Gender-based violence in immigration detention centers

Based on religious scholarship of “micropractice,” I demonstrate how immigration detention work produces violence. Through examination of incidents of gender-based violence in immigration detention contexts across history–from ships moored off the California coast to modern private prisons–I show how workplace micropractices culminate into incidents of gender-based violence.  Through methods of control, surveillance, and humiliation, those involved within the immigration system learn how to treat immigrants that they encounter; if you spend every workday demeaning immigrants, what is one more personal act of degradation? I propose that in order to end gender-based violence within the immigration system, and the violence of the immigration detention system itself, we must look not just at the religious ideologies that support xenophobia, but also the ritual practices that sustain it.