Visiting Migrants, Contesting Detention: An Overview of Community Visitation Programs and Advocacy for Immigrants inside U.S. Immigration Detention

How do activists advocate for immigrants in U.S. immigration detention, given its closed and guarded structures? Providing advocacy for immigrants becomes difficult in detention as many people do not have the requisite skillset for legal advocacy, a prominent method in providing support to detained immigrants. In this article, I examine the Freedom for Immigrants’ Community Visitation Program (CVP) network, which organizes visits to detention sites, as one model by which people provide advocacy for detained immigrants. I base this on an analysis of CVP documents, websites, videos and reports, detained immigrant letters and statements, news stories, investigative reports, and secondary resources. Through this analysis, I find that CVPs organize volunteers by having a wide coverage of CVPs throughout the U.S. and manage visitation training programs. This allows volunteers to provide social and emotional support to detained migrants. Additionally, volunteers serve as advocates during instances of abuse occurring inside detention that may otherwise have remained invisible by rallying around detained migrants, as seen in the case of Laura Monterrosa. Visitation programs allow for an opening within the closed detention system for other people besides those living in its daily infrastructure and work to undo the complex detention system.