THE LAW AND LAWLESSNESS OF US IMMIGRATION DETENTION

The United States operates the largest immigration detention system in the world. Immigrants and watchdog groups have reported poor conditions of confinement, including medical mistreatment and neglect, inadequate nutrition, unsanitary conditions, and overcrowding. To challenge these conditions of confinement, immigrants have raised a variety of constitutional, statutory, and administrative claims in federal court. Some courts have rejected these claims, reluctant to intercede in agency management of the detention system and override the will of the political branches. This emerging jurisprudence assumes that the sole interest of the political branches in detention is to facilitate the exclusion and deportation of immigrants, with little consideration given to how immigrants are detained. These courts view agency regulation of detention as gratuitous self-regulation, neither required by law nor enforceable, even when violations of these rules threaten the life and liberty of those detained. The result is a weakened rights framework that does little to protect the substantive rights of immigrants in detention. This Article challenges these judicial assumptions by unearthing a more nuanced account of the political branches' "civil detention interest." A careful review of legislative and regulatory history across three periods of detention expansion demonstrates the political branches' interest in ensuring the civil conditions of immigration detention and a growing legislative distrust of agency management of detention conditions. This civil detention interest should inform how courts adjudicate challenges to immigration detention conditions. The relative failure of any branch of government to effectuate this interest exposes the lawlessness of the immigration detention system in the United States.