Abolish or Adapt

The increasing migration of women, children, and transgender folks and the mobilizations against their detention have prompted immigration authorities to pivot and incorporate gender-responsive approaches to reframe the US immigration system as a humanitarian bureaucratic institution and not a site of neglect and death. This essay reviews three strategies that exemplify how immigration officials appropriated concerns to reclaim authority over the detention of transgender migrants at a time when their capacity was being called into question. These strategies include the hiring of an LGBTI public advocate for Enforcement and Removal Operations, the creation and issuance of transgender guidance and training, and the establishment of transgender pods. Drawing on a range of primary source materials, such as ICE employees’ public statements, training manuals, NGO reports, and newspaper accounts, this article shows how these strategies are part of a coordinated effort to pinkwash immigrant detention. Through this analysis, the author argues that pinkwashing was central to rehabilitating ICE's public image as caring and responsive and has been mobilized to expand detention. By doing so, the author shows the ways immigration enforcement is contributing to the growth of an emerging regime of carceral humanism.