Abolition geography, heterotopia, and the displaced Reign of God in immigration detention

Immigration detention centers form what Michel Foucault termed “heterotopias,” real spaces whose characteristics reveal new aspects of the surrounding spatiality. Engaging theologically with these heterotopias has great urgency in the face of policies of mass detention and deportation in the United States. Ruth Wilson Gilmore’s concept of “abolition geography,” “making freedom as a place” within these heterotopic sites, in dialogue with concepts from decolonial theorist María Lugones, offers an alternate spatiality within these sites to their intended carceral design. Correlating the human act of “abolition geography” with theologian Mary Emily Duba’s concept of God as room-making place in situations of displacement and theologian Loída Martell’s theorizing of the Reign of God as located with sojourners in border-spaces demonstrates how divine presence is embodied through human acts of life-affirming resistance and place-making. This presents a new paradigm for interpreting how God’s presence, more broadly, is actualized in creation through human freedom-making.