Timeline of Detention in the So Called United States

We are a bicultural family of chocolate makers and our lives regularly cross the political border between the so called United States and what is now known as Mexico. All chocolate is made with cacao beans that themselves cross the border in order to be transformed for the enjoyment of the US market and this fact is not lost on us. That is why we stand in solidarity with the movement to end family detention and the work to decriminalize immigration, to work towards a borderless world in which not only delicious food is welcomed but the human beings that grew that food are honored as well. We believe that the best way to address problems no matter the scale is to understand their context and history. It is in this spirit that we share a brief timeline of the detention practices in what is now known as the United States of America.

Capitalist Foundations in Slavery and Forced Labor

1508 - Spanish colonists began enslaving the indigenous Taino people in what is now Puerto Rico, using them as labor power to produce good for export back to Spain.

16th -17th Centuries - Spanish colonized Florida became a major center for the business of buying and selling enslaved peoples.

1641 - Massachusetts became the first British colony to legalize the sale and purchase of human beings.

1662 - Virginia further legalized the business of enslaving people, announcing that any children born in the colony would take on the status of the mother (regardless of the status of the father) and children were born as property, enslaved from birth.

1670-1715 - Financial records document at least 51,000 indigenous people living in what is now South Carolina were enslaved and sold as property.

1724 - Louisiana, a French colony, enforces ‘Code Noir’ a set of regulations legitimizing and codifying the economic trade of enslaved peoples.

1789 - The US constitution announces it will preserve the legality of the slaving business for an additional 20 years after ratification, protecting financial interests over human rights.

Legalizing Racist Imprisonment and Kidnapping

1830 - Indian Removal Act legalizing the forced removal & ‘deportation’ of Cherokee, Muscogee, Seminole, Chicksaw, Chocktaw and Ponca nations from their ancestral land.

1850 - The Fugitive Slave Act further legitimizes the captivity of human beings and creates an official business sector that profits from the kidnapping and transfer of people.

1865 - Passage of the 13th Amendment officially claims to end slavery except in the case of imprisoned people, further developing the prison labor system and lays foundations for the prison industrial complex.

1882 - The Chinese Exclusion Act creates the first federally paid positions for immigrant enforcement, detention and deportation. Specifically prohibiting Chinese laborers from immigrating & this was the first official immigration policy based on race.

1887 - The Dawes Act forcibly created borders, dividing indigenous land into ‘private’ land holdings that were then manipulated by the US government.

1893 - Fong Yue Ting v. The United States is a Supreme Court case that confirms the governments rights to expel immigrants (this is the ‘plenary power’ doctrine) it declared that deportation was not a punishment and so those being deported were not protected by the constitution.

1892 - Ellis Island Immigration Station in New Jersey was opened, the very first immigrant detention facility.

1893 - The first laws requiring immigrants be forcibly detained, some white immigrants wee allowed freedom based on a financial bond system.

Militarization of the Border

1904 - Hired guards working for the US Department of Commerce and Labor began campaigns of militarization at the southern border between the US and Mexico.

1924 - American Indian Citizen Act entered native people into the financial system of paying taxes on earned income.

1929 - The Undesirable Aliens Act specifically targeted Mexicans and developed official “Port of Entries” for authorized border entries. Crossing at other points led to financial punishment through fines and jail time in brand new prisons built along the border.

1942 - President Franklin D. Roosevelt established US military internment camps incarcerating 120,000 Japanese-Americans - 62% were citizens.

1946 - The School of the Americas (SOA) is formed as a military product with an agenda to exert imperialistic influence, weapons and training are sold all over Latin America.

1954-1956 - Operation Wetback deports over 1,000,000 Mexicans, many of whom had arrived by invitation under the Bracero Program in which Mexicans were encouraged to immigrate during the war to fill agricultural industry labor shortages.

Profit Prisons and Economic Warfare

1971 - War on Drugs campaigns led with military aid and intervention further militarized the border and destabilized societies targeted by the US as a result of the increasingly complicated agenda of dependency and debt.

1980 -1981 - Mass immigration detentions of Cubans, Haitians and Central Americans in the US as thousands of displaced people across the region flee totalitarian governments and civil war as a result of the ‘successful sales’ of the School of the Americas.

1983 - The first private prison company was formed and is hired by the US government to detain immigrants at a facility in Texas. Immigration policy emulating the criminal justice system advances.

1991 - An immigration detention facility at he US Naval Base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba is opened and is used to detain asylum seekers, refugees and later those loosely considered by the state to be prisoners of war.

1994 - NAFTA is signed and has resulted in long term job loss, economic stagnancy and the displacement of Mexican small farmers - many of whom became industrial laborers at factories set up along the US / Mexico border.

The Immigration Industry Expands

1994 - Operation Gatekeeper doubled the patrol officer positions at the border and contracted the construction of 5 miles of wall along the US/Mexico border.

1996 - A set of laws were enacted to expand the definition of “crimes of moral turpitude” including non-violent drug charges & both legal immigrants and undocumented non-citizens are subjected to mandatory detention and deportation. These laws are even applied retroactively.

1996 - Operation Disrupt increased federal spending on consular offices and immigration departments in foreign countries intended to apprehend undocumented migrants in these countries before they made it to the US border.

2001 - The Patriot Act expands surveillance capacities and heightens its targeting of immigrants based on race for detention.

2003 - Department of Homeland Security dissolves the former Immigration and Naturalization Services (INS) and expands into three federally funded departments; US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) which is now responsible for detainment.

Obama and Trump Administrations

2009 - The Obama administration temporarily ends family detention - except for funding the notoriously well documented human rights abusing Berks Family Detention Center.

2011 - Secure Communities & Criminal Alien Program encourages law enforcement to act on behalf of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and immigration raids increase

2012- Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) a program that provides temporary work status and relief from deportation for many immigrants who arrived as minors while simultaneously increasing the militarization of the border and targeted raids.

2014 - The Obama administration resumes the practice of family detention. By the end of his second term more than 3,000,000 people had been deported more than all other administrations in US history combined, concurrently the mechanisms for immigrant detention are expanded exponentially.

2017 - The Trump administration begins separating families seeking asylum, clearly expressed to be a punishment and to coerce them into abandoning their asylum claims.

2019 - The Trump administration officially began a ‘zero tolerance’ policy towards illegal immigration, increasing quotas* and federal budgets already at $3.1 billion dollars.

*Bed quotas or ‘guaranteed minimums’ ensure a profit-stream for private companies contracted to run detention centers and those contracted to provide medical, transportation, security, food, and other services within and between facilities.

2020 - Hundred of children separated from their families at the border are ‘lost’ into the system and hundreds more are unable to locate parents as a result of detention and deportation.

2021 - In one month (March) 172,000 people were arrested at the US-Mexico border, 19,000 were unaccompanied minors. According to a number of reports many of whom would qualify for asylum and are being detained in overcrowded for profit prisons with well documented human rights abuses.

Please visit our shop and order one of our Fortuna Tote Bags 100% of the profit is reinvested in the important work being done to end family detention and to legalize immigration.

We appreciate your solidarity.