Dr. Goodwin’s courageous and sobering Presidential Address is an urgently needed intervention today. Showing mastery of poetry, history and storytelling, Dr. Goodwin urges us to take on the question of citizenship through the lens of reproductive freedom and reproductive servitude. Instead of proposing a shiny new strategy or claiming to reinvent the wheel in the citizenship discussion, Goodwin prompts us to pause and look back for solutions relevant to today. This is a crucial exercise, as Goodwin demonstrates that many issues in reproductive rights today mirror those from the not-so-distant past. What makes her approach powerful is that she does not stop there. Instead, uncovering the past also unearths the struggles and hidden victories of women like Sojourner Truth and Ida B. Wells, who fought for progress during turbulent times. This is the brilliance of the piece: Goodwin is telling us that, just as we see the remnants of slavery and Jim and Jane Crow rearing their ugly heads today, we must also recognize the people and the battles waged to dismantle those systems. By doing so, Goodwin hopes to remind us and inspire courage today, as we learn from the bravery of yesterday.
A recurring theme throughout the piece is an exploration of two critical questions: what does it mean to be a citizen, and what does it mean to be included in a country’s vision? The answers to these questions are complex, and I do not intend to provide a simple, definitive answer. While Goodwin looks to the past to find answers about these questions related to citizenship, I want to focus on the present. Since we live in an era where the status and rights of both citizens and non-citizens are changing rapidly, I want to use this piece to shift the perspective and consider citizenship through a different lens – pretrial detention. I plan to build on Goodwin’s work and deepen the exploration of what it means to be a citizen by examining jail and the practice of pretrial detention as a space intimately connected to citizenship, yet where the treatment and boundaries between citizens and non-citizens become blurred. Specifically, what might these blurred lines reveal about the state in this political moment? And perhaps more importantly, what might they reveal about sites of solidarity for both citizens and non-citizens who are under attack from the same state project?
I believe focusing on the present moment is well justified. Drawing inspiration from Dr. Goodwin, I try to show how pretrial detention is used to target people of color, whether they are citizens or non-citizens. In this context, pretrial detention and jails do not distinguish between citizens and non-citizens. Instead, they both deprive people of their freedom and liberty all the same. My hope, like Goodwin’s, is that by seeing how the citizen and non-citizen are not so different, we can better identify new grounds for solidarity.
The expansion of pretrial detention for the citizen and non-citizen
On any given day, about 457,000 people are behind bars awaiting their day in court and have not been convicted of any crime (Sawyer and Wagner Reference Sawyer and Wagner2025). To put this into perspective, it is like incarcerating just over the entire population of Miami (442,241) every day. In recent years, scholars have emphasized that pretrial detention puts detained individuals at a serious disadvantage. Megan Stevenson (Reference Stevenson2018) points out that pretrial detention results in a 41% increase in bad courtroom outcomes. Scholars like Amy Lerman and Christine Scott Hayward (Lerman, Reference Lerman, Green and Dominguez2021; Scott-Hayward and Fradella Reference Scott-Hayward and Fradella2019), along with Stevenson, also highlight that pretrial detention raises the chances that the incarcerated person will face a longer sentence and be more likely to accept a guilty plea even if they are not truly guilty. This is due to the tremendous pressure placed on defendants while they are incarcerated pretrial. Individuals detained pretrial in jails often face poor jail conditions and poor health outcomes as well as loss of employment, housing, and (potentially) child custody, among many other issues. At the pretrial phase, people of color are more likely to be detained than their white counterparts, meaning that people of color disproportionately suffer the harms of pretrial detention (Williams Reference Williams2025).
The primary driver of pretrial detention is cash bail. Most people are behind bars today not because they have been convicted of a crime but because they simply cannot afford to purchase their freedom from the state. Sawyer and Wagner (Reference Sawyer and Wagner2025) estimate that the typical bond amount for someone detained is about eight months of their income, which most cannot afford. Recognizing this fact, states like Illinois, New Jersey and New York recently joined D.C. in moving away from relying on cash bail at the pretrial phase. Most notably, Illinois has completely abolished cash bail for all offenses at the pretrial stage. Although one of the main reasons for cash bail is to keep “criminals” off the streets, there is no evidence linking less reliance on cash bail to an increase in crime (for example, see Cragie and Grawert Reference Cragie and Grawert2024; Stemen and Olson Reference Stemen and Olson2020). Despite this lack of evidence, on August 25, 2025, President Trump announced an executive order pressuring states that have moved away from cash bail to reinstate it as part of their pretrial system. Trump specifically threatened to withhold federal funds from states and jurisdictions that do not reintroduce cash bail into their criminal justice system (Trump Reference Trump2025).
