I wanted to draw attention today to the new report from the Prison Policy Initiative, with their Whole Pie of Mass Incarceration numbers for 2026. The report is available here: https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2026.html
The most striking thing in today’s report is that immigration detention accounted for essentially the entire increase in mass incarceration this year. This isn’t really a surprise, in an era of “mass deportation” when the U.S. seems to be turning toward becoming what journalist Andrea Pitzer calls “a concentration camp regime.”
But it clarified for me something which has been becoming clearer in my own thinking, which is how closely tied the struggle for immigration justice is to abolitionist struggle. Right now, immigration detention is the site to focus abolitionist organizing on. The right to migrate and move freely is the antithesis of the prison ethos. Borders that serve to keep people out and barbed wire walls to keep people in are both aiming for the same goal of separating and excluding certain classes of people from community.
I’ve been working on immigration issues recently. A policy framework for faith leaders working toward long-term change and justice, focused on abolishing ICE, reworking immigration law to welcome migrants, and truth and reconciliation processes, is here: https://sojo.net/articles/opinion/ice-must-be-abolished-can-truth-and-reconciliation-follow
And I’m also helping edit the Migration With Dignity Lectionary project for the Episcopal Migration Caucus (following the pattern of our Abolition Lectionary project here). You can find that, and subscribe to it, here: https://episcopal-migration-caucus.ghost.io/