Joao Velloso (English and French)
Associate Professor, Faculty of Law - Common Law Section
[email protected]
Professor Velloso's expertise includes immigration and security and access to justice in detention and carceral governance.
"This detention centre is not the import issue; the main issue is how they are building a revolving door for deportation with a capacity for 3,000 people integrated to an airstrip with capacity for jet flights (including supersonic – Concorde style). We are not talking about a maximum security prison, but an administrative detention centre that will do triage for deportation. People will stay there as little as possible until they leave the cell to a plane within the same detention complex. It’s a holding facility to streamline deportation. This "Alligator Alcatraz" is just populism and absurdity."
Christina Clark-Kazak (English and French)
Full Professor, Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, Faculty of Social Sciences
[email protected]
Professor Clark-Kazak is the author of the book Migration and Racialization in Times of “Crisis”: The Making of Crisesand their Effects which explores the colonial, racist, and sexist forces behind various declarations of crisis, as well as their effects.
The state of crisis appears to be a condition for the maintenance of racial and patriarchal capitalism, however, the urgency inherent in the idea of crisis often leads to the legitimization of rights violations and arbitrary arrests, making visible the control that the state exercises over individuals, and especially over certain individuals.
"Immigration detention should only be used as a measure of last resort, not as a deterrence strategy. While the Trump administration is hoping that this new detention facility will encourage people to “self-deport,” research shows that "crimmigration" measures like this are counterproductive, driving people underground into more precarious situations."