Event Announcement: "Immigration Detention, Inc" Book Talk at American University September 30 (Register Today)
Join Ernesto Castañeda, Tazreena Sajjad, Nancy Hiemstra, Deirdre Conlon, and myself for a discussion about the rapidly-expanding US immigrant detention system.
I’m thrilled to invite you to a special event at American University featuring my colleagues—and fellow geographers—Nancy Hiemstra and Deirdre Conlon, whose new book Immigration Detention Inc.: The Big Business of Locking Up Migrants offers one of the most thorough, urgent, and critical accounts of the immigrant detention system to be published in years. The talk will be hosted by my good friend, Ernesto Castañeda, who runs the Center for Latin American and Latino Studies and the Immigration Lab. We will be joined by Tazreena Sajjad from American University.
The timing could not be more crucial. Congress just passed an unprecedented $45 billion expansion of immigrant detention. This conversation with Nancy and Deirdre will dive deep into the political and economic machinery that keeps detention not only running, but thriving.
Drawing on more than a decade of fieldwork and investigation, Nancy and Deirdre trace the financial incentives and structural dependencies that drive detention: from local governments to private equity firms, from cafeteria contracts to forced migrant labor. What emerges is a picture of a system that is not broken, but working exactly as designed—one that profits by turning hunger, illness, and human confinement into budget lines and dividends.
I’ve known Nancy and Deirdre for years. As scholars and as friends, they have deeply shaped how I think about space, power, and the hidden geographies of immigration enforcement. This book brings together the best of their critical insight and grounded research, and I couldn’t be more excited to host them for this conversation.
The event will be hosted in person at American University at 12:00 PM (Eastern US) on Tuesday, September 30, 2025. Registration is FREE but REQUIRED.
About the Authors
Nancy Hiemstra is an Associate Professor in the Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Stony Brook University. Her research focuses on migration, border enforcement, and the geopolitics of security. Using ethnographic and qualitative methods, she explores the human consequences of immigration control policies in the U.S. and Latin America.
Deirdre Conlon is an Associate Professor in the School of Geography at the University of Leeds. Her work critically examines the intersections of migration, incarceration, and neoliberalism, with a focus on the financial and institutional structures that enable immigrant detention in the United States.
About the Book
Immigration Detention, Inc. is published by Pluto Press, a fantastic independent publishing house in the UK. The book has already received high praise from friends of this Substack newsletter, such as Reece Jones, Mary Bosworth from Border Criminologies, and Todd Miller from the Border Chronicle. Order the book at Pluto Press’s website.
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