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Tapestries: Interwoven voices of local and global identities

Abstract

This paper examines how the concept of economic efficiency is utilized by the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) through three frameworks, to excuse human rights violations in the name of a productive and efficient deportation process. The first framework used is a discussion of how economic efficiency is positively coded and used in everyday life and as a means for state control. Efficiency and state control inform my second and third analyses of how the combination of ICE with local police forces and unconventional means of detainment aligns with a capitalist mentality that perpetuates a free market profit maximization while sacrificing human rights and safety. The conclusion of this paper states that the danger of an efficient deportation regime perpetuates ideas of detainment and deportation existing within a strict binary, and one that fails to recognize the increasingly privatized and violent process immigrants are subject to. By abolishing ICE and conceptions of human worth contingent on citizenship status, we can begin to remedy a system that solely functions for state control and profit.

Author Biography

Suzanna Jack (she/her/hers) is a graduating senior at Macalester College from Brookline, Massachusetts. She will be graduating with an American Studies major and minors in Music and Geography. Her research and interests are focused around Urban Studies with a concentration on placemaking and public memorials, public history, and late 19th century constructions of nationalism in the United States. She holds unprecedented gratitude for her professors, family, friends, fellow majors, and every single person who has encouraged her as a thinker, change maker, and coffee drinker.

Comments

Many thanks to Dave and Jacki for their endless patience in helping us compile and complete Tapestries. This couldn't have been done without them and we are so thankful!

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