In “Discipline and Punish,” French philosopher Michel Foucault presented a new vision for the modern-day carceral system, where prisons extend beyond bars and cells, shaping society through over-surveillance and other control mechanisms. These modern prisons, he argued, psychologically condition the convicted and normalize punishment, matching a larger cultural attitude shift against criminals. 

Originally published in 1975 and inspired by executions throughout French history, the book has chilling resonance five decades later. Since June, United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement has drastically increased its activities in Los Angeles, using fear-mongering to push ethnic neighborhoods into a special kind of carceral space. 

Foucault imagined the future social order to resemble one of extreme self-scrutiny: citizens policing themselves because they feel constantly visible. ICE’s unpredictable schemes and deployment of armed forces mimic this vision, as they are able to determine whose lives are valuable to maintain within the social body and whose can be removed.

Regardless of whether we stayed in L.A. or not this summer, many of us have seen news updates and warnings about ICE activity near USC’s campus. For students who possess the privilege of U.S. citizenship, the threat seems distant from their regular priorities. 

But the deportation campaign is festering across industries, and the disruptions it causes will hurt all Angelenos — regardless of nationality and status. California’s economy is hurting, with the sudden forced disappearances of day laborers from the manual sector.

Despite coming into contact with these cruel realities, we often glaze over the significance of this spectacle of criminalization: Across the city we inhabit and share, from MacArthur Park to downtown L.A., the areas we used to access with full liberty as students are now tools of discipline; public space is increasingly a network of control.

ICE’s tactics of spatial monitoring mirror Foucault’s “scientific supervision.” The punitive procedures of confinement aim to deprive individuals of their freedoms so they are less likely to resist or break the rules, often in covert ways. He clarified that the establishment of the new carceral institution would occur gradually, through challenging the public’s perceptions of the norms and legitimizing cruel punishment. 

The moment we stop being able to recognize the carceral city as an intentional infrastructure to shape daily life, we lose touch with the critical, conscious awareness to demand reforms or even acknowledge failures in the judicial system.  

What appears abstract and dispersed — the subtle controls — ultimately finds concrete expression in the detention itself. Hidden in plain sight, detention facilities in Southern California are marketed as “transitory centers” for those with pending immigration statuses while awaiting court actions. The largest centers are typically not in the metro region but in more suburban cities that sufficiently divert the public’s attention. 

The Adelanto ICE Processing Center is about a two-hour drive from USC, housing a population of over 1,000 detainees. Unable to communicate with the outside world, the convicted are not able to advocate for themselves as their fates fall into the hands of private corporations such as the GEO Group. 

The security companies join forces with government-owned agencies to compose the larger crackdown immigration movement, benefiting from unprecedented revenue growth of $29 million within the most recent quarter. They continue to generate profit from intrusive surveillance to maximize prison capacity. 

The discrete nature of their locations creates a legal ambiguity without procedural fairness. Those detained were often taken into captivity without reasonable suspicion and with their access to counsel denied. In addition to the lack of legal representation and due process, Angelenos’ civil rights are at stake as they experience excessive racial profiling during the unstandardized practices. 

Human rights activists have been speaking out about the conditions within the detention facilities, because, in reality, they are not merely “transitory centers” but underground penal colonies not far from USC. Ultimately, behind the disguise of arbitrary requirements and vague announcements to hinder transparency, ICE expands a carceral infrastructure that normalizes surveillance and makes the restriction of movement appear both inevitable and necessary. 

The coercive power that exists outside of the justice system itself is effectively molding the victims’ bodies into docile instruments. Elected officials found their constituents in Adelanto caged in isolation, subjected to inadequate access to food, water and hygiene, and placed in overcrowded cells without medical attention.  

ICE’s manipulation extends beyond the legal implications. Over the past few months, the constant unexpected arrests have transformed our city into a spatialized embodiment of Foucault’s punitive network. 

Rapidly developing technology deepens this control under the cover of bureaucracy. Biometric systems are now tapping into private information through facial recognition scans, cross-checking government identity databases and enabling warrantless transfers of individuals to bypass sanctuary policies. In once-lively communal hubs with high concentrations of immigrants, these methods have made mobility more precarious, especially for Hispanic-presenting residents.

More recently, the passage of a temporary restraining order blocking the indiscriminate stops and arrests of immigrants has momentarily eased the panic. Civil rights organizations began to find success in class action lawsuits through cases such as Vasquez-Perdomo v. Noem to defend the execution of the Fourth Amendment. 

However, even as local politicians attempt to solidify the city’s sanctuary status to counter ICE’s influence, the infrastructure that has existed throughout the summer will restrict where immigrants can walk, gather and live without fear. L.A. finds itself battling with the preconditions of an urban open-air prison, and the city must strengthen its protective measures to bring justice.