What this moment means for human rights and for the future

 

In recent months, immigration enforcement in the United States has become impossible to ignore.

Each day brings new coverage of armed officers, mass arrests and extreme violence. Immigration raids are taking place in workplaces, homes, hospitals and schools. And immigration detention has become highly visible, highly symbolic and a political touchpoint.

For many people – both inside and outside the US – the scale and intensity of what’s unfolding feels startling. For others, it feels like the culmination of the long-standing and sustained dehumanisation of migrants and refugees. Either way, what happens next in the United States matters far beyond its borders.

The United States already operates the largest known immigration detention system in the world. Tens of thousands of people are detained on any given day, simply because of their immigration status.

Detention is used while people wait for decisions on asylum claims, visa applications or removal proceedings. People can be detained in prisons or in places that resemble prisons for unknown periods of time without access to a lawyer.

Studies worldwide demonstrate the damage immigration detention can cause. A US study found that a staggering 86% of people detained showed signs of depression and 50% displayed PTSD symptoms, which worsened the longer they were confined.

IDC’s own research shows that detention is particularly damaging to children. It separates families, forces children to live in harsh conditions, takes away the stability they need to grow and places them in situations that are never in their best interests.

What’s more, immigration detention is hugely expensive – in fact, it’s a multi-billion dollar industry. The average daily costs of detaining an adult noncitizen in the US is $164.65, and in 2024, Congress provided funding of approximately $3.4 billion to prop up this inhumane and ineffective system.

The US has a long history with immigration detention. But what has changed in recent months is the scale, the visibility and the sheer violence of migration governance in the US.

New facilities are being built or expanded. Detention operations are being accompanied by heavily armed enforcement teams. There have even been repeated reports of deaths in immigration detention and custody, each raising serious questions about safety, oversight and necessity.

And the language used by officials increasingly frames migrants as a threat to national security rather than as human beings, with inherent rights and dignity.

This shift is not accidental. In the US, immigration enforcement has become a public and political performance. It attempts to send a message of toughness, control and deterrence – but the evidence is clear: immigration detention does not create safer, fairer or more effective migration systems. Instead, it harms individuals, families and society at large.

When migration governance looks like warfare

 

One of the most striking features of the current moment is the militarisation of migration governance.

Enforcement imagery mirrors military operations. Officers wear tactical gear. Vehicles, helicopters and surveillance equipment are deployed in ways more commonly associated with armed conflict than civilian administration. Migration is discussed using the language of invasion, threat and control.

This framing has consequences. When migration is treated as a security emergency, exceptional measures become easier to justify. Safeguards are weakened. Oversight is reduced. The people caught up in these systems are no longer seen as individuals with rights but as risks to be managed.

At the centre of this system sits Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), whose powers and footprint in the US have grown steadily over time. What began as a relatively limited enforcement body has expanded into a vast apparatus with responsibility for surveillance, arrest, detention and removal.

People migrate because they are fleeing violence, persecution, poverty or instability. Detention does not address these drivers. What it does do is create suffering, often for people who pose no risk and who are simply seeking safety or stability.

In this context, detention becomes political theatre. Its function is not to manage migration effectively, but to signal strength. The spectacle matters more than the outcome.

The wider erosion of rights

There is a deeper risk here. History shows that when governments normalise exceptional measures for one group, those measures rarely remain contained. The erosion of migrant rights often precedes broader human rights erosion.

Fear-based enforcement undermines trust in public institutions. Communities withdraw. Access to healthcare, education and justice is restricted, and the rule of law weakens not only for migrants, but for everyone.

That’s one of the reasons why what is happening in the US right now resonates so widely. People recognise the pattern and they understand that systems built on dehumanisation rarely stop at their original targets.

And what’s more, what happens in the United States rarely stays there.

US migration policy has long shaped regional and global approaches. Policy, tactics and enforcement models developed in the US often have a ripple effect elsewhere, particularly across the region.

One of the most damaging examples of this trend is ‘externalisation’ – an approach where responsibility for migration control is pushed beyond a country’s borders. In the US context, this has meant increasing pressure on neighbouring countries and countries in other regions to intercept, detain or return people before they ever reach US territory.

Countries across Central America and also countries in Africa are now bearing the consequences. Detention systems have expanded, and returns and third-country transfers have increased. In some cases, people are left stranded in unsafe conditions, exposed to violence, exploitation and enforced disappearance.

There are alternatives

This story is horribly familiar, but the outcome is certainly not inevitable. Across the US, in the region and beyond, people are resisting and maintaining a spotlight on alternatives.

Civil society organisations, migrant communities, legal advocates, journalists and ordinary members of the public are challenging abuses, documenting harm and pushing back in different ways. Judges have intervened, communities have organised and families have spoken out.

For decades, IDC and our members have been advocating for alternatives to detention that are humane, effective and far less costly. These include community-based accommodation, case management, access to legal advice, healthcare, education and social support.

These approaches work because they treat people as participants in a process, not as problems to be contained. They keep families and communities together, and they support compliance with immigration procedures.

IDC works with a global network of organisations and individuals advancing these solutions in real-world contexts. And this perspective matters – it allows lessons to travel in a different direction, from evidence and practice rather than fear and force.

The United States stands at a crossroads. The choices being made now will shape not only its own migration system, but the direction of migration governance worldwide.

Will detention continue to expand as a tool of spectacle and control or will governments invest in approaches grounded in evidence? The answer matters to millions of people, and it matters to the kind of societies we build for the future.

What happens next will be shaped by public scrutiny, solidarity and the willingness to choose a better future – one in which migration governance holds human rights, dignity and justice at its very core.