Caged: The Inhumanity of America's Immigration Detention System

Caged: The Inhumanity of America's Immigration Detention System exposes the brutal reality behind America's $3 billion immigration detention apparatus-a sprawling network of over 220 facilities that has become a machine for converting human suffering into corporate profits. Through meticulous research and documented case studies, this book reveals how a system supposedly designed for civil immigration processing has evolved into something far more sinister: a regime of systematic abuse, medical neglect, sexual violence, and psychological torture.

From preventable deaths in overcrowded facilities to children separated from parents for corporate gain, from sexual assault by staff to the torture of prolonged solitary confinement, author Daniel Payne documents how 95% of deaths in immigration detention could have been prevented with adequate medical care, how over 1,200 sexual abuse complaints have been systematically ignored, and how private prison companies have built billion-dollar empires by warehousing vulnerable human beings in conditions that violate every principle of human dignity.

Based on government documents, investigative reports, legal filings, and firsthand accounts from survivors and their families, Caged demonstrates that the immigration detention system fails by every measure-costing more than effective alternatives while achieving worse outcomes and inflicting immeasurable trauma on individuals, families, and communities. This is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand how America's immigration system actually works, what it costs in human and economic terms, and why fundamental reform is both urgent and achievable.

A powerful indictment of a system that has lost its way, Caged is ultimately a call for justice, accountability, and the restoration of human dignity to American immigration policy.