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'ICE Operates Within a Broader Apparatus Around Criminalization and the Deportation Machine' Janine Jackson ([link removed])


Janine Jackson interviewed Detention Watch Network's Silky Shah about mass deportation for the July 11, 2025, episode ([link removed]) of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.

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FAIR: Massive Expansion of Trump’s Deportation Machine Passes With Little Press Notice

FAIR.org (7/9/25 ([link removed]) )

Janine Jackson: As is being reported, including by Belén Fernández for ([link removed]) FAIR.org ([link removed]) , among the myriad horrors of Trump's budget bill—though not his alone; everyone who voted for it owns it—is the otherworldly amount of money, $175 billion, slated to fund mass deportation. That exceeds the military budget of every country in the world but the US and China. And some $30 billion is to go to ICE, the masked goons that are descending on swap meets and workplaces to carry out what many are calling brazen midday kidnappings.

We knew that this White House would be horrible for Black and brown people, and for immigrants especially, and yet we can still be shocked at how bad and how fast things are happening. Despair might be understandable, but it's not particularly useful. So what do we do? What can we do?

Joining us now is Silky Shah, executive director at Detention Watch Network ([link removed]) . She joins us now by phone. Welcome back to CounterSpin, Silky Shah.

Silky Shah: Thank you for having me.
FAIR: Silky Shah on the Attack on Immigrants

CounterSpin (1/24/25 ([link removed]) )

JJ: We see the narrative shifting ([link removed]) . “Hey, he said it was just going to be violent criminals, or criminals, or people whose crime is administrative, but now, this is getting weird.” What's happening now, the rounding up of anyone brown, basically, including people who are actively engaged in the legal processes of securing citizenship—we can be outraged, but I'm less sure about surprised, just because there was no “decent” way to do what Trump telegraphed ([link removed]) he wanted to do.

At the same time, though, I don't know that anyone really expected masked men spilling out of vans to snatch up children off the street. So, just first of all, did you even imagine the particular situation we're seeing right now? You explained ([link removed]) back in January how the apparatus were set up, but is this surprising, even at your level of understanding?

SS: I think what's so shocking about this moment is that the scale of what has happened before is becoming astronomical. So, as you mentioned, $175 billion ([link removed]) for immigration enforcement, $30 billion for ICE agents in particular, $35 billion for immigration detention. These are just wild numbers, and I think that is really what is so shocking.
Public Books: “The Basic Liberal Narrative Is Gone”: Immigrant Rights and Abolition with Silky Shah

Public Books (3/20/25)

I do think—we're speaking here on CounterSpin—one of the biggest challenges of the last 20, 30 years of immigration enforcement, and how it's been portrayed, is that there is a constant framing of immigration as a public safety issue, immigration as a national security issue, which is really not true. Mostly immigration is about labor, it's about family relationships, it's about seeking refuge.

And I think what's so frustrating is that, actually, for many, many years of having this narrative of “some immigrants are deserving and some immigrants aren't,” the “good immigrant versus the bad immigrant,” what ends up happening ([link removed]) is where we're at now, which it's like all immigrants are perceived as a problem. And there's no question that there's an underlying racism and xenophobia and classism and all the other things at play here.

I think what's so important for us to understand now, when we're talking about the way ICE is operating, is that it's been enabled by that framework—that when you reinforce this idea that some people are deserving, then you kind of expect everybody to be in that category. And in reality, the way the system worked before, is that people were being funneled through the criminal legal system. And this really skyrocketed ([link removed]) the number of people who are in deportation proceedings, especially under the Obama administration. So this framework of "we are going to target people who are criminals,” it's a distraction; the goal is to scapegoat immigrants, and all immigrants, and ignore the crisis of mass incarceration, which ICE is inherently a part of.

JJ: Where is the law in all of this? Is it that there are laws that exist, but aren't being enforced? Is it that the law has changed, such that what we're seeing is terrible, but lamentably legal? Do laws need to be changed? I think a lot of folks see masked men spilling out of vans and snatching kids and think, “That can't be legal.” But is it?
Silky Shah

Silky Shah: "They're actually using immigration enforcement as a pretense to go after people who don't agree with their ideas."

SS: Well, I think there are some aspects of this that have been baked into the law for 30 years now, and some aspects that are new. And so I think it's important to understand that. When you think about it, this initial framing of, “Oh, people are being disappeared and kidnapped,” came when a lot of students who had protested or expressed solidarity with Palestine were being targeted by ICE ([link removed]) , many of whom had not had contact with the criminal legal system, many of whom had legal status in some form, including Green Cards and visas.

In that context, 30 years ago, when they passed the 1996 immigration laws ([link removed]) , it actually started to expand the category of people who didn't get due process, who didn't have the right to due process; that included newly arriving immigrants, and also people who were legal permit residents, or had visas but had some crime, some conviction, that meant that they no longer had a right to make their case before a judge, and were required to be detained, required to be deported.

