Immigration Enforcement and Domination

• Date: 01 March 2017
• Author: Alex Sager
• Published date: 01 March 2017
• DOI: 10.1177/1065912916680036
• Subject Matter: Articles

Political Research Quarterly

2017, Vol. 70(1) 42 –54

© 2016 University of Utah

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DOI: 10.1177/1065912916680036

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Article

Boubacar Bah came to the United States from Guinea in

1998 on a tourist visa, remaining in New York to work

sixty-hour weeks as a tailor after it expired. When he

heard about a special green card program to regularize his

status, he applied for and obtained permission to visit his

family, whom he had not seen in nearly ten years. But

upon returning to New York, he learned that his applica-

tion had been denied. Instead of opting for deportation, he

chose to fight his case from the Elizabeth Detention

Center in New Jersey, run by the private company

Corrections Corporation of America.

We do not know how Bah’s skull was fractured in cus-

tody nine months later. In February 2007, he was found

unconscious on the floor of his dorm bathroom. When he

was brought to the medical unit run by the U.S.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the

Public Health Service, he became agitated. Documents

obtained by the New York Times detail how he was

“shackled and pinned to the floor of the medical unit as

he moaned and vomited, then left in a disciplinary cell for

more than 13 hours, despite repeated notations that he

was unresponsive and intermittently foaming at the

mouth” (Bernstein 2008). He spent five days in the hospi-

tal with a skull fracture and multiple brain hemorrhages

before officials alerted the family.

While Bah languished in the hospital, ICE managers

sought to avoid media scrutiny and discussed strategies to

avoid paying for his medical care. These included deport-

ing him and granting him the green card he sought so that

he could be eligible for Medicaid. Ultimately, they

decided to make Bah’s cousins in New York responsible

for his medical bills, but he died before he could be

released to his family. An internal ICE review concluded

that no action was warranted, as ICE employees were not

at fault.1

Boubacar Bah’s case is by no means unique (National

Immigrant Justice Center and Detention Watch Network

2015). In 2008, the American Civil Liberties Union and

the New York Times invoked the Freedom of Information

Act to investigate the number of immigrants who had

died in custody (Bernstein 2008, 2010; Harris 2010).

Between 2003 and 2015, 150 people died in immigrant

detention centers with most common causes listed as car-

diovascular (33.3%), cancer (16.1%), suicide (13.4%),

and other (12.8%) (Granski, Keller, and Venters 2015). In

recent years, deaths in ICE detention have declined, but

reports of abuse of detained migrants remain widespread

(Martínez, Slack, and Heyman 2013).

Bah’s case raises questions about the morality of

immigration administration and enforcement and the role

of bureaucratic discretion in controlling migration. In

680036PRQXXX10.1177/1065912916680036Political Research QuarterlySager

research-article2016

1Portland State University, OR, USA

Corresponding Author:

Alex Sager, Department of Philosophy, Portland State University,

Neuberger Hall, 393, 724 SW Harrison, Portland, OR 97207-0751,

USA.

Email: asager@pdx.edu

Immigration Enforcement and

Domination: An Indirect Argument

for Much More Open Borders

Alex Sager1

Abstract

Normative reflection on the ethics of migration has tended to remain at the level of abstract principle with limited

attention to the practice of immigration administration and enforcement. This paper explores the implications of this

practice for an ethics of immigration with particular attention to the problem of bureaucratic domination. I contend

that migration administration and enforcement cannot overcome bureaucratic domination because of the inherent

vulnerability of migrant populations and the transnational enforcement of border controls by multiple public and

private actors. The implication is that even if restrictive immigration policies are permissible in principle, the attempt

to enforce them leads to injustices that make them ethically unacceptable in practice.

Keywords

bureaucracy, domination, migration, neo-republicanism, open borders