Document Type
Article
Publication Date
9-2025
ISSN
0006-8047
Publisher
Boston University School of Law
Language
en-US
Abstract
The final Immigration and Customs Enforcement (“ICE”) detainees were released from the Irwin County Detention Center in early September 2021.2 A court did not order the end of ICE detention at Irwin. A social movement, led by people detained at Irwin, had a pronounced impact on the epistemological landscape and changed both normative principles and public opinion.3 Those detained at Irwin organized and acted to create new understanding of law and protect their rights in ways that courts and legislatures could not. This Essay tells the story of that demosprudential project; a dialectic between legal elites and people detained at Irwin that, I argue, can help dislodge sticky priors that dim the horizon of what is possible; indeed, I suggest that this project can help end ICE detention. Looking back on the closure of Irwin and the work people did there, one formerly detained woman reflected, “though many people say [closure of ICE detention centers is] not possible, I say it is possible.”4 This Essay tries to tell part of that story...
...Using the organizing and activism that took place at Irwin as a case study, this Essay explores the demosprudential project of organizing for abolition in ICE custody and the ways in which directly impacted communities—including those in and around Irwin—“restructured the politics of the possible”19 to create space for what might be achievable if justice were to be made real.20 This Essay explores how the social movement within, and around, Irwin was able to make and interpret law in ways that are distinct—and often undervalued—as compared to the role played by lawyers, judges, and legislators.
Too often the legal community has relied upon the narrative that lawyers and judges are the purveyors of social change. This Essay emphasizes not just the ways in which those inside and around Irwin were able to imagine and advance social change, but also the democracy enhancing potential of that work.
This Essay builds on the idea of “immigration disobedience” advanced by Jennifer Lee.22 Lee explains that immigration disobedience falls into three categories: direct action, deportation resistance, and hunger strikes.23 As Lee tells it, activists “use immigration disobedience to create new spaces of contestation.”24 Bypassing traditional institutional channels, immigrants act as political agents to help shape the agenda, “shifting the existing discourse about legal reform.”25
Not only are immigrants acting as political agents, but, I argue, immigrant activists are mobilizing to protect their rights in ways that traditional lawyering cannot and in ways that have a democracy enhancing effect. Ultimately, I argue that, in the case of Irwin: (1) the women’s participation had a democracy-enhancing impact, insofar as it opened up space for them to participate in decisions that shaped their lives; (2) the work, organizing and advocacy of the women inside provided additional sources of both accountability and authority; and (3) durable social change is neither produced nor sustained through litigation.
Theorist and legal scholar Lani Guinier asks us to “focus on the ways in which movement activists and a mobilized community can change thinking about the content of law and thus the horizon of the possible and sustainable.”26 This Essay contributes to the growing scholarship around demosprudence, abolition, and organizing by articulating the ways in which the women inside Irwin and the organizers acting in coalition with them changed one group of lawyers’ thinking—and community thinking—both about what was possible and what constituted justice.27
Recommended Citation
Sarah R. Sherman-Stokes,
Organizing for Abolition in ICE Custody
,
105
Boston University Law Review
1557
(2025).
Available at:
https://scholarship.law.bu.edu/faculty_scholarship/4227
Included in
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Comments
From the BULR Symposium: The Past, Present, and Future of U.S. Immigration Law