Abstract
This work highlights the experience of eight education students from a public university in the American Southeast in their trip to Stewart Immigration Detention Center. A pre-interview and two post-interviews were conducted to understand students’ perceptions toward the topic, what they learned from their experience, and how the experience affected their views on immigration with a particular concern for the intersection of immigration and education. Some of the themes that emerged were the broader injustices of the profit driven immigration detention industry, the difficulties of structural change, the idea of American (industrialized world) privilege, the ease by which individuals are detained, and the dehumanizing treatment. In regard to education, participants highlighted the need for curriculum to focus on the topic of immigration including the integration of immigrant stories, a global education that counters xenophobic narratives, and the need for a more critical approach overall in the social studies classroom. This research is relevant to the larger intersection of immigration policy and education and the need for educators to become advocates for social change not only in their classroom but in regard to the larger injustices in the society.
Introduction
The day will never escape my memory. It was my first visit to an immigration detention center, and there was a young man crying behind the glass in front of me. He was an 18-year-old from Central America. He was so distraught because he had recently escaped from gang violence in his country with his younger brother. Because his brother was a minor he was released to live with his father in the Northeast, but because he was 18, he was sent to this notorious detention center in rural Georgia that had a horrendously low rate of granting asylum due to the judges in the area who defied asylum in at least 94% of the cases, which contributed to the county having the highest removal rate in the country (Cárcamo, 2019). The young man said that as hard it was to be in the detention center, it was better than being sent back home where he feared for his life (McCorkle, 2016). The experience had such an impact on me that I started bringing groups down to the detention center for them to see firsthand what was occurring. In early 2020, just a month before the world shut down for the Coronavirus, I was able to bring some of my education students down to the detention center.
Background
The issue of immigration detention is not new in American history; however, the scope of immigration detention has grown dramatically since the 1990s. The average number of immigrants in US detention centers went from roughly 8,000 in 1990 to 20,000 in 2000 and 32,000 in 2010. By 2019, it neared 50,000 a day (Kassie, 2019). There are many reasons for this rise over time. Part of this could be attributed to the stringent immigration restrictions signed into law by President Clinton in 1996 (Shahani, 2019). It is also due to the large immigration apparatus that arose in response to September 11th with the new department of Homeland Security (Hesson, 2012). Likewise, under President Obama immigration detention continued to increase (Kassie, 2019). Though President Obama was known for advocating for certain inclusive immigration policies such as DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) and DAPA (Deferred Action for Parents), in some immigration circles he was known as the “Deporter in Chief” (Gonzalez, 2017). Internally, under Obama the priority was placed on those undocumented immigrants with criminal offenses. Though as it is highlighted in the documentary Immigration Nation (Clusiau & Schwarz, 2020) some agents had broad discretion to detain migrants if they could vaguely justify that they were a “threat.” Additionally, many asylum seekers and those caught at the border were sent to detention centers further into the country.
This increase of immigration detention and deportation was exacerbated under Trump. There was the infamous family separation policy that began in 2018. However, some aspects that did not gain as much attention were the detainment of whole families after the separation order was rescinded (Sands & Fossum, 2019) and more broadly keeping individuals in detention rather than allow them to be released until their day in court (Rosenburg & Cooke, 2019). Internal enforcement also increased as the Trump administration made all undocumented immigrants a target of deportation instead of focusing primarily on those with criminal records (Rochabrun, 2017).
The expansion of immigration detention can also be attributed to the expansion of the private prison industry. It was this industry that was a strong force behind the “show me your papers” legislation passed in Arizona in 2009 (Sullivan, 2010). More recently, they donated $1.6 million to political campaigns in the 2016 election to have their agenda passed. Though the donations were bipartisan, they gave the most to Republican candidates (Open Secrets, 2020). These detention centers have bed quotas with the federal government in order to carry out their detention practices (Gruberg, 2015). It could be argued that this campaign money allows these arrangements to stay in place and grow. The increasing privatization has also allowed the centers to become more clandestine and in many aspects treat the detainees in a more inhumane way than individuals in government run prisons. In fact, private prisons hold 70% of immigrant detainees (Altschuler, 2019). The detention center that is at the center of this research is Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, Georgia, which was established in 2004. It is one of the largest immigration detention centers in the nation and exclusively detains adult males. As of 2019, it held approximately 2,000 individuals (Robles, 2019). The center detains both immigrants that were arrested internally as well as individuals that were apprehended at the border, including those seeking asylum. There have been several reports on the human rights abuses at the detention center, including the case of a suicide after a man diagnosed with schizophrenia was forced to stay in solitary confinement for 21 days (Olivares, 2018) and forced labor with threats of solitary confinement and expedited removal for those who decide they no longer want to work for wages that could be as low as $1 a day (Goggin, 2020). There was also a strong critique for the procedures in place for COVID-19 after 51 of the employees at the facility tested positive and an inmate from Guatemala died (Redmon, 2020).
