The Business of Migrant Detention

Throughline

NPR

Society & Culture, History, Documentary

4.7 • 15K Ratings

🗓️ 18 September 2025

⏱️ 52 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The U.S. immigration detention system is spread out across federal facilities, private prisons, state prisons, and county jails. It’s grown under both Democratic and Republican presidents. And it’s been offered up as a source of revenue for over a century, beginning with the first contracts between the federal government and sheriffs along the Canadian border.

Guests:

Brianna Nofil, assistant professor of history at The College of William and Mary author of The Migrant's Jail: An American History of Mass Incarceration

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Transcript

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0:39.4	Now, on to the show.
0:41.6	In 1903, a reporter named Pultene Bigelow stumbled across a story in upstate New York.
0:48.5	The part of New York, that is right along the Canadian border.
0:52.8	A rural town in Franklin County called Malone, where he starts talking with locals.
0:59.8	And they tell him this route from Canada into northern New York has become this sort of vastly
1:06.5	underreported secret passage of illegal entry into the United States for Chinese migrants.
1:14.0	Like, why is that a pathway? Is it easier to get into Canada at that time? Yeah, it's a super
1:18.7	intentional choice. So this is about 20 years after the U.S. passes the Chinese Exclusion Act,
1:24.3	which bars Chinese laborers, basically entirely from legal immigration
1:29.2	to the United States.
1:31.1	So for many Chinese migrants who are still looking for a path in, this is one of their
1:35.4	best options.
	...

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