Stanley-Eric-Captive-Genders-Trans-Embodiment-and-Prison-Industrial-Complex

How to Make Prisons DisappearServed with an order to leave the country in December, Padilla andhis friends set about drumming up public support for him. Finally, at thelast minute and after a long and sustained media campaign, with the helpof thousands of individuals and many activist groups, including GenderJUST (of which I am a member), Padilla gained a one-year deferment ofhis deportation. If deported, he would have had to return to a country hehad not visited since his departure and be separated from his parents andsiblings. If he had resisted deportation, he would have been arrested anddetained, possibly indefinitely, or flown out of the country.In contrast, Tan brought her citizen partner (Mercado is originallyfrom the Philippines but a naturalized citizen) and her two sons, nativebornUS citizens, to the hearing. They were even featured in a Peoplemagazine two-page spread, which included photos of the family in theircomfortable Pacifica home (Mercado works in the information technologyindustry, and the family is well off). Padilla, worried about his undocumentedparents, did not and does not discuss them. In an interview,he politely declined to tell me anything about them, concerned that theslightest detail might provide ICE with clues as to their whereabouts.While the coverage about Tan emphasized the possible pain of separationfrom her family, little was said about the pain that Padilla’s familymight feel at seeing him taken away from them. Tan, despite her undocumentedstatus, garnered enough attention that Senator Diane Feinsteinsponsored a private bill in her name. Illinois US State Representative JanSchakowsky also introduced a private bill for Padilla, but this came muchlater, in the fall of 2009. 5How do we account for two such diametrically opposed accountsand experiences of undocumented immigrants? How is it that Padilla,who is not queer, was treated with disdain, at least initially (and he stillelicits the ire of many), while Tan, an out lesbian with a significantlybutch and consequently gender-non-conforming partner was able to flyto Washington, D.C. and address a bevy of senators? If we are to followthe established logic of the heteronormative state, it is Tan who shouldhave been vilified as a lesbian and undocumented immigrant. Why didshe instead get the kind of special treatment accorded to her?The exceptional treatment accorded to Shirley Tan is symptomatic ofthe ways in which the issue of LGBT immigration separates some gay andlesbian identities (and to a much lesser extent trans people), the kind thatare recognizable as synonymous with class and privilege, from immigrantidentities. In addition, this separation renders prison invisible. Tan’s shock125