Making Invisible Carceral Spaces Visible: Immigration, Detention, and Activism inside the El Centro INS Service Processing Center

About the paper

This paper explores a hunger strike that took place inside of the El Centro SPC in 1985. Using the hunger strike as a case study allowed her to start charting how undocumented detainees have historically made claims on the state within a transnational context. 
 

Jessica Ordaz 
Ph.D. Candidate, History, UC Davis

Jessica Ordaz is specializing in Chicana/o history, immigration, and the carceral system. Her work seeks to historicize immigrant detention centers in the United States post-1952. She investigates how undocumented and incarcerated immigrants make claims on the state.