Relationship to the Classroom
There is particular connection between these issues of immigration enforcement and detention and the lives of children in many classrooms throughout the United States. The Migration Policy Institute (2018) estimates that there are close to 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States. Though a smaller percentage of immigrants of this status are under 16 (5%), many U.S. citizen children who have undocumented parents are still victims in a system where their parents face possible detention and deportation. In fact, 35% of undocumented immigrants have at least one U.S. citizen child under the age of 18.
For those children who are undocumented, there is also the danger of their own deportation. In 2019, ICE, which focuses on internal enforcement as opposed to the border, deported 143,000 immigrants (Gramlich, 2020). In 2020, the U.S. government deported a record number of 10,700 family units, defined as parents and children. This increase was partially due to a more collaboration between the United States and governments in Central America (Sacchetti, 2020). The realities of the dangers of deportations have impacted teachers as well. Many have felt increased stress due to the immigration environment and also often what they perceive as a lack of support for the immigrant community amongst their colleagues (Sanchez et al., 2018).
Theoretical Framework: Critical Teacher Education and LatCrit Theory
This paper is based in the broader theoretical framework of critical teacher education studies. Hill (2007) calls for this critical teacher education approach to counteract the intersection of neoliberalism with educational policy. Just as neoliberalism has taken over much of education, the relationship between neoliberalism and immigration detention are also quite profound (Altschuler, 2019). In the midst of this environment, Hill and Boxley (2007) argue that teacher educators can have a strong impact on the broader ideological foundations of the society, but it is insufficient if it only stays within the classroom. In this framework, educators are aware of the way that broader societal injustices affect the classroom and the lives of students. This relates to the work of McLaren and Farahmandpur (2001) who call for a “revolutionary citizenship” that “ventures beyond abstractions and platitudes and refuses to linger inactively in the ambit of the apologists.” (p. 363). They call for a focus that confronts neoliberalism and capitalism more broadly and calls for a truer, more equitable democracy.
Critical teacher education is also tied into the ideas of critical reflection (Howard, 2003), which has an aim of implementing a more culturally relevant pedagogy that also seeks to reverse oppressive realities that have defined the school environment. Bartolomé (2004) argues that teacher educators are central in the goals of producing this more reflective teacher as educators need to “become courageous in (the) commitment to defend subordinated student populations — even when it is easier not to take a stand — and equip them with critical transformative tools” (p. 120). Liston and Zeichner (1987) contend that teacher educators not only need to offer a more liberating practice in their own teaching and pedagogical training, but that they should also stress engagement in reform at the school level, particularly the need for greater democratization of school decisions, and finally at a societal level to confront broader inequalities. This societal level certainly encompasses areas of immigration, which have a direct impact on the lives of students and families.
More specifically, the ideas of LatCrit studies, particularly its intersection with critical teacher education and immigration, have relevance to this work. One aspect of this LatCrit perspective is a focus on counter-narratives that stand in opposition to the oppressive status quo (Solorzano & Yosso, 2001). This is seen in Vasquez’s (2018) scholarship as he details his experiences as a social studies teacher educator in seeking to show students how Latinx stories have been minimized or forgotten in U.S. History and how stating this to prospective teachers is, at times, met with opposition or deflection. This LatCrit framework was also used to examine the experience of Latinx students in a Texas High School. The researchers concluded that more subtle forms of racism, sometimes disguised as colorblindness, were detrimental to the experiences of the students (Cooper Stein et al., 2018). Calderon and Urrieta (2019) examine how even conceptions of Latinidad need to be problematized particularly by exploring how indigenous populations relate to the larger concepts of Latin culture. They argue that oftentimes Latinx identity is reduced to a concept of “mestizaje” (p. 233), which does not account for the diversity in the broader Latinx community nor give space for indigenous communities who have been the greatest victims of colonialism. In a similar vein, Cahuas (2019) calls for a greater integration of the works of black and Latinx scholars and pedagogical focus in Latinx studies as a whole. Though in this study the individuals that the students met with in the detention center were not from Latin America, the majority of immigrants that are in U.S. detention centers and the majority of immigrant students in the classroom, particularly in the Southeastern context, are from this background. This critical approach is also important as a large number of recent immigrants from Latin America are from indigenous communities, particularly from nations like Guatemala. This theory is also importance as the issue of immigration discrimination and race are deeply intertwined.
