Book Review: From Deportation to Prison: The Politics of Immigration Enforcement in Post-Civil Rights America

• Author: Mark A. Winton
• Published date: 01 March 2018
• Date: 01 March 2018
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/1057567717727815
• Subject Matter: Book Reviews

Book Reviews
International Criminal Justice Review
2018, Vol. 28(1) 82-88
Book Reviews
ª 2017 Georgia State University
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Macı´as-Rojas, P. (2016).
From Deportation to Prison: The Politics of Immigration Enforcement in Post-Civil Rights America. New York: New York
University Press. xi, 233 pp. $28.00, ISBN 978-1-4798-3118-0.
Reviewed by: Mark A. Winton, University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL, USA
DOI: 10.1177/1057567717727815
This book focuses on the links between immigration, border policing policies, incarceration, and the
development and implementation of the Criminal Alien Program (CAP) and other related polices.
Using multiple ethnographic techniques, such as observation, interviews, and archival analysis,
Macı´as-Rojas spent more than 10 years analyzing the effects of immigration and border policing
policies. The settings are the Arizona–Mexican border towns. From congressional debates to local
decisions to deport based on detention bed availability, Macı´as-Rojas demonstrates a problematic
and costly system that has negative effects. Macı´as-Rojas includes her experiences of “being
watched” while conducting her research. This book provides an examination of surveillance, social
control, and criminalization that seems to becoming more intense as perceived threats from differ-
ent groups are constructed. She discusses stigma, labeling, and the social construction of the
criminal immigrant and analyzes the interactions between different groups.
Chapter 1, “The Post-Civil Rights Borderland: The Arizona-Sonora Border,” centers on the
theoretical explanations for social control, punishment, and civil rights. Due to the large number
of undocumented migrants, “fast track” hearings take place. Furthermore, Macı´as-Rojas points out
the dilemma in trying to reduce the prison population while simultaneously arresting and prosecut-
ing more people. Macı´as-Rojas analyzes multiple perspectives to...