*The Body Ritual among the Nacirema*

The Body Ritual Among the Nacirema (Miner 1956) is an anthropological essay, a culture-free description of a man, a Nacirema, which is American spelled backwards. He is standing at the bathroom sink, looking at himself in the mirror while shaving. An observer from another time and place mistakes the mirrored medicine cabinet for a magical box in which many charms and potions are kept, and before which the man chants and sways every morning.

Before joining the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to serve as Senior Advisor to DHS Secretary Napolitano on Detention and Removal, I was Warden of a city jail, then Commissioner of two city and two state correctional systems. As I toured the first of many immigration detention facilities operated on behalf of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), I walked through it as would a newly admitted detainee become acquainted with her place of confinement, starting at the sallyport, then Intake, through the medical area, to the housing units, a combination of 50-bed cellblocks and 100 bunks dormitories in which people were packed, nose to toes, under conditions as severe and secure as high-custody correctional facilities, locked-in as many as 23 h every day. I moved through segregation housing, still operating as it had when it was a prison, then food services, the laundry, law library, visitation, and commissary, onto the recreation yard. This detention center looked like a correctional facility in almost every respect and, initially, appeared to operate as one would (Goffman 1961) and, make no mistake, that would not be a good thing. Detainees surrendered all their personal property at admission along with any semblance of their personal identities; in exchange, each was issued a

**Citation:** Schriro, Dora. 2021. On the Other Side of the Looking Glass: COVID-19 Care in Immigration Detention. *Social Sciences* 10: 353. https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci 10100353

Academic Editor: Robert Koulish

Received: 31 July 2021 Accepted: 17 September 2021 Published: 23 September 2021

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photo ID with an "Alien Number" by which they would now be known. After a cursory assessment of their immigration and criminal history (when there was any) they exchanged their street clothes for a couple of jumpsuits in one of several colors associated with their custody classification—in my opinion, ill-advised in any settings—and the first departure from correctional practices that I noted that day—blue uniforms for low security, orange uniforms for medium security, and red uniforms for maximum security—and then were assigned to housing units with others in same custody classification.

On the recreation yard, the differences were more pronounced. A large group of men, all of them wearing red unforms, supposedly to warn others of their violent nature, were supervised by only one detention officer. Some of them were playing a game of horseshoes, tossing real horseshoes around sharpened metal stakes that had been pounded into the ground, as others stood around them and watched. A correctional facility would never release any number of truly dangerous inmates together onto a recreation yard, certainly not a yard enclosed in just a six-foot chain link fence and the one officer in the area, and under no circumstances with heavy metal objects at hand that could—and likely would—be used as weapons if they were violent. When it was time to go back indoors, there was no inventory of the equipment or search of the detainees for contraband. The officer simply escorted them back to their housing unit, through the main corridor where there were a lot of detainees in blue and orange jumpsuits—without incident. The people who ICE has continually characterized as the "worst of the worst," and not trustworthy of being assigned to open housing, and certainly not community supervision under any circumstances, had played by the rules, literally. In fact, most detainees always do.

The vast majority of the people in ICE's custody are contributing members of intact, extended families, with job skills, employment histories, and community ties. They do not want any trouble, only the opportunity to be heard and hopefully, secure relief. Unfortunately, ICE policy and practice is a self-fulfilling prophesy. When the governmen<sup>t</sup> locks up people who are pursuing civil remedies through the immigration court in jails and prisons, dressed in jumpsuits with their movement monitored moment to moment by uniformed guards, or assigns them to community supervision with an electronic monitoring device tethered to their ankle, we conclude they must be criminals. Why else would the government treat them as such? If ICE were to house migrants on college campuses or in hostels, rectories, training centers and worksites, and similar settings, dressed in street clothes, and had them check in periodically with a coach or an advisor, should any of these provisions actually be warranted, our opinion of them would be as different as the treatment they receive. ICE has never assessed risk correctly or responded proportionately, and despite its unfounded exaggerations as to detainees' dangerousness, many had never been convicted of a crime before they were detained, cause no trouble during their detention, and do not engage in criminal activities of any kind after their release (Schriro 2009).

ICE's oversight and operation of immigration detention is reminiscent of the narrator who misinterpreted the Nacirema's moves and motives as he went about his morning rituals. ICE goes through many of the motions associated with criminal incarceration without an apparent understanding or appreciation of the substantive differences between detainees and inmates, and immigration enforcement's distinctly different role and responsibilities for *civilly* detained individuals in its custody—especially those at heightened risk of serious illness, life-altering complications, and death from COVID-19 during the pandemic. ICE's criminalization of the immigrant deprives all the people in its custody of their rights under international and federal law and absolves Immigration Enforcement of its responsibilities to the detained (Bowling and Westenra 2018).
