Intercultural Human Rights Law Review
First Page
125
Abstract
This article will primarily focus on illustrating examples of lengthy detention that surely seem unending to the immigrants involved, if not "indefinite" as determined by the U.S. Supreme Court. I will address all other aspects of detention more fully than actual "indefinite" detention. Detention is one of many tools at the disposal of DHS to assure orderly immigration and provide predictable consequences for violators of the United States immigration system. I hope to illustrate the frequently coercive affects of the detention scheme and argue that in some, if not many, contexts detention actually impedes the orderly administration of justice, despite its assumed use to guarantee such orderliness. Finally, I subscribe to the usefulness of the scholarly techniques of the Critical Race Theory movement, particularly the use of storytelling to elucidate a legal problem, so narrative vignettes will appear throughout this article. The subjects of the narratives are undocumented immigrants, immigration violators or criminal immigrants, each classification progressively more onerous to many members of society. The narratives are used to provide a concrete illustration of a concept and each narrative is likely representative of hundreds of similar cases. The cases discussed herein are somewhat sanitized versions of actual facts. It is my hope that in depicting actual circumstances I can give voice to a politically weak constituency and show that the function of law unduly prejudices many immigrants, despite detention appearing facially as a reasonable component of U.S. immigration policy.
Recommended Citation
Michael S. Vastine,
Good Things Come to Those Who Wait - Reconsidering Indeterminate and Indefinite Detention as Tools in U.S. Immigration Policy,
5
Intercultural Hum. Rts. L. Rev.
125
(2010).
Available at:
https://scholarship.stu.edu/ihrlr/vol5/iss1/7