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On March 24, 2020, a 31-year-old Mexican national in Bergen County Jail, New Jersey, became the first federal immigration detainee to test positive for the novel coronavirus (COVID-19). By April 10, 2020, New Jersey had more confirmed COVID-19 cases among immigration detainees than any other state in the nation. This article examines the relationship between COVID-19 and processes of migrant detention and deportation through a case study of New Jersey — an early epicenter of the pandemic and part of the broader New York City metro area. Drawing on publicly available reports and in-depth interviews with wardens, immigration lawyers, advocates, and former detainees, we describe the initial COVID-19 response in four detention facilities in New Jersey. Our findings suggest that migrant detention and deportation present distinct challenges that undermine attempts to contain the spread of COVID-19. We provide testimonies from migrant detainees who speak to these challenges in unsettling personal terms. Our interviews highlight the insufficient actions by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to contain the spread of the pandemic and a troubling lack of due process in immigration court proceedings. Based on these findings, we argue that reducing the number of migrants detained in the United States is needed not only in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic but also as a preventative measure for future health crises. Reductions can be achieved, in part, by reforming federal immigration laws on “mandatory detention.”

Contents List of Figures ix Acknowledgments xi Introduction 1 Part I. Cosmopolitan Desires 1. Salir Adelante: Migration, Travel, and Aspirational Economies in the Central Andes 43 2. Paper Fixes: The Making of Mobile Subjects in Peru's Migration Industry 73 Part II. Transnational Socialities 3. Remote Sensing: Structures of Feeling in Long-Distance Communication 105 4. Unfortunate Visibilities: The Transnational Circulation of Image-Objects 141 Part III. Discrepant Publics 5. Enframing Peruvianness: Folkloric Citizenship and Immigrant Personhood 177 6. Phantom Citizens in El Quinto Suyo 209 Conclusion 231 Notes 247 Bibliography 263 Index 293 About the Author 304

A variety of phenomena including mass migrations, diasporas, dual citizenship arrangements, neoliberal economic reforms and global social justice movements have since the 1970s produced shifting boundaries and meanings of citizenship within and beyond the Americas. This special issue builds upon, but also extends, prior discussions on transnational citizenship, by situating new practices of ‘immigrant’ and ‘emigrant’ citizenship and the policies that both facilitate and delimit them in a broader political–economic context and accounts for how new forms of neoliberal governance shape such practices. The essays included here draw from a range of disciplines and inter-disciplinary perspectives that focus on migration between the United States and countries in Latin America and the Caribbean which in recent years have been transformed into ‘emigrant states.’

Since the 1980s, political instability and national and global economic crisis have increasingly undermined the ability of the Peruvian state to maintain a viable national economy and sustain its population. The past decade has seen efforts by the state to reclaim emigrant citizens and facilitate their incorporation into a redefined Peruvian nation that extends beyond the country’s borders. Examination of two instances of the struggle over extraterritorial membership and the processes of inclusion and exclusion emerging from this struggle suggests that by extending both symbolic and material membership to the emigrant population the Peruvian state is restructuring and reconceptualizing itself in the context of a changing global economy.

This article takes its point of departure in an incident of communal violence in the rural Peruvian community of Urcumarca to discuss the transnational political engagements of a group of Andean migrants from this community based in Maryland and Washington DC. As inhabitants of rural Peru, only a few Urcumarquinos have historically exercised full citizenship in their country of origin prior to migration. It is argued that, while the particular incidence of economically supporting the legal process following the violent incident in Urcumarca may be taken as evidence of the development of ‘diasporic citizenship’ among US-based migrants, it is important to understand such political practices as a continuation of local struggles against economic and juridical marginalisation within Peru.