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When first seeing this image I am one enranged/annoyed/frustrated. The violence against undocumented people and the racist policing mechanisms that incacerate them become invisible and are obscured as one views an image that could be a craiglist add for an apartment buidling. The toxicity becomes clear in the spatial removal of undocmented people from a metropole. The California desert becomes a mechanism for control and isolation. Additionally, as stated, the lack of bodies and context makes the images and the policing mechanisms in which these images represent seem rather benign.

The aseptic aspect of the facility in the pictures is what most calls my attention. This neatness stands at great odds with the dubious, illegal, conflicting, murky reality of migrant lives. It all seems accessible and, in many ways, even comfortable. Yet, the pictures purposefully leave outside any images that show this is a detention center. Cells are ironically called “east/west housing” -this is no housing; this is a place of abandonment.