Book Review: ‘In the Shadow of Liberty,’ by Ana Raquel Minian

Of Minian’s principal subjects, only one, Mansur, was detained after being accused a crime: possessing marijuana, in his case, less than an ounce. He and his wife, a fellow Cuban immigrant, were arrested and separated from each other and from their two young children, who were put in foster care. Fu, despite his valiant efforts to protect American missionaries in China and despite having received an invitation to study at Oberlin College, was detained over issues with his paperwork, the details of which were apparently never made clear to him. Knauff was locked up at Ellis Island not knowing why or for how long she would be held there; a few months later, she learned that American officials suspected her of being a spy, a rumor started by her husband’s ex-girlfriend. In August 2018, Arredondo was sent back to Guatemala; the government had disobeyed a judge’s order and deported him.

How is any of this possible? Minian gives a short explainer on what’s known as the “entry fiction,” the doctrine that migrants who land on American soil are not actually in the country proper but are in an “extraterritorial limbo” that is an extension of the border. The same goes for detention sites, a number of which are “deep in the heartland,” or, as in the case of Guantánamo, are categorically under American control. While migrants are detained, “they are treated as if they are not here,” Minian writes. “Since they are ‘not here,’ detainees are not guaranteed basic constitutional protections — even when subjected to the laws and forces of the state.”

“Here” but “not here” — this legal no-man’s-land means that migrants who have been wrongfully detained have often had to rely on media attention to publicize their plight. Minian’s book is dotted with examples of American citizens recoiling once they learned that their government was detaining people in a manner that seemed dismayingly redolent of an authoritarian regime. For more than a quarter century, from 1954 to 1980, American officials turned away from detention, toward what one described at the time as a more “humane administration of immigration laws.” The rivalry of the Cold War helped, forcing Americans to recognize that the country’s reputation was at stake. But public opinion soured after the Mariel boat lift, Minian says, when the Reagan administration reintroduced detention in 1981 — not just as a matter of policy, but as a form of deterrence.

“In the Shadow of Liberty” is an effort at moral suasion, written with the explicit purpose of moving readers to pay attention to the cruelty that is meted out in their name. In the book’s acknowledgments, Minian thanks the historian Jill Lepore, “who suggested I write this book in the first place and taught me the importance of narrative.” Storytelling allows Minian to convey the physical and emotional toll of detention with potent specificity. The result is a book-length plea against dehumanization, at least for those who are willing to listen.

IN THE SHADOW OF LIBERTY: The Invisible History of Immigrant Detention in the United States | By Ana Raquel Minian | Penguin Press | 367 pp. | $32