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Besides rigorous enforcement tucked behind a thin veil of security prerogatives, what have we had for an immigration policy?  What objectives has it it met? Is it tailored to labor needs? Is it intended to optimize economic growth by perpetuating moderate demographic expansion? Does it preserve our identity as the world’s beacon of human and individual rights? Does it strengthen communities? Or does its design imply that immigration comes at such great cost to our society, that the privilege of entry is to be bestowed with extreme parsimony upon better applicants for sainthood than any of us, and, seasonally, upon those who pick our fruit? (from Passaic, by Daniel Kunstler)

My Work:

Passaic: The True Story of One Man's Journey Through American Immigration, Detention and Deportation

 

Passaic takes its title from Passaic County Jail in Paterson, NJ. In the early years of our nascent millenium, Passaic operated as an immigrant detention facility under contract with the Federal government. Its standards of custody were crude and punitive by design, contrary to the law's premise that immigration detention is an administrative safeguard, not a correctional measure.

 

"Is this the best way we can grow our big orchards? Is this the best way we can grow our good fruit? To fall like dry leaves to rot on my topsoil. And be called by no name except 

deportees?"  (Woody Guthrie)

Photo by Matthew Naythons

Cover art by Kathryn Jacobi

From Tamalpais Press

 

Or ask your local bookseller!

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