Lawsuit Using International Human Rights Law to Protect Detained Immigrants in the United States
Penny Venetis
Chapter 4: Riot!
Fauziya Kassindja (with Layli Miller Bashir)
Chapter 5: "You're Giving Them Too Much Hope."
Will Coley
PART II: Mandatory Detention, Crimmigration, and the National Security State
Chapter 6: How a Good Immigrant/Bad Immigrant Binary Fuels the Modern Deportation Regime
Sarah Tosh
Chapter 7: A Journey to Freedom: My First Steps in the United States
Abdulai Bah
Chapter 8: "It's not like you're ever going to see this guy after he gets released today..."
Marguerite E. Marty, Esq.
Chapter 9: We Are IRATE!: Seven People in a New Jersey Diner and the Power of Accompaniment
William Westerman
Chapter 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 Accompaniment
Chapter 11: A Permanent Executive Order from God: The Reformed Church of Highland Park's Ongoing Response to EDC's Systemic Sin
Rev. Seth Kaper-Dale
Chapter 12: Bed 26: Becoming a Refugee and Claiming Asylum
Edafe Okporo
Chapter 13: Touring the Elizabeth Detention Center: A Diary Comic
Kristyn Scorsone
Chapter 14: Due Process Army at the Elizabeth Immigration Court
Pina N. Cirillo
Chapter 15: Know Where You Stand and Stand There
Kathy O'Leary
PART IV: Economies of Detention
Chapter 16: Anti-Detention Laws, the EDC, and How New Jersey Became a Private-Detention-Only State
Katherine M. Sastre
Chapter 17: Big Business and Bad Care: The Sick Economics Behind the Elizabeth Detention Center
Deirdre Conlon and Nancy Hiemstra
Chapter 18: From EDC to e-Carceration and Digital Surveillance: My Experience with Libre by Nexus
Julio 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 Beyond
K. Sebastian Leon
Chapter 20: Do You Want to Come Back? A Transgender Woman's Story Between Honduras and the EDC
Xiomara 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 Jersey
Mary Rizzo and Whitney Strub
Chapter 22: "Daddy, this China?": Ibrahim's Experience in EDC During the COVID-19
Ibrahim (with Ulla D. Berg)
Chapter 23: Aganan v. Rodriguez and the Fight to #FreeThem All
Jessica Rofe
Chapter 24: Asylum Granted, Peace Denied: Fearing a New Era in January 2025
Ivo and Gabriel (with Gloria d'Alessio)
Chapter 25: The Detention Ban Ripple Effect: Defending Community Wins and Sustaining National Momentum
Gabriela Viera
Afterword
Silky Shah
Notes on Contributors
Index