Literature Review
This work builds upon educational scholarship focused on the integration of immigration policy and education. Particular attention in this article is given to the intersection of immigration and the lives of children, teacher awareness, and the attitudes of teachers toward immigration and the rights of immigrant students. Turner and Mangual Figueroa (2019) call educators and scholars to work in this intersection. As they state,
This historical moment presents us with a grave ethical obligation to bring together our collective knowledge and to critically examine the frameworks we have been using, implicitly or explicitly, and our own roles in how the current status quo is perpetuated and maintained (Nader, 1972) while we also learn from, stand by, care for, and act with immigrant students and families and other minoritized people being harmed by the current regime (p. 555).
They highlight that though deportations rose dramatically under Obama, there is an even more acute crisis regarding immigration under the Trump administration. Lemke (2017) warns that the political polarization of current displacement policies can lead to teachers upholding problematic ideas and norms that do harm to immigrant students. She argues that there is a need for greater awareness among educators around these issues of immigration. Similarly, Rodriguez et al. (2020) call for a type of informed empathy that pairs a compassion that many teachers may have toward immigrants with a knowledge of the immigration policies, particularly those polices that cause restrictions for immigrant communities. Rodriguez and Monreal (2017) also argue that the discourses around immigration at the legislative level (in their case, a study of immigration policy in South Carolina) has a strong connection with the experiences of immigrant students by creating an environment where detrimental narratives are upheld.
Additionally, there is growing research on teachers’ awareness and attitudes toward immigrant students and immigration more broadly. McCorkle (2019) found a significant correlation between teachers’ attitudes toward immigrant students and broader attitudes toward immigration overall. There is also some evidence that classroom experiences with immigrant students can have an impact on attitudes. Though McCorkle (2018a) found no significant relationship between number of immigrant students in the classroom and attitudes toward immigration, there was a significant relationship with number of immigrant students and attitudes toward rights for immigrant students. Likewise, Byrnes et al. (1997) found that teachers had more inclusive attitudes toward linguistic diversity and linguistically diverse students if they had more experience with emergent bilingual students. Similarly, Youngs and Youngs (2001) found that there was a significant positive relationship between attitudes toward emergent bilingual students and teachers having lived and taught abroad or having attended foreign language classes or those related to multiculturalism. Rodriguez and McCorkle (2020) highlight the strong relationship between awareness of immigration policies and attitudes toward immigrant students particularly as it relates to the belief or rejection of false immigration narratives. Likewise, Cruz (2014) found that once teachers went through an immigration workshop they had significantly more positive attitudes toward immigration. Authors such as Rubinstein-Avila (2017) and Tarman and Gürel (2017) argue that awareness of the immigration system is of vital importance for educators.
This article also relates to the literature on children in detention and the pertinent implications for scholars from many areas, but for educational scholars in particular. This work is especially crucial in light of the child separation policies that have occurred under the Trump administration. Many child specialists warned about the consequences of these types of actions. Wood (2018) describes how the detention and separation policy “creates a perfect storm for attachment damage, toxic stress and trauma” (p. 5) that can have long term consequences on the child. They also warn that the U.S. family detention is not a better alternative and can cause serious problems for children as well. From a legal perspective, Todres and Villamizar Fink (2020) highlight how the child separation policies “echo and rise to the level of some of the harshest violations of human dignity in the age of human rights” (p. 427) and that this crisis highlights the need for a human-rights based education in the schools.
This research seeks to build upon the research of the importance of awareness of the immigration system and the possible relationship between teachers being exposed to the realities of the immigration system and more inclusive attitudes. This research is unique as it entails educators seeing the harsh realities of the immigration system first-hand in an area that has received less focus in the field of education-immigration detention.
Research Question
The broad research question focuses on how the experience of visiting the detention center affected the dispositions and perceptions of education students. This question had two sub-questions.
What was the evolution of students’ perspectives and awareness regarding immigration detention from their experiences on the trip?
How did the participants’ experiences relate to their role as teachers and educational advocates for broader social change?
Methods
The research covers the broader experience of the trip, but focuses primarily on the one pre-trip focus group with the students and then two smaller post-trip focus groups. Given the range of topics being discussed and the uniqueness of this particular area of research, a post-humanist analysis approach was used in which “constitutive elements fall apart, and the researcher’s goal is to explain the elements’ interactions, as well as the complex effects of those interactions on human life” (Jackson, 2013, p. 747). This post structuralist approach is also related to the interpretive description design (Thorne et al., 2004) that seeks to present a
“coherent conceptual description that taps thematic patterns and commonalities believed to characterize the phenomenon that is being studied and also accounts for the inevitable individual variations within them” (p. 4).
