Silky Shah

Silky Shah, Executive Director of the Detention Watch Network and a prominent voice in immigrant justice, shares her decades-long battle against ICE. She discusses the evolution of immigration detention since the 1980s and how legal changes fueled its growth. Silky highlights the mixed emotions of hope and fear surrounding detention deaths and calls for strategic collaboration between lawyers and organizers. She advocates for a world beyond ICE, emphasizing investments in housing and healthcare instead of enforcement, and finds inspiration in grassroots movements.

Laura Whitehorn, a longtime organizer and former political prisoner, joins Silky Shah, the Executive Director of Detention Watch Network, and Nadia Ben-Youssef, Advocacy Director at the Center for Constitutional Rights. They discuss the increasing normalization of harsh punitive systems, particularly against marginalized communities. The panel offers insights on solidarity in activism, the brutal realities of immigration detention, and the need to unlearn punitive narratives. They emphasize that true solidarity can act as a powerful form of resistance and joy amidst ongoing struggles.

Harsha Walia, lawyer and organizer focused on migrant justice and anti-imperialism, and Silky Shah, detention abolition leader and author, explore immigration policing as a pillar of racial capitalism. They unpack enforcement expansion, detention warehousing, local impacts in Minneapolis, and strategies like mutual aid, narrative work, and international solidarity to make borders obsolete.