**1. Introduction**

The pandemic has been a time of crisis, a crisis of greater magnitude than most of us have ever experienced. In such times, people tend to seek stability and order to escape the chaos brought on by crises, turning to institutions of social control for a sense of normalcy and security, which can strengthen such institutions (Berger 2009; Olmo 1990). In the era of COVID-19, however, the precariousness and vulnerability brought on by the pandemic and people's reactions to it potentially destabilized institutions of social control. Indeed, conditions within places where people live and work together indoors, such as detention facilities,<sup>1</sup> accelerate the spread of the virus (Hooks and Libal 2020). Although immigration detention has long been the subject of scholarly and activist criticism (e.g., see Golash-Boza 2016; Kirkham 2012; Sullivan 2010), the devastating effects of the pandemic have prompted new and more urgen<sup>t</sup> condemnations of the immigration detention industry and its practices. Meanwhile, the Movement for Black Lives (M4BL) has challenged the foundation of the criminal justice system, calling for transformative cultural and community

**Citation:** Liao, Wenjie, Kim Ebert, Joshua R. Hummel, and Emily P. Estrada. 2021. The House Is on Fire but We Kept the Burglars Out: Racial Apathy and White Ignorance in Pandemic-Era Immigration Detention. *Social Sciences* 10: 358. https:// doi.org/10.3390/socsci10100358

Academic Editor: Robert E. Koulish

Received: 28 July 2021 Accepted: 18 September 2021 Published: 27 September 2021

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**Copyright:** © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/).

changes that would involve the disbanding of police and defunding of prisons (Bell 2016; Carruthers 2018; M4BL 2019). Accordingly, the legitimacy of the immigration detention industry, which is embedded in the criminal justice system, has likely deteriorated further.

The pandemic and the corresponding condemnation of the industry, in addition to M4BL's compelling criticisms of the criminal justice system, have created an opportunity for immigrant advocates to call for radical, transformative change. We might expect the current environment to inspire the ACLU, for example, to advocate for changes such as "abolishing ICE" and ending immigration detention. We also might expect this context to prompt industry stakeholders to utilize explicitly racist and nativist narratives that pathologize migrant bodies, characterizing them as diseased, in order to rationalize enforcement, detention, and deportation. After all, migrants have historically been a convenient target for such discourse (Li and Nicholson 2021; Markel and Stern 1999). However, we know relatively little about the effects of the pandemic on not only immigrant advocacy but also the reactions of the immigration detention industry. Specifically, a dearth of research examines the apparent decline in the industry's legitimacy, the challenges from advocacy groups, and the responses of industry stakeholders. This gap is significant because the legitimacy or lack thereof of immigration detention has implications for the institution's future and the fates of thousands of migrants. Additionally, the discursive politics of immigration control, including immigration detention, is embedded in the broader immigration politics that inform ideologies and practices that affect all migrants and their communities far beyond the walls of detention facilities.

To address this gap, we qualitatively analyzed an original data set of primary content of over 700 public documents released in 2020 by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the private prison industry, including CoreCivic and the GEO Group, Inc. (hereafter, GEO), and the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Using a critical race theory lens (Bracey 2015; Watkins Liu 2018), we examined what these groups say and what they do not say, considering that omissions and oversights could be equally as important as what is said. Given the white supremacist history of immigration policy (Glenn 2015; Golash-Boza et al. 2019), continued racist practices at every stage and level of immigration control and the criminal justice system more broadly (Alexander 2012; Aranda and Vaquera 2015; Armenta 2017; Arriaga et al. 2020), and overrepresentation of Black and Brown men in lockup<sup>2</sup> and deportation numbers (Golash-Boza 2016; Golash-Boza and Hondagneu-Sotelo 2013; Zarrugh 2020), it is telling if these groups fail to mention race in the immigration detention industry.

We found that the ACLU continues to criticize practices within immigration detention during the pandemic, but it does so within the confines of its pre-pandemic criticisms. Industry stakeholders also relied on pre-pandemic narratives. They are outwardly indifferent towards the pandemic crisis and relatively silent about their role in exacerbating the spread of the virus within detention facilities and the surrounding communities. Private prison companies continued to characterize themselves as ordinary service-providing businesses, bemoaning the financial losses due to the pandemic, thus demonstrating not only apathy but also insensitivity and recklessness towards individuals in detention facilities and to all adversely affected by the pandemic. Moreover, ICE not only appears unconcerned about the plight of at-risk and infected individuals in detention, but it has also manufactured an alternative storyline with a new enemy: "COVID fraud." In directing its efforts towards "Operation Stolen Promise," ICE overlooks its actions in enforcement, detainment, and deportation that amplified the deadly effects of the pandemic and emphasizes its role as protector of law and order of the "Homeland," demonstrating a remarkably irresponsible and cruel position. ICE ignores the pandemic spreading across the country like a wildfire and instead chooses to focus on those "stealing our promises."

These findings further our understanding of the discursive environment of U.S. immigration politics and offer critical insights into the processes of maintaining and challenging the status quo in the context of crises. They inform existing work on the racialization of migrants within immigration control in two meaningful respects. First, the seemingly

contradictory narratives presented by the critics and enforcers of immigration detention during the pandemic did not effectively loosen the foundation of the institution. Altogether, this collection of claims contributes to *racial apathy* (Forman and Lewis 2006). The conversation remains largely disengaged with the interlocking systems of exclusion and exploitation underlying migrant suffering, thus minimizing the racism faced by migrants and reinforcing color blindness. Second, the storylines of the immigration detention industry contribute not only to racial apathy but to *white ignorance* as well (Mills 2007; Mueller 2020). This is evident in aspects of their accounts, including how they aggressively disregard the effects of the pandemic in detention and unmistakably overlook their role in spreading the virus. In the context of not only the pandemic but also Black movements that are effectively centering racial oppression on the global stage and promoting the dissolution and defunding of multiple aspects of the criminal justice system, ICE and private prison companies are so divorced from reality their obliviousness appears willful, aggressive, and militant.

