Immigration detention is considered by many states to be a necessary tool in the execution of immigration policy. Despite the apparently key role it plays in immigration enforcement, the law on immigration detention is often vague, especially in relation to determining the circumstances under which prolonged detention remains lawful. As a result, the courts are frequently called upon to adjudicate these matters, with scant legal tools at their disposal. Though there have been some significant judgments on the legality of detention at the constitutional level, the extent to which these judgments have had an impact at the lower end of the judiciary is unclear. Indeed, it is the lower courts which are tasked with judging the legality of detention through habeas corpus or judicial review proceedings. This book examines the way this has occurred in the lower courts of two jurisdictions, the UK and the US, and contrasts this practice not only in those jurisdictions, but with judgments rendered by the Court of Justice of the European Union, a constitutional court at the other end of the judicial spectrum whose judgments are applied by courts and tribunals in the EU Member States. Although these three jurisdictions use similar tests to evaluate the legality of detention, case outcomes significantly differ. Many factors contribute to this divergence, but key among them is the role that fundamental rights protection plays in each jurisdiction. Through a forensic evaluation of 191 judgments, this book compares the laws on detention in the UK, US and EU, and makes recommendations to these jurisdictions for improvement.

Policing the Borders Within offers an in-depth, comprehensive exploration of the everyday working of inland border controls in Britain, informed by extensive empirical material viewed through the lens of wide-ranging interdisciplinary debates. In particular, this book examines afresh the relationship between policing, borders, and social order, in terms of migration policing. By charting this new landscape of everyday contemporary policing, this book's main goal is to advance understanding of novel forms of law enforcement in a global age. These new forms of collaboration direct attention to the way in which frontline enforcement agents, through their everyday work, not only enforce the border, but recreate it. As the book argues, the emphasis on borders and migration controls and the growing importance of it within inland policing is a symptom of the new demands and challenges facing the state in exercising authority in a fast-moving, interconnected world, and its attempt to offer a semblance of order. Such challenges result in practice of random, capricious, informal, and arbitrary operation of power, which relies on non-rational elements to solve policing problems. Through an ethnography of the worlds of police and immigration officers, this book dissects the ethical, political, legal, and social dilemmas, and explores the tensions and contradictions of maintaining order in a deeply unequal globalized world. The new impetus to police migration is an insightful entry point to understand law enforcement in a global age.