Metrics
5 File views/ downloads
47 Record Views
Journal article
A Snapshot of Immigration Court at Stewart Detention Center: How Social Workers Can Advocate & Advance Social Justice Efforts in the United States
Critical social work: an interdisciplinary journal dedicated to social justice, Vol.20(1), pp.46-65
07/01/2019
Abstract
Changes to U.S. immigration policy have implications for social work, owing to the ethics-based foundation of the profession. The twin purposes of this mixed-methods case study are to describe the detainment and deportation processes, and their implementation at the Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, Georgia (notorious for its disparately high rate of deportation); and, to discuss social work’s ethical role in relation to immigrant populations and immigration policy issues. To achieve analysis, we collected data at the Stewart Detention Center, directly observing a sample of 39 immigration court hearings across 4 separate time points between June and September of 2018. We use univariate statistics to describe the sample in terms of hearing duration, demographics of detained persons, characteristics of judge and attorney interactions, removability charges, and hearing outcomes. Our analysis includes mappings of 2 courtrooms and a thick and rich narrative description of our first trip to the Stewart Detention Center in June, 2018. Identified themes across court observations include: (a) lack of uniformity in process, (b) adoption of criminal justice norms and procedures without inclusion of protective factors, (c) layers and barriers to communication that present as isolating, and (d) a seeming emphasis placed on the voluntary departure option. We conclude with a discussion of implications for social work and respective recommendations for engagement.
Files and links (2)
Related links
Details
- Title
- A Snapshot of Immigration Court at Stewart Detention Center
- Publication Details
- Critical social work: an interdisciplinary journal dedicated to social justice, Vol.20(1), pp.46-65
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Publisher
- University of Windsor * School of Social Work; Canada
- Format
- link
- Copyright
- Copyright is held by Critical Social Work and works are published with a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 4.0 license.
- Identifiers
- 99380464595606600
- Academic Unit
- Social Work
- Language
- English