Book Review: Disappearing rooms: The hidden theaters of immigration law by Castañeda, M.

• Published date: 01 March 2024
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/10575677231191819
• Author: Thais Moreira de Andrade
• Date: 01 March 2024

Book Reviews

Castañeda, M. (2023).

Disappearing rooms: The hidden theaters of immigration law. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. 200 pp. $24.95,

ISBN 9781478019633.

Reviewed by: Thais Moreira de Andrade,Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA

DOI: 10.1177/10575677231191819

A shackled man twists his torso in a physiologically challenging effort to raise his hand and commit

to telling the truth. A detained woman is prohibited from saying farewell to her spouse. Individuals

are referred to as “the body”and expressly proscribed from eating. Others are forced to line up

against a wall after parting ways with their loved ones. To many Americans, these scenes likely

exemplify the terrorizing actions of drug cartels across Latin America’sbarrios and favelas where

a legitimate rule of law is absent. Conversely, however, these are portraits of lived experiences

within courts and administrative off‌ices that adjudicate immigration cases throughout United

States territories. In a liberal democracy that prides itself on endorsing fundamental rights,

“aliens”—a derogatory term, employed to identify foreigners, that further emphasizes their condition

of otherness—do not possess nearly as many constitutional safeguards in America as citizens do.

In this book, Castañeda employs a valiant narrative, placed at the intersection of performance, his-

torical, and carceral studies, to elucidate how the administration of justice resolves the indeterminate

status of undocumented immigrants in the American jurisdiction. By conducting a critical sceno-

graphic analysis of the spaces where these decisions are made, the author dissects how theatrical ele-

ments known as mise-en-scène—architectural designs, gestures, symbols, and writings that are

arranged in a certain fashion as to evoke a certain reaction from the audience—serve to unearth

the contradictions within immigration law mechanisms that, disguised as protecting national security,

aim to secure racialized political interests.

The ambivalence indicated within the title—hidden theaters—presages countless paradoxes that

Castañeda identif‌ies as inherent to a legal system that “threatens to kill and promises to save”(4).

Congruent with colonizing practices, the United States has historically enacted policies aimedat

attracting low-cost labor from abroad. Although not explicitly employing this framework, the

author’s rationale communicates with the minority threat perspective (Blalock, 1967) to the extent

that, it is only when these groups begin to be perceived as cultural, economic, political,and/or

public security risks (Caraballo, 2020; Wang, 2012) that that same legal apparatus is directed at ostra-

cizing them.

Chapter 1 focuses on the dynamics of a removal room, where undocumented individuals may be

deported during their mandated periodical check-ins with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement

agency, in Manhattan in 2017. Immigration law proceedings, Castañeda argues, while seemingly set-

tling individual-level violations of the law, are deliberately directed at specif‌ic nationalities at certain

historical moments. Such is the case, in present times, of undocumented individuals of Central

American descent. In Chapter 2, Castañeda probes into the experiences of asylum seekers at a

family detention center in Texas in 2016. She details how legal reforms passed to advance

Book Reviews

International Criminal Justice Review

2024, Vol. 34(1) 87-93

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