In this way, broader themes are highlighted while also leaving space for the unique perspectives of individual perspectives. The analysis and findings also sought to focus on the voices of the participants. This focus of analysis also relates to a more social justice approach toward research (Lyons et al., 2013). In an area such as educators’ experiences in detention centers, this methodological approach allows for the possibility of counter-narratives to emerge, which is central in the ideas of LatCrit work (Solorzano & Yosso, 2001). This approach also allows “a less hierarchical and more reciprocal, transparent framework” (Karnieli-Miller et al., 2009, p. 285) that is less a critique of the students’ perspectives but is rather an opportunity for the participants’ experiences to be highlighted in a more direct manner. However, simultaneously it is research that centers on “helping students examine the patterns in their lives in such a way as to discern the nearly-hidden structures that shape their own and others” (Lincoln, 1995, p. 92). As Solorzano and Yosso (2001) demonstrate by drawing on the work of Lincoln (1993), this methodology based in a LatCrit approach “challenges traditional methodologies” (p. 489) by focusing on research and analysis with the goal of large societal change and exposing systems of injustice. As Lyons et al. (2013) highlight, social-justice-based qualitative research has strong overlap between research and application. In this case, the approach toward the analysis is not merely positivist or objective nor does it only seek to explain a social experiment, but it rather seeks to delve into how the experiences of the students’ in the detention center relate to the larger injustice of immigration detention and the work that teacher educators can do in working for societal change.
Participants
There were eight participants in this study. All identify as female. Five of them are graduate students and three are undergraduate students. They all attend a mid-sized public university in the American Southeast. The majority were in their early to mid 20s with one teacher who was 30 and one who was a retired teacher in her early 60s. Seven of the students were white while one was an international student from Taiwan who was a former Mandarin teacher.
Four of the graduate students went on the trip as part of a graduate education course. These were students that I had in an educational policy course. Though immigration was not extensively discussed in that class before the trip, it was more broadly discussed in the educational advocacy course I had with them the previous semester. However, the trip related to the class as we were exploring the effect that broader policy issues had on education. The trip was part of the class, but students who were not able to make it were given an alternative assignment. The only ones not able to attend were those teaching full time. The other four students volunteered to participate. I had mentioned the opportunity in my undergraduate courses, and they had responded with interest. One of the students was my graduate assistant who was also interested in joining. It would be accurate to state that all of the students seem to have an interest in immigrant rights, so it was not necessarily a representative group of students from a predominantly white college in the American South. They also knew about my work in regard to advocacy for immigrant rights. They were therefore not necessarily neutral observers without prior dispositions toward these issues. However, despite their tendency toward more inclusive attitudes, there was still a level of unawareness about the system and the way it affects individuals.
The Pre-Trip Focus Group
Points of Clarification
The goals of the pre-trip focus group was to garner an understanding of the participants’ views of detention and how it related to their perspectives on justice in the United States overall as well as to address any questions they had. One of the students asked a question about the length of stay of detainees before they are deported. As she states, “What keeps them from not deporting them, like this month?” Another student responded that it could be due to the financial gain from prison labor, “Well, if you keep them longer, then less people will come because they won’t want to get into that.” She also linked it to possible deterrence. “If they’re seeing that other people are being held in like a place for two years, then why would you want to come and be held somewhere for two years, maybe?”
Another question that arose was whether the individuals held in detention were there primarily for criminal offenses or for merely immigration violations. A question was also asked about how the officials know where undocumented immigrants are from, and how they avoid inadvertently sending them to the wrong country.
Misconceptions About Immigration
When discussing some of the misconceptions that the public has about immigration, one student stated that many have “assumptions that they’re, like, just here basically, like, mooching off everybody who actually works. . .that they’re just, like, kind of freeloaders.” Later in the interview the point was highlighted that there is another caricature of the position of those who want more inclusive immigration policies,
Like, if you say that you are for immigration, immigrants coming into the country and getting asylum. . .if you say it that way, people are like. . . Democrats just want to have open borders, you don’t want any law of the land.
Another misconception that the students thought was prominent was the belief that our immigration system was more inclusive than it is. As one student stated in regard to the asylum system, “I think people think that they get granted (asylum seekes). When in reality we would know that’s not necessarily the case.” When questioned why they think that way, she responded, “Because it’s all part of the American Dream. We’re the policemen.” Another student added in ironically, “We’re all about freedom and making everybody else better.”