The move to reinvigorate cash bail is just one step in a broader pattern of policy actions by the Trump administration, which has actively pursued an aggressive campaign to increase pretrial detention for both citizens and non-citizens. Alongside the executive order on cash bail, Trump has deployed federal law enforcement to places like Los Angeles and D.C. to round up and arrest individuals in cities where his administration says crime is out of control. Detention facilities that were once shut down for safety reasons are now being considered for repurposing to hold immigrants (Hippensteel Reference Hippensteel2025). The Trump administration has also inked lucrative deals with local sheriffs, effectively renting jail beds to hold detained immigrants, whom they lack the capacity to detain elsewhere (McCann Reference McCann2025). While detaining immigrants at local jails is not new, under Trump’s tenure, the increased willingness of sheriffs to lease beds to the federal government has resulted in a significant rise in the immigrant population in local jails (Hippensteel Reference Hippensteel2025). The New York Times estimates that just over a third of all immigrants arrested under Trump have been held in local jails (McCann Reference McCann2025).
Herein lies the connection between citizens and non-citizens in the context of pretrial detention. Although we like to think there are clear differences between the two, the reality of pretrial detention reveals that the harms and punishments are often the same, especially as more immigrants are housed in the same facilities as citizens. This means that the harmful practices targeting non-citizens also affect citizens. Many immigrants held in local facilities have not been charged or convicted and are placed in detention centers that are not equipped to meet their needs, whether for medication, translators, or legal communication (Hippensteel Reference Hippensteel2025). These are the same issues faced by many citizens in local jails who also have not been convicted of any crimes, along with the widespread problems of physical violence in jails. In fact, under the guise of targeting crime in D.C., nearly 40% of the arrests made during the administration’s operation there were solely related to immigration (Montoya-Galvez and Sgana Reference Montoya-Galvez and Sgana2025). In this way, the merging of policies designed to lock up more people in pretrial detention affects both citizens and non-citizens alike, even physically confining them together.
Common sense for who?
The source of harms targeting citizens and non-citizens is not limited to the executive branch. On September 8th, the Supreme Court issued the Noem v. Perdomo et al. (2025) decision, which effectively allows U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to detain individuals based on their latine identity. The case reached the Supreme Court after plaintiffs argued that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was conducting roving patrols in the LA area at locations such as Home Depot parking lots, car washes, construction sites, tow yards, farms, recycling centers, churches, parks and other everyday places where DHS suspected they would find undocumented individuals. The plaintiffs claimed that people were being detained during these patrols solely because they appeared latine or spoke Spanish. They argued this practice violated the Constitution because law enforcement lacked the individualized suspicion usually required by the 4th Amendment to justify a stop or detention (Perdomo-Vasquez, 4). Instead, ICE was relying on generalized suspicion based on racial appearance, language spoken, and location as reasons to suspect someone of being undocumented. Rather than push back on this suspicion, the government claimed that their practice of racial profiling was justified because many undocumented people in the LA area are latine, speak Spanish, and are known to frequent the locations where they conduct sweeps. They argued it was reasonable to detain people in this manner (Perdomo-Vasquez, 3). In other words, the government’s stance was that simply matching a demographic profile was enough to suspect someone of being undocumented.
In a cavalier endorsement of racial profiling, Justice Kavanaugh concluded that DHS had not violated the Constitution. According to Kavanaugh, ICE’s racial profiling was common sense because of the “extremely high number and percentage of illegal immigrants in the Los Angeles area” who do not speak much English and gather in specific areas. With this case, we again see the blurred lines between citizen and noncitizen in how specifically communities of color are targeted. What started as a challenge to a problematic practice aimed at immigrants has expanded after the Supreme Court decision to include both latine citizens and non-citizens. To be clear, this decision essentially makes both latine citizens and non-citizens suspicious simply because they are latine. Being latine, speaking Spanish, or being in a certain place does not determine legal status. Citizen or not, the Supreme Court’s approval means that ICE can now detain any of the 4.8 million latine folks in LA on suspicion of being undocumented, and at worst, potentially 65 million people nationwide, just because they look or speak a certain way.
I struggle with how I will tell my students that, despite this decision, the law might still be seen as something that can protect or redeem them. It is simply embarrassing that we live in a time and place where how you speak and what you look like are reasonable bases for suspicion. While I believe everyone should be treated with dignity and respect, the whole idea of citizenship is that it guarantees some protection that others do not receive just because they are not part of the same citizenship group. I think this case painfully shows that for the latine person, you can be caught, detained, and subjected to violence just the same. Whether you are a citizen or not seems irrelevant – the Supreme Court and ICE clearly do not see it as important. Essentially, being latine is enough to potentially be detained.
