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U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)

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Trump looks at border wall construction prototypes.
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The Militarization of Immigration Enforcement is Not Unique to Trump

Angry that ICE is ripping families apart? Don’t just blame Trump. Blame Clinton, Bush and Obama, too.
by Carly Goodman via Made By History on June 11, 2018
President Calvin Coolidge raising his hand behind a podium to be sworn into office.
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Behind America’s First Comprehensive Federal Immigration Law

Even as the primary targets of immigration restrictionism have shifted, the consequences for immigrants remain profoundly shaped by the system created in 1924.
by Devin E. Naar via Made By History on July 9, 2024
Ronald Reagan and Nancy Reagan wave at inauguration in 1981
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Reagan’s War on Drugs Also Waged War on Immigrants

Lawmakers are undoing the worst parts of 1980s drug legislation, but they have forgotten its ties to immigration enforcement.
by Alexander M. Stephens via Made By History on October 27, 2021
A Border Patrol agent stands by an opening in the U.S. Mexico Border wall.
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Trump’s Border Wall Belongs to Biden Now

A border policy divorced from history can’t do what policymakers want.
by Kevan Q. Malone via Made By History on April 11, 2021
Street protest in Hamburg, Germany

The Black Refugee Tradition

Undocumented Black migrants struggle to have their asylum rights recognized in the United States. Groups have been asking President Biden to stop deportations.
by Sean Gallagher via Black Perspectives on April 7, 2021
Artwork depicting The Statue of Liberty's back.

America Never Wanted the Tired, Poor, Huddled Masses

The U.S. is a diverse nation of immigrants—but it was not intended to be, and its historical biases continue to haunt the present.
by Caitlin Dickerson via The Atlantic on April 5, 2021
A picture of a man and a graffiti wall

The Origins of an Early School-to-Deportation Pipeline

Appeals to childhood innocence helped enshrine undocumented kids’ access to education. But this has also inadvertently reinforced criminalization.
by Ivón Padilla-Rodríguez via NACLA on November 6, 2020
Workers exit a Koch Foods Inc., plant in Morton, Mississippi, during an ICE raid.
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The Poultry Industry Recruited Them. Now ICE Raids Are Devastating Their Communities.

How immigrants established vibrant communities in the rural South over a quarter-century.
by Angela Stuesse via Made By History on August 9, 2019
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For Private Prisons, Detaining Immigrants Is Big Business

Today, despite their mixed record, private prison companies are overseeing the vast majority of undocumented migrants.
by Sarah Weiser, Noah Madoff, Anne Checler via Retro Report on October 1, 2018

Why It’s Fair to Compare the Detention of Migrants to Concentration Camps

Not every concentration camp is Auschwitz. The term is much older.
by Jonathan M. Katz via Slate on June 20, 2018

Refugee to Detainee: How the U.S. is Deporting Those Seeking a Safe Haven

Since the 1994 Crime Bill signed into law by Bill Clinton, refugees have been deported in droves. And Southeast Asians are being targeted.
by Thi Bui via The Nib on June 13, 2018
Donald Trump at Lancaster Airport on November 3, 2024, in Lititz, Pennsylvania.

This Is America

Donald Trump’s authoritarian second term has led critics to describe him as a fascist in the mold of Adolf Hitler.
by Daniel Bessner via Jacobin on March 27, 2025
President Eisenhower; The silhouette of a hand pressing into a fence that is blocking the American flag.

The Shaky History of Mass Deportations

‘Operation Wetback’ and ‘Mexican Repatriation’ worked—until they didn’t.
by Benjamin Montoya via The Dispatch on March 5, 2025
Silhouettes of Energy Secretary Chris Wright, President Donald Trump, and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum in the Oval Office in the dark.

The Making of Emergencies

For centuries, theorists of liberal governance have worried about how emergencies can unfetter executive power. Trump has given those fears new urgency.
by Caroline Elkins via New York Review of Books on February 16, 2025
Photo of Galveston County Jail, 1929.

