Targeted: National Security and the Business of Immigration

Fortress America : the Kafkaesque US homeland security system is exposed. America has always portrayed itself as a country of immigrants, welcoming each year the millions seeking a new home or refuge in this land of plenty. Increasingly, instead of finding their dream, many encounter a nightmare - a country whose cultural and legal system aggressively target and prosecute them. Here, journalist Deepa Fernandes seamlessly weaves together history, political analysis and first-person narratives of those caught in the grips of the increasingly Kafkaesque US Homeland Security system. She documents how in post-9/11 America immigrants have come to be deemed a national security threat. Fernandes, herself an immigrant well-acquainted with US immigration procedures, takes the reader on a harrowing journey inside the new American immigrant experience, a journey marked by militarised border zones, racist profiling, criminalisation, detention and deportation. She argues that since 9/11, the Bush administration has been carrying out a series of systematic changes to decades-old immigration policy that constitute a roll back of immigrant rights and a boon for businesses who are helping to enforce the crackdown on immigrants, creating a growing Immigration Industrial Complex . She also documents the bullet-to-ballot strategy of white supremacist elements that influence the new American immigration legislation.