After news broke in the Washington Post about the Biden administration’s reopening of a Trump-era camp in Carrizo Springs, Texas, used to detain migrant children, criticism from immigration advocates was swift. Linda Brandmiller, a San Antonio­–based immigration lawyer who represents unaccompanied minors, told the Post: “It’s unnecessary, it’s costly, and it goes absolutely against everything [President] Biden promised he was going to do.” The news also prompted criticism from elected representatives like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who remarked, “This is not okay, never has been okay, never will be okay — no matter the administration or party.” The White House, for its part, has categorically denied comparisons between the facility and the brutal migrant policies of the Trump era.

Adam Goodman is an assistant professor in the Latin American and Latino Studies Program and in the Department of History at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and author of the 2020 book The Deportation Machine: America’s Long History of Expelling Immigrants. Jacobin spoke to Goodman about the news surrounding the reopened Carrizo Springs facility, the recent history of America’s deportation and border policies, and the landscape for immigration reform in the Biden era.