Militarizing Migration
Chapter 2 discusses the politics of deterring asylum seekers by exploring the simultaneous efforts to find new detention space for Cubans and Haitians who had already arrived in the United States and to develop “contingency” space in the event of another mass migration. This chapter focuses on the pivotal role of military bases in the ad hoc creation of U.S. migration policy during the Carter and Reagan administrations. Haitian and Cuban asylum seekers who arrived in 1980 found themselves confined on separate military facilities from Florida to Wisconsin and Arkansas. The search and negotiations surrounding new places to detain reveal racialized imaginations and seemingly irrational investments in new places to detain. The deeply contingent and contested use of decommissioned military bases led ultimately to the search for more permanent detention space.