The Shadow of El Centro - (Justice, Power, and Politics) by Jessica Ordaz (Paperback)

About the Book

"The city of El Centro is located in southern California's Imperial Valley, near the US-Mexico border. Surrounded by desert, sand dunes, and mountains, it is isolated and difficult to reach, but has long been an important place for Mexican migrants attracted to the valley's agricultural economy and proximity to the border. The Shadow of El Centro tells the story of how the El Centro Immigration Detention Camp of 1945 evolved into the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Service Processing Center of the 2000s and became a national model for detaining migrants-a place where the policing of migration, the racialization of labor, and detainee resistance coalesced"--

Book Synopsis

Bounded by desert and mountains, El Centro, California, is isolated and difficult to reach. However, its location close to the border between San Diego and Yuma, Arizona, has made it an important place for Mexican migrants attracted to the valley's agricultural economy. In 1945, it also became home to the El Centro Immigration Detention Camp. The Shadow of El Centro tells the story of how that camp evolved into the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Service Processing Center of the 2000s and became a national model for detaining migrants--a place where the policing of migration, the racialization of labor, and detainee resistance coalesced.

Using government correspondence, photographs, oral histories, and private documents, Jessica Ordaz reveals the rise and transformation of migrant detention through this groundbreaking history of one detention camp. The story shows how the U.S. detention system was built to extract labor, to discipline, and to control migration, and it helps us understand the long and shadowy history of how immigration officials went from detaining a few thousand unauthorized migrants during the 1940s to confining hundreds of thousands of people by the end of the twentieth century. Ordaz also uncovers how these detained migrants have worked together to create transnational solidarities and innovative forms of resistance.

Review Quotes

"The Shadow of El Centro casts new light on America's dark history of migrant detention. Far from simply being the infrastructure for enforcing the nation's deportation powers, Ordaz shows us that detention centers are in fact durative carceral institutions that shape the everyday geographies of economy, community, and power of the places in which they are erected. A first of its kind, this seventy-year history of the El Centro Detention Center revises how we think about migrant detention, revealing the power and resources it creates for capitalist society and the contradictions that give rise to migrant resistance. As a history at the important nexus of immigration, carceral, and labor studies, this is an indispensable book for anyone interested in the history of twentieth-century racial capitalism." -- Chandan Reddy, University of Washington, Seattle

"A compelling history grounded in the El Centro Detention Center in the Imperial Valley border region of California. . . . By centering detentions as anything but new and anything but a simply transactional moment in a benign process, this book contributes to critical histories of repression and resistance in the United States to further argue that racial violence is embedded within the immigration regime, and its reform is untenable."--Pacific Historical Review

"A compelling work that exposes the hidden histories of El Centro and detention centers more generally . . . a nuanced approach to current scholarship by analyzing the long and continuous histories of violence that have been prevalent in these detention centers from their inception, and not necessarily as a more recent product of neoliberal practices and policies."--Society for U.S. Intellectual History

"Illuminating."--NACLA Report

"Jessica Ordaz's The Shadow of El Centro revisits [the history of migrant incarceration] through a deep exploration of one migrant detention center in Southern California from 1945-2014. . . . The author does a good job of highlighting the local story of El Centro without losing sight of the national and international context. . . . Ordaz argues that the migrant detention system in the present is not broken and 'cannot be reformed, because violence is the core of its essence.' If you need convincing on this point, read this book."--New Mexico Historical Review

"One of few works that fulfills its promise to tell a desire-based narrative of 'transnational migrant solidarity' without losing the analytical power necessary to confront immigrant incarceration in the US. . . . This short book packs a powerful punch . . . [and] explains the rise of the immigrant punishment system without attributing a complex issue solely to race, capitalism, or xenophobia."--Antipode

"Ordaz deftly shows the extent to which detention, control, and violence have come to dominate America's response to undocumented immigration through a history of one of America's oldest detention facilities."--Boom California