And so all of that stuff has been happening for decades now, and there are many aspects of what happened. Being separated from your family, even if you have a pregnant wife ([link removed]) , all those things are quite normal. And also not having a warrant ([link removed]) ; I mean, ICE goes after immigrants all the time without a warrant. And a lot of our work has been to help people know their rights ([link removed]) , know what is needed. But I think the thing that's scary is that they're actually using immigration enforcement as a pretense to go after people who don't agree with their ideas, people who might be showing support for Palestine, or merely because they are Black and brown, and are an easy scapegoat for this administration.

So I think there are things that are happening outside of the scope of the law, and I think the test cases here are those students who were detained, and also the case of the many people who were sent to a mega-prison in El Salvador ([link removed]) . I think those are instances where you're just like, “Wow, that is definitely outside of law, and they're operating in these ways that are really concerning.” But they're also using these as strategies to change the law, which is what we saw recently with the men who are being deported to South Sudan ([link removed]) , were stuck in Djibouti for many weeks, and now officially are in South Sudan. And the Supreme Court deeming ([link removed]) that OK.

JJ: It's bizarre.

You mentioned last time ([link removed]) how much local- and state-level buy-in is required for this whole plan to work. Yes, there's ICE. Yes, there is the Trump administration, but they do rely on state and local law enforcement, and other officials, to make this play out. Is that still a place to look for resistance, then?

SS: Absolutely. And I think it's especially important now that we double down on those efforts because, yes, ICE is going to have $45 billion more over the next four years to build more detention centers, and our goal is to block that in every way, and make sure that isn't permanent. And a lot of our strategy is getting local officials, state officials, to do that work, to say, “No, we don't want a new ICE detention center in our community.” Once ICE detention exists in the community, people are much more likely to be targeted for deportation. Detention exists to facilitate deportation.

So in places like Illinois and Oregon, for instance, there are no detention centers. And that actually helps protect communities that much more.
NPR: In recorded calls, reports of overcrowding and lack of food at ICE detention centers

NPR (6/6/25 ([link removed]) )

And I think, unfortunately, a lot of Democratic governors ([link removed]) are responding in ways that are not ideal. I think in places like California and Washington State and other places, there needs to be a lot of work to say no, we have to double down on these policies that have protected immigrant communities, and expand them, and make sure that those transfers to ICE aren't happening, so that we can limit ICE’s reach as much as possible. It's still the most effective way to prevent them from getting the scale of deportations they want. The easiest way for them to do this is through these ICE/police collaborations, and stopping that is essential.

But also, in places like Florida, where Ron DeSantis is doing everything possible to work with ICE, and building things like this Everglades detention camp ([link removed]) , and having agreements with ICE at every county jail. There's been numerous deaths ([link removed]) , actually, in Florida already, of people who have been in ICE custody. And so it really shows you the harm that that sort of relationship between state and local law enforcement does to make ICE even that much stronger. So I think there is this constant attention on ICE, but we have to understand that ICE operates within a broader apparatus around criminalization and the deportation machine, that many, many law enforcement agencies, including sheriffs, are central to.

JJ: And just to add to that: It's about money, as you've explained. It comes back to money. Prisons—we can call them "detention centers"—bring money to a locality. And so that is part of the unseen or underexplored aspect of this, is that when you build a holding cell, then you're going to put people in it. And that is part of what explains what's happening.

SS: Absolutely. I think that this is so about the political economy, and some people have referred to this new MAGA murder bill as a jobs program. If you have this much more money for ICE, this much more money for detention, that means more jobs in these communities. And this is what we saw for years and years during the prison boom, is that many rural communities that were struggling financially were seeing prison as a recession-safe economy ([link removed]) , like an ability to bring in jobs.

And especially when it comes to the relationship between sheriffs and ICE, there's a symbiosis there between the federal government and local counties, that local counties are really depending on its revenue. I think one of our biggest challenges when we're trying to work to end a detention contract is that fear of losing jobs, and that fear of losing that revenue.
First Ten to Communities Not Cages

Detention Watch Network (2021 ([link removed] First Ten to Communities Not Cages.pdf) )

JJ: Let me just ask you, feeding off of that, to talk about #CommunitiesNotCages ([link removed]) . What is the vision there? What are you talking about there, and where can folks see another way forward?

SS: Yeah, we launched a #CommunitiesNotCages campaign many years ago, under Trump's first term, and we're actually about to relaunch, because the amount of money that's going to the system, the scale of what's going to happen, I think we need to bring a lot more people in.