Justice and the United States
There was also a desire to understand how the students saw the U.S. government particularly as they were about to see the more draconian side of that government on the trip. Students were also asked about how they view the United States in terms of justice on a scale of 1 to 10. One student gave the U.S. a 4 and particularly addressed gaps in human rights. The student from Taiwan put a very high number of 8 or 9 stating that the U.S. had its problems but the “American education system, it’s a lot better in how they treat the laborers, how they treat the immigrants even though, like, it’s improving, but that’s a good topic for us. . .that’s, like, a reference for us, too.” Another student pointed out the hypocrisy of the United States stating,
“I feel like we’re always trying to, like, be the good, like, be looked at as the good guys. . .trying to do what’s right in other places and control everyone else but we’re committing a lot of criminal things in other places as well. And then when people try to criticize it, people are like, oh no, the US is always doing so good.”
There was another critique related to the inequality and economic mobility in the system. As the student stated, “social mobility, especially if we’re all in education and we’ve seen it’s not necessarily as strong as people perceive it to be.”
Restrictive Immigration
Regarding the actual restrictions on immigrants one student stated the perspective of the U.S. to immigrants is “I don’t care what the reason is, you’re just trying to get here, and we don’t like you. We don’t want you here.” However, she added from her perspective, “I think we need to look at what’s going on in these places (sending countries). What we’re doing in these places. . .And why they need help, instead of just turning them all away.”
Two students also mentioned their families experiences with immigration, one whose father was from Canada and another whose grandmother was from the Netherlands. They believed that they both had relatively easy paths coming into the country. The one student described this difference being due to the fact that “he’s a white man from Canada.” She also thought there was a difference in how individuals from a place like Europe are viewed who overstay their visa compared to those on the Southern border. As she added, “When people think of immigrants now, like, even me, you just see somebody from, like, a Hispanic country. . .You just automatically in your head, because that’s just how it’s constantly portrayed.”
The pre-interviews appeared to demonstrate a base level of understanding about the immigration system and some of the stereotypes surrounding immigration. There was also a realization of some of the inequities in the immigration system based upon issues like race and economic status. In regard to the view of the United States in relation to justice, there was more of an ambivalent answer with some notions of the U.S. being just but with some serious caveats. There also appeared to be a broadly inclusive attitude toward immigrants, but it appeared to be a little more from a distant and abstract manner.
Trip to the Detention Center
The actual trip to the detention center took place in February 2020. We left on a Sunday afternoon and drove about 4 hours to Americus, Georgia and stayed at Koinonia Farms, which is a type of radical nonviolent communal setting whose former leadership gave birth to Habitat for Humanity (2020). All the rooms are named after different activist figures like Oscar Romero and Dorothy Day. In some ways the setting was ironic as we ventured into the oppressive environment of Lumpkin and Stewart Detention Center the next day. Before we entered Lumpkin, we visited Plains, Georgia, the home of Jimmy Carter, which is less than 30 minutes from Lumpkin. We stopped in the shop with memorabilia that was all dedicated to Carter and his work. In the polarized American setting today, it is strange to think that Carter came from this rural Georgia setting and how his message of human rights conflicted with the environment we were about to enter. We then drove the 30 minutes to the small town of Lumpkin. Lumpkin only has a population of about 1,300 with about 33,000 in the entire county (United States Census Bureau, 2019; World Population Review, 2020). The county was founded in 1832 after an expansion of white settlers led to the forced removal of the Cherokee from the land (Lumpkin County Historical Society, n.d.). The largest employer in the area is the Stewart Detention Center. It is a desperately poor town in a forgotten area of Georgia.
We worked with an organization called El Refugio, which was founded out of Atlanta in 2008 (El Refugio, 2020). They seek to provide direct assistance to detainees’ families by providing a place to stay while they are visiting Lumpkin while also seeking to give emotional support to detainees. Additionally, they host groups from different colleges and religious organizations so the American public they can see firsthand what is occurring in immigration detention. They hope by exposing individuals to the system, they can help advocate for more systematic changes. Before we actually entered the detention center, we were given a little overview of the situation by one of the members of El Refugio. The coordinator talked about what would happen when we arrived there and what we should find out about the inmates including any mistreatment that was occurring. He also gave a broad overview of the recent changes in the immigration system. Each pair of students was also given a card with information on one detainee that they were to talk to for an hour. A brief background was given of each detainee if it was available. Since none of the students were fluent Spanish speakers, no one talked to anyone from Latin America, even though this is the majority of the population at the detention center. Given that one of the students was from Taiwan, she was able to talk with a man from China. The other students were able to talk to English speakers, one from Nigeria and one from Mongolia (who had grown up in the United States).
We stayed for about 30 minutes in the waiting center when the students were directed back. They had to go through security to the back to an area where they could talk to the individuals through the glass with an old phone. After the conversations, we drove back to the El Refugio house where we had a debriefing and the students were asked to write down any details before they forgot. At the lunch and the ride back to the university we had further informal conversations as the students processed the experience.
