The Biopolitics of Forced Sterilizations: An Insight Into The U.S. Detention Centers

Fig.1 Editorial Credit: Julian Leshay/ Shutterstock.com

The United States has a long history of racism and xenophobia, which is often reflected in the brutal treatment of immigrants in its detention centers. These strong feelings of racism gave rise to the 20th century Eugenics movement in the United States, which is an immoral method employed by authorities to regulate populations and eliminate the social 'others', typically through state-sponsored mechanisms such as forced sterilization. Much of this structural violence stems from the assumption that a perfect gene is that of a white male body, with the rest deemed unfit or an ‘existential threat’ to the white body, resulting in severe discrimination against non-whites, mentally ill, and disabled bodies. Initially the eugenic ideology was seen as a tool to prevent the black population from continuing their kind but over the past few years, it has influenced the US state’s policies towards detained immigrants by asserting a control over their reproductive choices. This blog post seeks to understand the nature in which this securitization practice manifests itself by analyzing it in a threefold manner. 

In the summer of 2020, the Irwin County Detention Center in Georgia came under tight scrutiny when a whistleblower revealed that the doctors working in the detention center performed involuntary sterilization on migrant women at the behest of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). According to the Securitization theory, powerful actors or states present something to be an existential threat through the means of speech acts (Waever 6,1995). The Trump administration often used speech acts to frame immigrants as threats in unique ways. In his speeches, Trump claimed that there have been over a dozen instances of immigrants who entered the country lawfully, frequently by petitioning for and obtaining citizenship, and then afterwards planned, with success, to kill Americans. He gave the following countries as examples: Somalia, Morocco, Yemen, Syria, Afghanistan, the Philippines, Iraq, Pakistan, and Uzbekistan. In one of his announcement speeches in 2015, Trump described illegal Mexican immigrants as rapists and criminals (Johnson).

Such efforts are targeted towards garnering support from the majority supporters and legitimizing violent means carried out by the state to repress any form of dissent. In this instance, forced sterilization of immigrant women is portrayed as a demographic threat to United States’s national security and cultural integrity, with authorities justifying coercive actions as necessary to protect the state interests. Detention centers are sites of mass surveillance where detainees are subjected to numerous civil and human rights violations. These centers lack adequate healthcare facilities and reinforce discriminatory practices against minority populations particularly Latinx, Black, and indigenous people who are framed as potential security risks by the US state.  

Fig.2 Family members and supporters of detainees at the Adelanto Immigration Detention Center hold signs in front of the Los Angeles Federal Building during a news conference to begin a hunger strike protesting the alleged ``horrific and scary’’ conditions in the facility on Wednesday, Sept. 30, 2020 in Los Angeles, CA.

(Brian van der Brug/Los Angeles Times)

Lene Hansen’s feminist critique of the Copenhagen School focuses on the gendered dimensions of the security discourse and practice. The physicality of events, in detention centers where coercive violence like forced sterilization takes place, constantly illustrates the plight and gendered insecurities of immigrant women. Their interactions with the securitization process can be seen as indicators of the US state’s larger political agenda. Hansen argues that there is a need to make the securitization theory more inclusive by broadening its definition such as encompassing experiences of those who are silenced (Hansen, 2000).

In traditional security studies, women’s experiences and lived realities are often overlooked or silenced by the agents of the government. Hence, female individuals’ interests are always put second to that of the state, eventually resulting in either women not speaking up for themselves or the state apparatus silencing them. The state takes their reproductive rights away considering them as disposable. The feminist framework encourages us to look at the patriarchal nature of the violence faced by these women. The act of forced sterilizations represents an infringement on women’s autonomy as they transform from political actors into subjects under state control. Moreover, it makes one of the most fundamental aspects of being a woman- her body- into a tool for erasing one’s race, ethnicity, or nationality. Such an intersectional lens helps us delve deeper into the narrative and focus on the oppression fueled by the masculine norms of the society. 

Fig.3 An image from one of the ICE's Detention Center

Drawing on Michel Foucault's notion of biopolitics, which suggests a tool of governance in which the state controls the population and their bodies, the case study demonstrates how women's bodies become the focal point of analysis and suffer the burden of regulations imposed by authorities. The term “governmentality” used by Foucault refers to disciplining of the bodies to the point that an individual's autonomy is threatened as they become a mere instrument to serve state interests (Foucault, 2000). A notable example of the state's use of biopower in this context is the scientists, doctors and state officials heavily investing in producing cutting-edge technology to control females’ reproductive choices without their consent in the name of state security. The state engages in such performative activities by capitalizing on the fear of these immigrant women in order to establish authority, communicate a message of control and preserve their security. The concept of ‘Necro-politics’ coined by Achille Mbembe, which describes the state's power to determine who lives and who dies by controlling populations through oppressive means that lead to death, is evident in ICE's efforts to involuntarily sterilize certain detainees based on their ethnicities (Mbembe 3003). The intention to maintain hegemonic power structures and the superiority of the white body is clear here, allowing for discrimination and the elimination of the ‘deviant’ others. Jeremy Bentham's concept of a Panopticon fits perfectly into this narrative since in the Georgia prison, power is centralized in the sense that the ones having all the power are the security, the guards, the wardens, the judges and the state while the ones being watched over remain powerless. From the PARIS school’s perspective, security and insecurity do not work in isolation but are constantly influencing each other since they believe that it is relative in nature.

Thus, the securitization theory and its feminist critique assist us in analyzing how targeted sterilizations can be turned into a threat to national security by the authorities in power eventually creating severe insecurities for the immigrant women. 

Works Cited

 Hansen, Lene. 2000. “The Little Mermaid’s Silent Security Dilemma and the Absence of Gender in the Copenhagen School.” Millennium 29 (2): 285–306. https://doi.org/10.1177/03058298000290020501

Foucault, Michel. 1978. The History of Sexuality. Print. Book. Translated by Robert Hurley and Random House, Inc. Volume I: An Introduction. Pantheon 

Wæver, Ole. Securitization and desecuritization. Vol. 5. Copenhagen: Centre for Peace and Conflict Research, 1993.

Mbembe, Achille. "Necropolitics." In Foucault in an Age of Terror: Essays on Biopolitics and the Defence of Society, pp. 152-182. London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2008.

Johnson, Jenna. “Donald Trump Now Says Even Legal Immigrants Are a Security Threat. Washington Post, 5 Aug. 2015, www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/08/05/donald-trump-now-says-even-legal-immigrants-are-a-security-threat/.