Citizen-only jobs?
Another recent example where detention is used to both obscure and define the issue of citizenship is the Hyundai immigration raids in Georgia. In brief, ICE conducted a large immigration raid at a Hyundai-LG Battery factory. ICE stated they were there to find immigrants working at the plant without documentation. During the raid, nearly 500 workers were detained and arrested, with over 300 of them being South Korean nationals (Cohen Reference Cohen2025). While it is unclear what exactly triggered the raid, a Georgia Republican Congressional candidate named Tori Branum made waves by claiming in the news that she tipped off immigration authorities, leading to the raid (Glawe Reference Glawe2025). Branum proclaims herself to be an “America First” supporter of Donald Trump, which has become shorthand for preferring U.S. citizens over immigrants for jobs.
A major issue with the Hyundai raid was that neither Branum nor anyone else knew the actual status of the workers at the plant. This was evidenced by the fact that many of the South Korean workers who were detained during the raid actually had visas or visa waivers allowing them to be in the country (Cohen Reference Cohen2025; Hippensteel Reference Hippensteel2025). Nevertheless, ICE still saw it as appropriate to arrest and detain them. South Korean authorities quickly became involved and negotiated a deal to send the detained workers back to South Korea. Recognizing their mistake, the Trump administration reportedly offered to find a pathway for the workers to stay and continue working in the U.S., but the South Korean workers declined (Cohen Reference Cohen2025; Hippensteel Reference Hippensteel2025).
What seems important to me here is that Branum and even ICE officials saw this plant as a site where they could enforce the boundaries of citizenship. Evidence suggests that ICE officials and even Branum herself believed the raid would actually target people they assumed would be latine undocumented workers. I find it hard to believe, given the large number of South Koreans working at the plant, that officials were unaware of their presence. I bring this up to highlight that the fact these workers in the plant were both latine and South Korean indicated that something about them was perceived as not being “American” and somehow not here properly. Presumably, if the factory had been staffed predominantly with white workers, Branum or ICE would not have considered it worthy of attention. Those are presumably the kinds of workers “America First” envisions. But to be outside the image of the white U.S. worker – or better yet, to be an Asian or latine worker – is to be suspect. It did not matter that the South Korean workers were here legally or that they had done everything right. In fact, they were helping the U.S. enterprise by training U.S. citizens for the type of work needed at the factory. What mattered was that the workers did not fit the profile of the “America First” citizen.
What also cannot be ignored is that what happened to the workers at this plant was not just a part of a conversation. ICE did not show up and ask a bunch of people some questions and then give them the option to go back to South Korea. What happened was that the tool of detention, before it was known whether someone was guilty of being here without status, was punitively used against South Korean workers who had gone through all the immigration hoops. These workers, who traveled from their home country and clocked in to work, were rewarded with detention, stripped of their freedom, and isolated from their families. It is a reality I have suggested throughout is shared by citizens and non-citizens across this country in racialized ways as a result of the state’s sweeping and vast power to detain and question later.
A shared vision
When I reflect on Dr. Goodwin’s questions about what it means to be a citizen and to be included, I wonder if sometimes we put too much stock in the distinction. There are certainly important historical and legal ramifications to the distinction. And I do not mean to downplay those ramifications. But I think we should be thinking more about the ways in which the two are intermingled.
My heart breaks for us, people of color, who have found ourselves outside of what the vision of a citizen is and what that has meant, historically and today, in this country. While I have not answered these questions in this piece, I want to suggest to both citizens and non-citizens that we are not each other’s enemies. As a person of color, it is pointless to believe that legal status as a citizen will somehow protect you from the ways in which non-citizens of color are targeted. Especially when we consider one of the most harmful tools the state can use against someone – pretrial detention – both citizens and non-citizens face the same risks. You will not be spared from losing your job, your children, your health, or your freedom just because you are a citizen, and vice versa.
As Dr. Goodwin suggests, our current political moment requires us to be courageous and avoid retreating into comfort. We cannot ignore what happens to the South Korean plant worker in Georgia or the latine worker in L.A. just because we feel some sense of safety through our own citizenship status. Instead, our new vision must include both citizens and non-citizens seeing our issues and solutions as interconnected. When we do so, I believe it broadens our advocacy, our coalitions, and our ability to push back against a state that is increasingly seeking ways to arrest, detain and silence those outside its imagined political vision.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Michele Goodwin for this opportunity. The editors at Law and Society Review for their helpful comments. I would also like to thank Professor Robert Chang, whose thoughtful comments helped push this project forward.
Open access