But a lot of it was actually responding to local organizing against detention. So we were seeing, in places like Alabama and Georgia and Arizona ([link removed] First Ten to Communities Not Cages.pdf) and elsewhere, that people were calling attention to the existing detention system and the harm that it was doing, the number of deaths that were happening, people hunger-striking in facilities. We were trying to really do work to get resources to them, make sure people are strategizing together.

And then in places like the Midwest, for years, so many groups were doing work to stop a new detention center from coming in. ICE wanted to have one large detention center in Illinois ([link removed]) or Indiana or elsewhere. And they tried to build it in nine or ten different sites, and at every site they were able to organize with local community, or work with the state legislature, to stop detention expansion.

And so what we did was bring a lot of these communities together, the people who are organizing this campaign, thinking about state legislation, thinking about strategies with local counties or city councils, to learn from each other, and figure out, “OK, what can we do?”

Because one of the things we discovered, and we did some research on this, is that when there's a detention center in your community, so if you have, say, 50 beds for detention, somebody's two times more likely to be targeted for deportation ([link removed] You Build It%2C ICE Will Fill IT_Report_2022.pdf) . If you have 800 beds, somebody's six times more likely to be targeted for deportation. And so that ability to cut off the detention capacity actually prevented increased deportation.
New Yorker: The Emerging Movement for Police and Prison Abolition

New Yorker (5/7/21 ([link removed]) )

So we really see #CommunitiesNotCages as a part of the strategy to end this mass deportation agenda, and also really connect to that broader effort against the prison industrial complex and against the crisis of mass incarceration, which does so much harm and are really, I think Mariame Kaba has called them ([link removed]) “death-making institutions.” I mean, we're seeing that numerous deaths have just happened in the last few weeks.

And so we're really concerned about the conditions right now. I'm the first person to say Trump is building on what’s a bipartisan agenda, for decades now, against immigrants. But the scale of what's happening, and how abysmal these facilities are becoming, are even shocking to me, as somebody who's been doing this work for 20 years.

So I think this is the time where we can't give in. Yes, they got this $45 billion, but actually, we have a lot of ability to stop them from implementing their plans, and we really need to gear up and fight as much as we can.

JJ: Well, that sounds very much like an end, and yet I am going to push for one final question, because we need a positive vision. What we're seeing, what's passing for a positive vision on immigration right now is, “But he makes my tacos! He waters my lawn! Don't come for him!” And it makes immigration feel like noblesse oblige. It's very nice of “us” that we let “them” live here.

And we can debunk all day: Immigrants do pay taxes ([link removed]) , they aren't stealing jobs ([link removed]) . It's also mean and small as a vision. And I just feel that there's a positive, forward-looking vision that we could be talking about.
CounterSpin: US ‘Intervention Has Directly Led to the Conditions Migrants Are Fleeing’

CounterSpin (6/25/21 ([link removed]) )

SS: I think one of the most challenging things about the way the mainstream immigrant advocacy efforts over the last 20 years have hurt our ability to make the case for immigrants is that they've really reinforced the idea of the good immigrant versus bad immigrant. And when they're talking about the “good immigrant,” a lot of it really pushes this idea of immigrant exceptionalism or productivity, or immigrants are better than everyone else.

Often there's this narrative of "immigrants commit less crimes than US citizens," which just reinforces both anti-Black racism and the idea that immigration is about public safety, which it's not.

And so again, as I was saying before, immigration is really largely about labor and family relationships, and also the root causes of migration. A lot of the narrative hasn't allowed us to talk about US empire, and the role that the US has played ([link removed]) in destabilizing a lot of other countries and conditions for people across the world.

So when I think about a vision—and I hope that we can move forward in a different way—is that actually part of the reason immigrants have been able to be scapegoated is because the US government and billionaires have created a crisis, an economic crisis, for so many people. And what we really need to understand is that immigrants are central to our community, that we are in this together—like having better healthcare; having better, more affordable housing; having better education opportunities, those things are going to make it easier for us to make the case for immigrants.

So I think, actually, we need to really deeply show that immigration is connected to every issue, whether it be climate, whether it be housing, etc., all these things, and see us in it together and think about this as a broader question of working people, working-class, poor people, and really not exceptionalizing immigrants.

And the other thing I would just say is that in so many ways, immigration detention in particular is being treated as an aside, as this other issue: small, not big, and whatever, there's mass incarceration, there's deportation. But now it's being used as a testing ground for Trump's authoritarianism. And so we really need to see that, actually, the way they're operating around immigration creates risks for all of us. And, again, the reason why it's so important that we see our struggles intertwined, and that we work together on this.

JJ: We've been speaking with Silky Shah from the Detention Watch Network. They're online at DetentionWatchNetwork.org ([link removed]) . Thank you so much, Silky Shah, for joining us this week on CounterSpin.

SS: Thanks so much for having me.


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