How Texas Jails Built Migrant Incarceration

Following a 1925 investigation, immigrant detention in the Galveston County Jail was declared “a crime against humanity.”
by Brianna Nofil via The Texas Observer on November 19, 2024
A drawing of two parents and a child running at a border, their silhouettes being sliced by a chainlink fence.

The Crime of Human Movement

Two recent books about our immigration system reveal its long history of exploiting vulnerable individuals for financial gain.
by Coco Fusco via New York Review of Books on October 31, 2024
Sheriff Joe Arpaio riding in the back of a convertible car painted like an American flag.

Are Sheriffs Above the Law?

Many vignettes of sheriffs in action are dramatic and alarming. But how representative are they?
by Linda Greenhouse via New York Review of Books on September 12, 2024
A U.S. Border Patrol vehicle in front of a section of the U.S.-Mexico border fence near Ocotillo, Calif., on Sept. 13.
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The Myth of ‘Open Borders’

Even before the United States regulated migration, states did. Here’s why.
by Anna O. Law via Made By History on March 23, 2024
Migrants in line for U.S. Customs and Border Protection, barbed wire in the foreground.
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Biden’s Border Policies Target Haitians. That’s No Accident.

The long history undergirding our harsh bipartisan migration policies.
by Leslie M. Alexander via Made By History on May 11, 2023
Drawing of aerial view of vast room of cubicles.

The 20-Year Boondoggle

The Department of Homeland Security was supposed to rally nearly two dozen agencies together in a streamlined approach to protecting the country. So what the hell happened?
by Amanda Chicago Lewis via The Verge on April 21, 2022
Cover of "The Deportation Express"

How American Deportation Trains Represent a Century of American Immigration Policy

"The Deportation Express: A History of America through Forced Removal" traces the historical roots and spatial routes of systemic denial, arrest, and removal from the United States.
by Ethan Blue via University Of California Press Blog on April 1, 2022
A picture of armed militias

What the Term “Gun Culture” Misses About White Supremacy

The rise of tactical gun culture among civilians reveals a new front in the U.S. battle against nativist authoritarianism.
by Chad Kautzer via Boston Review on December 17, 2021
Anthropometric data sheet of Alphonse Bertillon with his picture straight on and in profile

Face Surveillance Was Always Flawed

On the origins, use, and abuse of mugshots.
by Amanda Levendowski via Public Books on November 20, 2021
Demonstrators supporting immigration reform.
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Avoiding Past Mistakes is Key to Congress Passing Immigration Reform That Works

Updating the Registry Act and uncoupling legalization from punitive measures could be first steps.
by Elizabeth F. Cohen via Made By History on September 30, 2021
Photo of immigants being detained.

‘I Became a Jailer’: The Origins of American Immigrant Detention

The massive U.S. apparatus for holding immigrants has a long American tradition.
by Ariel Aberg-Riger, Tanvi Misra via CityLab on July 20, 2021
Immigrant mother and child embracing

As American as Family Separation

Though the cruelties of the Trump administration’s “Zero Tolerance” policy were unique, they were part of an American tradition of taking children from parents.
by Hari Kunzru via New York Review of Books on June 9, 2021
Still life painting, “Early American, Apples in a Porcelain Basket” (2007), by Sharon Core.

After Apple Picking

The decline of South Carolina's apple industry, interwoven with personal memories of family orchards.
by Mark Powell via Oxford American on March 23, 2021
The entrance at Camp Livingston.

Forgotten Camps, Living History

Reckoning with the legacy of Japanese internment in the South.
by Jason Christian via The Bitter Southerner on February 18, 2021
Two men stand in a church doorway.

The Revival of Church Sanctuary

How a long-abandoned practice became a way for undocumented immigrants to seek protection.
by Rafil Kroll-Zaidi via New York Review of Books on November 10, 2020
Chinese immigrants arrested in New Jersey in November 1934. One is smiling, all look disheveled.

An Explosive Government Report Exposed Family Separations and Other Immigration Horrors—in 1931

Lessons about “dark age cruelty” and the limits of reformism from 90 years ago.
by Noah Lanard via Mother Jones on October 27, 2020
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