Internment is all too real

TL;DR: A Throwback Thursday post

This is the first inaugural “throwback Thursday,” when I write about an older book for young readers that has renewed importance.

When I considered doing this, the first book that came to mind was Samira Ahmed’s Internment (Little, Brown and Company, 2019), a chilling near-future dystopia set in an America where a xenophobic administration enacts policies targeting people based on their identity.

Sound familiar?

I’d read Internment when the book was first released. Two years earlier, President Donald Trump enacted a series of executive orders that restricted entry into the U.S. for citizens of Muslim-majority countries, including Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, Iraq, and Sudan. The so-called “Muslim ban” also halted refugee admissions from Muslim-majority countries.

The orders caused chaos at airports, sparked nationwide protests, and triggered dozens of lawsuits. The following year, the Trump administration began separating families and imprisoning them at the US-Mexico border. It’s estimated the government split up hundreds of families. At least 5,500 children were seized, leaving lasting damage.

President Joe Biden revoked the ban on his first day in office, calling it “a stain on our national conscience and … inconsistent with our long history of welcoming people of all faiths and no faith at all.”

Why is Internment so relevant today? Before 2016, the nearest parallel to the drama of Internment was the imprisonment of Japanese Americans during World War II. Now, however, the parallels are developing right in front of us.

For his second term, President Trump ran on a promise to deport immigrants who had committed serious crimes and were in the United States illegally. But his administration is not limiting deportations to alleged criminals. I’ve read dozens of credible reports that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents are grabbing any brown-skinned person off the streets.

June 4, 2025: A woman pleads with ICE officers not to detain her because she has a 15-year-old son at home. She was attending a scheduled court appearance a in New York City. Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty Images

This is happening across the country. In my state alone, North Carolina, detentions have surged. In Los Angeles, for instance, many of the parks once frequented by local Latino families are empty since people, including legal residents, are terrified of ICE sweeps.

Most—though not all--of those arrested have Latin American heritage. According to official reports, ICE has detained people from over 170 different countries. The majority have never been charged with crimes. Arrests have included children and people in the country legally.

One of them is Sara Lizeth López Garcia, only three years older than Ahmed’s Internment heroine, Layla. A legal immigrant, López was studying interior design at a New York college when ICE came to her home looking for someone else. Instead, without a warrant, ICE agents took Sara and her mother into custody, then sent her to a private prison in Louisiana.

She remains there as of today.

In important ways, Internment is more relevant than ever. Prisons like the one where López is being held now exist in several states. One that has received the most attention recently is a Florida facility called “Alligator Alcatraz.” Located in the Florida Everglades, the facility—a flimsy set up of tents and trailers—is infested with insects and surrounded by alligator- and python‑infested wetlands.

The New York Times reported:

The men … have no pencils, books or television. The lights stay on through the night. When it rains, which is nearly every day during summer, the tents housing detainees spring leaks and bugs crawl in. In phone interviews, several detainees described infrequent showers, meals that amounted to little more than snacks, other detainees falling ill with flulike symptoms and sleep deprivation. They described unrest over a lack of information, recreation and access to medication.

That excerpt also shows, horribly, how Ahmed’s vision in Internment is perhaps not extreme enough. This is not a criticism but rather a terrifying reality check on how far we’ve descended into authoritarian violence, open racism, and human rights abuses. Ahmed’s fictional Camp Mobius at least had phones. There is a roof. People may not eat well, but there is food.

But where Ahmed’s book remains strong is how she captures the feeling of powerlessness and disorientation the camp is meant to create. “Everyone is scared in a deep way—like in our bones. And maybe thinking of what more they might do to us is too much to bear.”

I gleaned a bit of hope from how many Americans are responding to these abuses. At least so far, people are standing up to ICE terror in ways Ahmed didn’t foresee. There’s a lovely line in the book-- “You’d be surprised how quickly armed military personnel and pepper spray shut down the well-meaning protests of liberals in small, leafy towns.” But in fact, people in those small, leafy towns as well as the big cities and rural areas have stood up and are speaking out against ICE and advocating for their coworkers, friends, and neighbors.

How long will this resistance last? Ultimately, Ahmed’s Camp Mobius is closed due to public outrage, internees are freed, and Layla, deeply traumatized but defiant, walks away determined not to look back.

Protest in Durham, North Carolina . Photo by Robin Kirk

I can only hope for a similar ending to places like Alligator Alcatraz.

Thanks for reading!