Post Trip Focus Groups
In the post trip focus groups, several different realities became apparent, but many surrounded the ideas of greater awareness particularly around the areas of the dehumanization of immigrants, the more complicated and often bipartisan structural injustices, and the ideas of American privilege, and the roles that race and gender serve in immigration detention. In addition, part of the discussion centered around the intersection of immigration policy and education.
Dehumanization of Immigrants
Within 2 weeks of the trip, two post-trip focus groups were conducted with the students. There were many concepts that came out of the emotional experiences. One of the most profound was the dehumanization of the detainees. As one student stated, “you don’t even just refer to them as immigrants. It’s like, you’re an immigrant, you’re an illegal alien. . . . It’s just like something other than like a human being.” Another participant stated that “It’s by design, you know, when you’re saying dehumanizing. It’s dehumanizing on purpose. And that’s the part that I have the hardest time with because there’s a cruelty in that.” Another point was made in a similar vein about the fragility of the immigrant experience. As the student stated, when an individual, “has a green card and then they lose it, like it does seem, sometimes like how fragile things are like one misstep, and then you’re treated like less than human.”
This dehumanization was also related to a theme of how we see foreigners as different. As one student stated,
“If Americans were in detention centers, like in different countries, we would lose our mind if there was an American, . . . Like, imagine if people went to like North Korea or something like they got locked up right there. . . .just how frickin pissed off people would be.”
Another student stated that from her perspective the dehumanization was in some aspects worse than even the Japanese internment. As she stated, “Even (in) the Japanese internment camps, they got to live as families.” She clarifies that “it was horrible what our country did to them, but I think that what we’re doing to people trying to come in is much more dehumanizing and cruel than what we did to the Japanese.” This dehumanization was also discussed in terms of international law. As she states, “I mean, if you look at the UN’s definition of refugee. . . the Stewart Detention Center is in violation of international laws, if asylum seekers are identified as refugees.”
This dehumanization was also related to the actual facilities of the detention center as individuals could not even see visitors face to face, but rather through thick plexiglass and through an old phone. As a student stated, “they’re held like they’re criminals, but they aren’t criminals. . . why couldn’t you be in the same room as them?” The student from Taiwan somewhat joked but with a sense of concern that she did not know if she could end up there 1 day if she made a mistake. The sense of the vulnerability and expendability of the lives of foreigners was quite plain and relates closely to the ideas of the dehumanization of those from developing nations that critical border and migration theories address.
Broader Structural Injustices
Another issue the students highlighted was the deep structural injustice of the immigrant detention center that extended beyond just the Trump administration. Some of this came from the actual conversations with the detainees, but it was also due to the discussions that they had with one of the leaders of El Refugio about the broader history and current situation surrounding immigration detention. As one student stated regarding the pass that Obama seemed to be given on immigration,
When Trump did all this stuff, with cages and all that, like, with families and how bad deportations have been-it’s crazy how silenced it was under Obama, and people would come out and be like, ‘well, Obama, it wasn’t as bad under him or whatever.’
Another point was that the broader system itself was more influential in the individual cases of the detainees than who the president was. As a student stated regarding the individual she talked with, “he kind of hinted that he didn’t care who was in office because the president’s not going to come down and be like, okay, you can stay, you can’t. . .the judge is going to do that.” She added “he cared more about, like, local government in a way.” Another aspect that was mentioned was that the contracts with ICE were already in place so even if there was a new president (like Bernie Sanders who was leading the Democratic primary at the time), the private prison industry would still receive their funds.
The Immigration Process
The students also discussed aspects they learned from the experience. One aspect related to the costs of the system. As one student stated, she thought more people would be outraged to know how tax money is being spent, “I think if the people were more aware of where it is, regardless of your political party, if you know that your tax money is being used to just kind of indefinitely hold people.” Another student stated,
“I think for me, it was just like awareness. I don’t think I realized that people who were being detained for immigration, a lot of times were seeking asylum. . . . So many people did seek asylum, so called, like, the legal way and then were detained for that too.”
Another aspect that was mentioned was, “how easy it is for somebody to get detained, I obviously knew that we were doing things like that in our country, but not to that extent.”
There was also a surprise at the range of counties the asylum seekers were from, not just from Latin America. This relates to the misconception highlighted in the pre-trip interviews with the portrayal of all immigrants as being from Latin America.
American Privilege
The idea of what Bregman (2016) argues is the greatest privilege, being born in the industrialized world, was also seen in the students’ reflections. As stated previously, one of the students mentioned how the same treatment of an American citizen in another country would not be accepted and would be seen as reprehensible. There was also a recognition of what some would define as the lottery of birth (Brown, 2018). As one student remarked, “They didn’t choose to be born in Guatemala or have all these issues in their countries.” This relates to the ideas of Carens (1987) who argued that restrictive immigration is a human rights violation precisely due to the fact of the inability to choose the place of one’s birth.
