Care, complicity, and containment: Professionals’ experiences of moral injury working in US immigration detention centers

Abstract

For the professionals who work or volunteer with detained migrants, providing care or advocacy requires navigating morally conflicting responsibilities and exposure to an environment of harm. Working in immigration detention spaces has a cost, both for the professional's mental health and for the detainees who rely on professionals’ capacity to intervene in a system of harm and neglect. Bringing together moral injury and tactics, this article examines how professionals navigate and counter the morally injurious contexts of their work. Ethnographic interviews with detention employees, case workers, forensic psychologists, and medical evaluators revealed a range of strategies and outcomes of moral injury. While professionals used tactics like moral numbing or avoidance to protect themselves and continue providing care, the withholding or lessening of care has consequences for the detainees relying on their intervention. Yet not utilizing strategies has its own cost, as professionals experience burnout, trauma, and hauntings. Just as migrants are literally “caught” as they chase the American Dream, professionals feel morally entangled in circumstances of harm. In attempting to intervene or lessen harm, care becomes a justification for and a source of moral violence in professionals' lives. Through this analysis, I argue that a framing of tactics incorporated into moral injury better captures the diversity in how professionals navigate and respond to their moral injuries in ways that can disrupt or support the continued systemic violence in immigration detention contexts. Examining the moral dimensions to professionals’ experiences and distress allows for more informed, targeted interventions to disrupt this harm and empower professionals’ efforts to provide care and advocacy within detention spaces.