Zero Matching Records Found: Enforced Disappearance in the Carceral Web Landscape

Abstract

In 2011, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officially launched its online locator system, an internet-based public tool designed to assist attorneys, family members, and interested entities in locating detained individuals in ICE custody. In November 2019, Freedom For Immigrants (FFI), an immigrant rights organization, conducted surveys of individuals and organizations attempting to locate detainees and found 698 instances of migrants disappearing from the online locator system, with the search stating “zero matching records.” With this in mind, this essay explores technologies of invisibility of the carceral web through ethnographic observation and testimonies collected in immigration detention. I use the term “carceral web” by Susila Gurusami to refer to the spatial intersection between carceral institutions and digital technologies that unveil the entanglements and workings of the carceral edgelands. I argue that the ICE locator system, a public tool for migrant identification and placement, not only showcases state-enforced disappearance but reveals a process of invisibilization and structural violence temporally and spatially at work.