Abstract
Through an analysis of government documents, media sources, migrant testimonies, made objects, and acts of protest, this essay examines the impact of the United States’ indefinite detention of Mariel Cubans—and their resistance—on immigration detention policy and the rise of the carceral state during the Reagan administration. As the United States first detained Mariel Cubans on military bases and then in US prisons, Cubans continually challenged their indefinite detention and US attempts at deportation through legal, political, and poetic claims, as well as uprisings—culminating in a two-week takeover and standoff at two prisons in Atlanta and Louisiana in 1987, the longest prison uprising in US history. Throughout, the Mariel migration remained at the center of the Reagan administration’s immigration and prison policy discussions, ushering in a new era in detention and immigration restriction.
This essay also considers the role of Mariel Cuban storytelling as a powerful form of resistance to detention, and the extraordinary anti-Blackness, queerphobia, and criminalization surrounding this migrant group, then and now. It concludes by reflecting on contemporary coalitional efforts to uplift the stories of Cubans recently—or still—imprisoned, some having arrived with the Mariel Boatlift, and possibilities for abolitionist futures.