From the Bookshelves: How to Close a Camp: Dispatches from the Fight Against Immigrant Detention by John Washington
How to Close a Camp: Dispatches from the Fight Against Immigrant Detention by John Washington, Paperback, 224 pages, July 21, 2026
Publisher's Abstract
An urgent polemic and practical guide to dismantling the immigrant detention system
Masked federal agents are kidnapping and killing our neighbors, on the streets and behind the bars of hundreds of detention centers across the country. In How to Close a Camp, award-winning journalist and translator John Washington offers a galvanizing, clear-eyed case for why we must close these camps—and how to do it.
In spite of the decades-long growth of immigrant detention, communities have been fighting back against camps—and winning. Washington distills strategies and lessons from successful campaigns to close camps and block or slow the opening of new ones, drawing on conversations with veteran organizers from the movement.
Chipping away at the infrastructure of the camp is the only way to stave off increasing xenophobic and authoritarian violence. It is time to close all the camps and build a world that no longer requires them.
