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

How to Make Prisons Disappearwhat documentation she was to use from there on—especially since withoutsuch, she would not have been able to travel outside the country, oreven within it under some circumstances. It is not unusual for people to ignorethe letters of deportation and simply not show up for their departure.My point here is not to expose Tan as a liar. The current immigrationsystem is set up to exploit and terrorize the undocumented who arehere in such large numbers because the US economy is sustained on andencourages the development of a pool of exploitable and cheap labor. Thesystem is set up so that people like Tan and others are compelled to lie andobfuscate their origins in order to survive. In this context, defining someimmigrants as more or less honest than others does nothing to addressthe fact that it is the state, with its willingness to dehumanize and exploitthose it deems expendable, that commits atrocities beyond mere lies.I’m pointing to the fact that even under senatorial scrutiny, the verifiabletruth of her account was less important than the construction ofa supposedly authentic narrative about her honesty and uprightness asa citizen—unmarred except for the fact that she was not a citizen. Thatauthenticity involved purging the possibility of prison or any evidenceof wrongdoing, of not having “respected” the judicial system. It also involvedexplicating her lesbianism within contained terms (by clarifyingthat most of their friends were heterosexual couples) and demonstratingher adherence to the kind of gender roles that could legitimize her family.Where ordinarily her partner’s butch self-presentation might have proveda liability, in this case they were able to use it as an advantage. Mercadoemerged as the manly figure who protected Tan, supported her financially,and provided food and shelter for the family. At the same time, like thestereotypical male, Mercado was declared unable to perform basic householdchores while also working—this, despite the fact that she was clearlysocialized as female. 8Tan’s version of what happened to her hides the brutal reality ofundocumented life, transmogrifying it into an ethereal suburban paradiseshattered only by the unexpected visit from ICE. But for millions of daylaborers and factory workers, and countless trans/queer sex workers, lifeis a constant climate of fear and surveillance, with exploitative jobs forwhich employers can underpay, threatening to turn them over to ICE ifthey complain about wages or mistreatment.Tan’s testimony is quite typical of the discourse around LGBT immigration,which has, in recent years, been distilled down to just one issue:that of lovelorn US citizens or permanent residents needing to be with129