As the student stated in regard to the privilege of those from a country like the United States compared to those who are in the detention center,
Think about the privilege that you have to be born here. Like, you’re not running, like, these asylum seekers are obviously not feeling safe in their own country. So they have to find somewhere new. And then once they get here, it’s like they’re back to square one. So even somebody like the guy. . .was like ‘I’d rather be here than be back in my home country.’
Racial and Gender Issues
Particular focus was also placed upon the individuals working in the detention center, the majority who come from poorer communities in the Lumpkin area and are predominantly from working-class African-American communities. As one student stated in regard to the damaging cycle that this creates, the detention center is “kind of just like in the middle of nowhere and the people they. . . all have to, like, feed into the system because that’s the only job opportunities that they have.” However, she added, “but at the same time, like, it’s just like this whole cycle that just is nonstop playing into itself.” Another student noted that perhaps it was intentional that it was primarily women at the front desk who were responsible for visitors. As the student stated, “I thought it was a little bit interesting that the people that brought us in the reception area were women. . . because it’s an all male facility.” She added, “I just wonder was that on purpose to kind of soften (the environment).” This relates to the reality of how marginalized groups are often co-opted to buttress unjust systems of oppression and neoliberalism (Bode, 2017; Vasquez Heilig, 2014). This dynamic can be seen clearly in the film Immigration Nation as ICE officials talk about their desire for a more diverse workforce (Clusiau & Schwarz, 2020) while ignoring the way their policies marginalize communities of color.
Links to Education
The research also focused on how this trip related to the larger issue of education. As one student stated particularly in regard to how history is taught, “this part is missing in history classes where you just don’t talk about the severity of different situations. . .I feel like just a lot of our history is so whitewashed.” Another student mentioned how focusing on issues of immigration is so elemental as it relates to global citizenship in the face of xenophobic media narratives. As she stated,
I think that students today have to learn to be a global citizen. . .And for me, my experience with the immigrants coming to Taiwan, we don’t have any education about that. What we learn, it’s from the TV or the news, which all have negative comments about them, and then I think that’s a really bad way to learn about those people.
Another student discussed the importance creating curricular choices that center on this issue of immigration. As the student stated, there is an importance of creating a curriculum “that includes the stories of different people who are at Stewart or in different detention centers. . .Like we’re saying, the face of the immigrant is not what we think it is.” As another student highlighted, often cultural education merely focuses on aspects like making a food from a certain county without delving into these deeper issues.
One student mentioned the relationship to education in terms of the lives of students and parents who are separated due to immigration enforcement. As she stated, “I also think about children’s parents who is being detained in the detention center. And then I think it’s really upsetting to know that they don’t know when or if their family is coming back to them. I think that’s very sad.”
Discussion and Implications
Teachers as Advocates
The reflections from the students reveal both a greater understanding of the immigration system and immigration detention while also a deeper sense of empathy for those that have been caught in the system. This greater focus on empathy is of particular importance for these future educators in numerous ways. For one, it allows educators to gain a greater understanding of what some immigrant students may be experiencing in their classroom. It also provides them the opportunity to become a source of information for other educators in their schools and communities who may be unaware of these issues. However, most importantly, it may allow them to take the next step and actually become involved in the broader advocacy and the work that Ladson-Billings (2008) refers to in becoming a truly culturally relevant teacher, where teachers work not only in transforming their own classroom but the larger society. This likewise relates to the ideas of democratic education (Parker, 2005) as teachers not only provide space for their students’ perspectives to be heard, but also entrench themselves in the larger movement for societal change given the relationship that this has to their own classrooms as the communal and individual action cannot be separated. Button (2019) focuses on how individual teachers can stand up for rights for immigrant students, particularly by being aware of ICE activity and knowing their rights as educators as they seek to protect their immigrant students.
Power of Real-Life Experiences and Story
This research also highlights the importance of story and experience in the greater push for educational and societal justice. The students could have just watched a film or read a book about these issues, and it may have had a certain, limited effect. However, the emotional tie that a real-life experience presents may have been lost. There may have been less chance for inward reflection as well, particularly as it related to areas of privilege, or in the case of the student of Taiwan, the level of vulnerability it made her feel despite her legal status. There were also many small details and aspects that would be overlooked when merely receiving information in a workshop or video, aspects like how the town and environment feed into the perpetuation of the system, the significance of all women working at the front desk of the center, or the difficulties of talking to individuals with the restrictive visitation policies. In a time where stories and videos are at student’s fingertips, it may be tempting to limit experiences related to societal injustice or change to a video, lecture, or discussion. Though these are an important first step, they will not have nearly the transformative experience that real-life engagement with the realities of social injustice will (McCorkle, 2018a).
