Abstract: Structures of punishment are infused with anxiety about national belonging. Since the mid-1990s, governments in the United States, Australia, and much of Western F,urope have embraced the practice of immigration detention, building quasi-prisons for non-citizens at a breakneck pace (see Bacon 2005; Bosvvorth 2007; Kelly 2005; National Immigration Forum 2013)- Criminal justice systems have also warped under the pressure of border control. In the past five years alone, both the United States and the United Kingdom have established special prisons to hold foreign nationals serving criminal sentences (Guttin 2010; Greene & Mazon 2012). in Britain, non-citizens convicted of criminal offenses are transferred to prisons ‘embedded’ with border agents (Kaufman 2013). In the US, more than half of last year’s roughly 400,000 deportations started when a border agent entered a prison or a jail (American Immigration Council 2013).