### **2. Background: Immigration Detention in the Pandemic**

COVID-19, caused by the novel, severe, acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), was first reported in December 2019 in Hubei Province, China. Since then, the World Health Organization has declared it a pandemic (WHO 2021). As of September 2021, over 200 million people globally have contracted the disease that led to more than 4.5 million deaths. The U.S. alone has totaled more than 40 million cases and over 500,000 deaths (Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center 2021).

As an industrialized country with unparalleled clinical and research capacity, the exceptionally high rates of COVID-19 in the U.S. are largely due to the federal government's failure in forming and executing effective policies in response to the pandemic (Carter and May 2020; Haffajee and Mello 2020). Among other things, the poor response to COVID-19 was a symptom of a medical system that prioritizes profits and reinforces health inequity (Carter and May 2020; Okonkwo et al. 2020).

For a multitude of reasons, migrants in detention are among the groups disproportionately impacted by the virus. Above all, institutionalized populations, such as those living in orphanages, nursing homes, and custodial settings, constitute some of the most vulnerable groups to infectious diseases as they live in close quarters with limited mobility (Barnett and Grabowski 2020; Marouf 2021; Wang et al. 2020). Their frequent interaction with staff members also increases the chance of cross-infection (Barnett and Grabowski 2020). Meanwhile, overcrowding, poor ventilation, rudimentary healthcare, lack of basic hygiene, and insufficient testing in prisons, jails, and immigration detention centers further exacerbate the danger of contagious diseases (Arriaga et al. 2020; Franco-Paredes et al. 2020; Keller and Wagner 2020). Such damning conditions, combined with the already elevated risk for a variety of diseases among migrant detainees due to existing health disparities (Meyer et al. 2020), have led to exceptionally high rates of COVID-19 in immigration detention centers (UCLA Law n.d.). The pandemic persists as we write. On one hand, the introduction of effective vaccines encourages cautious optimism. On the other hand, unequal access to vaccines and treatments both globally and domestically is accompanied by reports of outbreaks among the hardest hit and least protected populations, including migrants in detention. As of early September 2021, ICE reported that 27,149 detainees have tested positive for COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic and that nine people have died while in ICE custody (ICE Staff 2020c). However, researchers criticize these numbers, arguing ICE is severely underreporting the spread of the pandemic in its facilities. They estimate that the number of people in lockup who have contracted the virus is up to 15 times higher than what ICE has reported (Smart et al. 2021). Predictive models sugges<sup>t</sup> that the vast majority of detainees will contract the disease even under the most optimistic scenario (Irvine et al. 2020).

Furthermore, immigrant detention in the pandemic presents a threat not only to migrant detainees but also to public health in general. Research indicates that prison staff also experience substantially higher COVID-19 case prevalence than the U.S. population overall (Ward et al. 2021) as they share "an environment known to amplify, accelerate, and act as a reservoir for outbreaks of respiratory diseases" with the prison inmates (Montoya-Barthelemy et al. 2020, p. 888). As staff members commute between work and home, carrying the virus into the communities where they live (Keller and Wagner 2020; Kinner et al. 2020), the local healthcare systems could have been or may still be overwhelmed as new variants spread, as most ICE detention facilities are often located in small, isolated towns (Eason 2017) with limited medical resources (Keller and Wagner 2020). Additionally, the frequent transfer of detainees among facilities risks transmitting the disease across different communities (Keller and Wagner 2020; Meyer et al. 2020).

Alerted by the rapid spread of COVID-19 among ICE detainees and detention facility staff, public health experts called for the release of most if not all ICE detainees to minimize the risk of exacerbating the pandemic (Lopez et al. 2021). While claiming to heed these suggestions, ICE continued its enforcement efforts throughout the pandemic and failed to adhere to COVID-19 safety guidelines (Dyer 2021; Miller et al. 2020). Given the record level of immigration detention under the Trump administration (Cho et al. 2020), ICE's (in)action during COVID-19 poses a tremendous risk to both the detainees and public health. Meanwhile, ICE also continued to deport migrants (e.g., ICE Staff 2020a), many from COVID-infested facilities and some diagnosed with the disease, demonstrating that the U.S. and its agencies are actively and knowingly spreading the virus globally (Miller et al. 2020; Montes 2020).

ICE's failure in addressing the COVID-19 crisis has not gone unnoticed. In addition to criticism from immigrant rights advocates such as the ACLU (e.g., see Cho 2020a), mainstream media have also covered the disastrous impacts of ICE's insufficient response to the pandemic both domestically (e.g., Hackman 2020; La Gorce 2020) and globally (e.g., Keller and Wagner 2020; Montes 2020). For instance, in April 2021, the *New York Times* (Niu et al. 2021) published a thorough account of ICE's mishandling of COVID-19 that ended with a call to release more detainees. Although immigration detention has long been the subject of scholarly and activist criticism (see Ebert et al. 2020 and references therein), the current pandemic appears to have provided a new entry point to expose the cruelty of the industry and to challenge its legitimacy. We therefore ask: Have critics of immigration detention taken advantage of this opening to expose and further delegitimize this practice? How has the immigration detention industry responded to its critics and the crisis?