As teachers, the participants also highlighted the themes of informing individuals about the immigration system, forming a curriculum that highlights the voices of those that have been marginalized, and undermining false narratives that individuals may receive regarding immigration. All these are important themes not only in the social studies curriculum but throughout the larger curriculum. As McCorkle (2018b) highlights in regard to xenophobia in the classroom, teachers may be one of the few sources where false immigration narratives are challenged. The centering of the stories of immigrants also falls strongly into the idea of counternarratives, which are prominent in the LatCrit work. Instead of allowing politicians and the government apparatus to write the stories of detention and immigration, teachers can highlight the voices of real individuals who have been victimized by an unjust system.
Relation to Teacher Education
More broadly in regard to education, these are topics and social realities that relate strongly to education and teacher education particularly as immigrant students’ parents are likely to be caught up in this horrific system. It also relates to how students view social issues and the role of the United States in the world more broadly. Examining issues like immigration detention may help give prospective teachers a more realistic view of the United States and lower levels of nationalism. In this way, while social studies teacher education may seem like the ideal place to explore these issues, it is vital for students in other subject areas to engage with these issues as well particularly due to the fact that there tends to be more restrictive attitudes toward immigration among teachers in certain fields, particularly physical education, math, and science (Author, 2018a).
It is also vital, particularly in the field of social studies, for teachers to actually discuss issues of modern immigration in more depth. This focus is an area that teacher educators can cultivate in their programs. Author and Author (2020) examined the middle school social studies standards and textbooks of their Southern state and found that there was an overall low focus on modern immigration. When it was focused on, it was often framed around ideas of controversy and illegality, which was even conflated with issues like the drug trade. In contrast, historic immigration was treated as more natural. Dabach et al. (2018) argue that it is essential that we move the discussions of immigration away from one of debatable controversy to one of justice and human rights.
In order to relate to the needs of immigrant students and children of immigrants, teacher educators also need to stress the importance of family and teacher interactions even when there may be language barriers present. Ratcliff and Hunt (2009) highlight how parent-teacher relationships often face significant barriers, and part of this issue can be resolved by greater focus on cultivating these relationships in teacher education programs. The focus on these relationships “must be varied, comprehensive, and integrated” throughout the programs (p. 504). Ramirez (2003) examines the experiences of a group of families from Latin America descent who felt frustration from the lack of quality interaction with their school and often felt that the teachers were not aware of the cultural realities of their families. As he states, “parents pled with me to teach my preservice teachers just to care about their students and their students’ families” (p. 105). In order for there to be a vibrant environment between immigrant students and their teachers, one that can foster a relationship where teachers can truly meet the often specific and distressing needs of their students, teacher education programs have to stress proper and effective ways to cultivate teacher outreach to immigrant families.
Teacher educators also need to continually stress these themes of immigration and immigrant rights, not only when it is popular or politically expedient to do so, but also when it may not be central in the national headlines. As this research points out, many of the immigration injustices began before Trump (and will likely continue long after him). Teacher educators need to make the focus on immigrant rights a larger theme that is foundational in the curriculum, not only when there is a more blatantly xenophobic leader like Trump, but also when it is at the ever-present structural level where it is often easier to ignore.
Grappling With the Dehumanization
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, this research centers on the idea that the detainees are not just treated in a discriminatory fashion but are utterly dehumanized. The historical example that one of the students gave of Japanese internment is particularly relevant as it shows the recycling of this dehumanization perhaps in even more draconian ways. Though few will use the exact language of dehumanization that might have defined fascist governments of the past, the practices and the disregard for basic decency shows this dehumanization. If we truly believed these immigrants and asylum seekers are humans with equal dignity and worth, the modern immigration apparatus could not continue to function in the way it does.
Conclusion
The trip to the detention center highlights the intersection of immigration policy, educational research, and the K-12 classroom. For educators and future educators, a true societal understanding, particularly of societal injustices, is essential. Simply knowing ideas and mastering skills is not sufficient. A critical understanding of and engagement with the society is necessary and is a foundation that can be laid in teacher education programs. As this awareness and connection to societal injustices is garnered in educators, they have a chance to become greater advocates in the educational system and the larger society (Rodriguez et al., 2020). As with many issues of change in the society, educators will be an essential element in leading the change in a draconian and profit-drive immigration system that dehumanizes immigrants, wreaks havoc on our social systems, and detracts from the values of justice we claim.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: It was Innovative Liberal Arts and Sciences Small Grant-College of Charleston.
