Unbuild Walls
Why Immigrant Justice Needs Abolition
FROM ONE OF THE LEADING ORGANIZERS IN THE IMMIGRANT RIGHTS MOVEMENT: While current literature on immigrant detention, mostly by journalists and academics, focuses on revealing the history and problems with US policies, it offers little in the way of strategies for dismantling those policies. Unbuilding Walls brings a new, much-needed abolitionist perspective to those conversations.
FEATURED IN TEEN VOGUESilky Shah is well-known among advocates for migrant rights, and her profile as a writer, speaker, and activist continues to grow. This book offers the too-often overlooked but essential perspective of an experienced organizer on the frontlines of the fight, solidifying her place, alongside Robyn Maynard, Derecka Purnell, and Harsha Walia, among today’s leading thinkers and dreamers in abolitionist circles.
will speak broadly to readers and activists interested in immigration, criminal justice reform, discriminatory policing, white supremacy, racial capitalism, and community organizing.
Silky Shah has been working as an organizer on issues related to racial and migrant justice for over two decades. Originally from Texas, she began fighting the expansion of immigrant jails on the US-Mexico border in the aftermath of 9/11. In 2009, she joined the staff of Detention Watch Network, a national coalition building power to abolish immigrant detention in the United States, and she now serves as its executive director. Her writing on immigration policy and organizing has been published in Truthout, Teen Vogue, Inquest, and the Forge, and in the edited volumes The Jail Is Everywhere (Verso, 2024), Resisting Borders and Technologies of Violence (Haymarket Books, 2024), and Transformative Planning (Black Rose Books, 2020). She has also appeared in numerous national and local media outlets including the Washington Post, NPR, and MSNBC.
