Episode Details

“The first and crucial step to closing a camp is being against the camp. Not a camp, not that camp, not a newly proposed camp or this particularly atrocious camp. But against camp as concept, against camp as practice—against all camps. Against locking people up because of where they were born or where they are.”

This is the thesis of How to Close a Camp: Dispatches from the Fight Against Immigrant Detention by John Washington. Washington is a longtime reporter on the border and immigration detention, and he joined us to discuss what we can learn from the organizers and activists who’ve been leading the fight against America’s expanding network of immigration camps—and why these mechanisms for indefinite detention without the benefit of due process or trial by jury are obviously the infrastructure of authoritarianism.

Check out John’s book: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/2880-how-to-close-a-camp

And here’s Aaron’s review of the book for The New Republic: https://newrepublic.com/article/213448/closing-detention-center-rarely-single-strike-it-siege