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This paper analyses the spatialities and temporalities of a U.S. migrant detention centre, to demonstrate the entanglement of migrant exclusion with dehumanisation and racialisation. I examine spatial orderings such as isolation, segregation, and regulated mobilities in detention alongside the arbitrary and deadening tempos and rhythms of detention. I find patterns of inclusionary exclusion through which the “consent” of detained people to their own deportation is conditioned by dehumanising spatio‐temporalities. These patterns are the product of the highly standardised, regulated, and ordered spatio‐temporalities of detention. I ultimately argue that the spatial and temporal ordering of detention, in all of its standardisation, is a racialising project that rationalises exclusion and dehumanisation, placing responsibility for degradation, deportation, and even premature death, upon those in detention.

During the presidency of Donald Trump, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) targeted migrant justice activists, journalists, and advocates with deportation proceedings. The recent political repression has a revanchist character that appears to be a new pattern introduced by Trump but is part of a longer project of securing the smooth functioning of economic and racial social control in the US. I read the recent political repression of activists in relation to texts produced by radical intellectuals who endured political repression in two prior historical moments: the detention and deportation of radicals in the McCarthy era through the words of C.L.R. James; the policing and imprisonment of Black radicals in the early 1970s through the words of Angela Davis. In a third moment, I situate the recent pattern of Trump-era political repression in a context of ongoing contestation over interior immigration enforcement. The struggle over immigration enforcement is not only about legality, but also about the politics of race and class marginalization in the US.

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