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1. Duration in Immigration Detention and Health Harms

   https://doi.org/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2024.56164  

   Saadi, Altaf; Patler, Caitlin; Langer, Paola (January 2025, JAMA Network Open)

   IMPORTANCE Length of custody is a mechanism by which carceral systems can worsen health. However, there are fewer studies examining US immigration detention, in large part because US immigration detention is largely privately operated and opaque by design. OBJECTIVES To examine the association between duration spent in US immigration detention with subsequent health outcomes. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS This cross-sectional study used a referral sample of recently detained immigrants who were released from Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) under a series of court orders in 2020 and 2021. Data were analyzed from June 2023 to October 2024. EXPOSURE Detention duration less than 6 months vs 6 months or longer. MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURES We used multivariable regression analysis to assess the association of detention duration and several variables: (1) self-rated health, (2) mental illness (Kessler 6-item psychological distress scale), and (3) posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) (Primary Care-PTSD-5 Screen).We then calculated the likelihood of experiencing each outcome, controlling for covariates. As a robustness check, we conducted sensitivity analyses with detention duration as a continuous measure. RESULTS The study included 200 respondents (mean [SD] age, 40.3 [10.1] years; 175 male [87.5%]; 149 Hispanic or Latino ethnicity [74.5%]). Results revealed a high prevalence of poor self-rated health, mental illness, and PTSD for all respondents, but especially among those who had been detained for 6 months or longer, who had significantly higher likelihood of poor or fair self-rated health (49.1% [95%CI, 40.5%-57.6%] vs 30.4%[95%CI, 21.8%-39.1%]; P < .001), mental illness (37.0%[95%CI, 28.2%-45.8%] vs 20.7%[95%CI, 12.6%-28.7%]; P < .001), and PTSD (59.3%[95% CI, 50.3%-68.3%] vs 34.8%[95%CI, 25.3%-44.3%]; P < .001). Sensitivity analysis confirmed the general robustness of these findings, with longer detention duration significantly associated with mental illness (OR, 1.11 [95%CI, 1.02-1.20]; P = .01) and PTSD (OR, 1.11 [95%CI, 1.03-1.20]; P = .005) in our adjusted models. CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE In this cross-sectional study, detained immigrants experienced a high prevalence of poor health, mental illness, and PTSD, with detention periods of 6 months or more associated with higher rates compared with those detained less than 6 months. Duration of custody is one mechanism by which immigration detention might be a catalyst for worsening health. 

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2. Advocating for Transgender Immigrants in Detention Centers: Cisnormativity as a Tool for Racialized Social Control

   https://doi.org/10.1177/00027642221083531  

   Kurdyla, Victoria (May 2022, American Behavioral Scientist)

   Despite public concern over immigration enforcement, little attention has been given to transgender immigrants, who are disproportionately at risk for arrest and deportation. Organizations dedicated to protecting LGBT people’s rights and immigrant rights have been working to address this issue and shape policy decisions to better protect transgender immigrants in detention centers; however, research has not investigated how these organizations frame transgender immigrant detainees and their experience in detention to accomplish their goals. This current study uses a content analysis of public documents spanning 2009–2021 from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Transgender Law Center (TLC) to investigate how two legal advocacy organizations frame the issue of transgender immigrants within detention centers. The ACLU rarely discusses transgender immigrants and thus upholds cisnormativity. When they do discuss transgender immigrants, their transgender identity is referenced as a singular issue in isolation from other facets of their identity. The TLC, on the other hand, frames immigration detention for transgender immigrants as part of a larger web of oppression. Through a comparison of the ACLU and TLC, this study underscores the role of cisnormativity as a tool for racialized social control. Findings highlight the importance of a critical, intersectional approach to immigration advocacy and scholarship that challenges the cisnormative assumptions guiding the current immigration system. Implications for future research and service provision are discussed. 

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3. Immigrant Legal Status Disparities in Health Among First- and One-point-five-Generation Latinx Immigrants in California

   https://doi.org/10.1007/s11113-021-09689-w  

   Hamilton, Erin R.; Patler, Caitlin; Savinar, Robin (December 2021, Population Research and Policy Review)

   Abstract Restrictive US immigration laws and law enforcement undermine immigrant health by generating fear and stress, disrupting families and communities, and eroding social and economic wellbeing. The inequality and stress created by immigration law and law enforcement may also generate disparities in health among immigrants with different legal statuses. However, existing research does not find consistent evidence of immigrant legal status disparities in health, possibly because it does not disaggregate immigrants by generation, defined by age at migration. Immigration and life course theory suggest that the health consequences of non-citizen status may be greater among 1.5-generation immigrants, who grew up in the same society that denies them formal membership, than among the 1st generation, who immigrated as adolescents or adults. In this study, we examine whether there are legal status disparities in health within and between the 1st generation and the 1.5 generation of 23,288 Latinx immigrant adults interviewed in the 2005–2017 waves of the California Health Interview Survey. We find evidence of legal status disparities in heart disease within the 1st generation and for high blood pressure and diabetes within the 1.5 generation. Non-citizens have higher rates of poor self-rated health and distress within both generations. Socioeconomic disadvantage and limited access to care largely account for the worse health of legally disadvantaged 1st- and 1.5-generation Latinx adults in California. 

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4. Apathy and Color-Blindness in Privatized Immigration Control

   https://doi.org/10.1177/2332649219846140  

   Ebert, Kim; Liao, Wenjie; Estrada, Emily P. (May 2019, Sociology of Race and Ethnicity)

   Despite several widely covered scandals involving the role of for-profit corporations in administering immigration policy, the privatization of immigration control continues apace with the criminalization of immigration. How does this practice sustain its legitimacy among the public amid so much controversy? Recent studies on the criminalization of immigration suggest that supporters would explicitly vilify immigrants to defend the privatization of immigration control. Research on racialized social control, on the other hand, implies that proponents would avoid explicit racism and vilification and instead rely on subtler narratives to validate the practice. Drawing on a qualitative analysis of over 600 frames derived from nearly 200 news media articles spanning over 20 years, we find that journalists and their sources rarely vilify immigrants to justify the privatization of immigration control. Instead, they frame the privatization of immigration detention as a normal component of population management and an integral part of the U.S. economy through what we call the apathy strategy—a pattern of void in which not only the systematic oppression of immigrants is underplayed, immigrant themselves also become invisible. 

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5. Spatial Barriers as Moral Failings: What Rural Distance Can Teach Us about Women's Health and Medical Mistrust.

   https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.healthplace.2020.102396  

   Statz, Michele; Evers, Kaylie (January 2020, Health place)

   null (Ed.)

   Policy attention to growing rural “health care deserts” tends to identify rural distance as a primary spatial barrier to accessing care. This paper brings together geography, health policy, and ethnographic methods to instead theorize distance as an expansive and illuminating concept that highlights place-based expertise. It specifically engages rural women's interpretations of rural distance as a multifaceted dimension of accessing health care, which includes but is not limited to women's health services and maternity care. Presenting qualitative research with 51 women in a rural region of the U.S., thematic findings reveal an interpretation of barriers to rural health care as moral failings rather than as purely spatial or operational challenges, along with wide communication of negative health care experiences owing to spatially-disparate but trusted social networks. Amid or owing to the rural crisis context, medical mistrust here emerges as a meaningful but largely unrecognized barrier to rural women's ability—and willingness—to obtain health care. This underscores how a novel interpretation of distance may inform policy efforts to address rural medical deserts. 

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