Anti-ICE protesters rally outside the Delaney Hall ICE detention facility in Newark, New Jersey, on June 3, 2026.
(Selcuk Acar / Anadolu via Getty Images)
“The first and crucial step to closing a camp is being against the camp. Not a camp, not that camp, not a newly proposed camp or this particularly atrocious camp. But against camp as concept, against camp as practice—against all camps. Against locking people up because of where they were born or where they are.”
This is the thesis of How to Close a Camp: Dispatches from the Fight Against Immigrant Detention, by John Washington. Washington is a longtime reporter on the border and immigration detention, and he joined us to discuss what we can learn from the organizers and activists who’ve been leading the fight against America’s expanding network of immigration camps—and why these mechanisms for indefinite detention without the benefit of due process or trial by jury are obviously the infrastructure of authoritarianism.
And here’s Aaron’s review of the book for The New Republic.
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Jonathan Smucker
Jonathan Smucker is cofounder and executive director of Popular Comms, a cofounder of Pennsylvania Stands Up, and the author of Hegemony How-To: A Roadmap for Radicals. He has worked for over 25 years as a political organizer, campaigner, and strategist, and has trained thousands of organizers and social movement participants.
Matt DaSilva
Matt DaSilva is a co-host of the Fighting Fascism podcast.
Aaron Regunberg
Aaron Regunberg is a climate lawyer, a contributing editor at The New Republic, and a former Rhode Island state representative.
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