How to Close a Camp

Thursday evening in Oakland: a grounded talk on immigrant detention and how communities push back

Local Economy is hosting a serious and timely conversation on Thursday, September 10, from 6:00 to 7:30 pm. The room should fit the topic well. It has that Oakland neighborhood feel where people can sit close, listen closely, and stay for the kind of questions that do not always fit into a bigger hall.

Journalist and translator John Washington will talk about his book How to Close a Camp, which looks at immigrant detention in the United States and the organizing work behind campaigns to shut detention sites down or stop new ones from opening.

He will be joined by Lauren Markham, whose writing on migration and belonging has reached a wide audience, and Julia Neusner, a lawyer and researcher focused on migration, human rights, the U.S. Mexico border, and climate related movement.

This is the kind of event for people who want more than headlines. You will hear from people who have spent real time with the issue, from reporting and writing to legal work and field research. The focus is not just on what is broken, but on what communities have already done and what lessons can be carried forward.

If you care about immigration, local organizing, human rights, or how policy shows up in real lives, this should be worth your evening.

Where: Local Economy, Oakland, California
When: Thursday, September 10, 2026, 6:00 to 7:30 pm

The American immigration system is fundamentally cruel. Our economic system (with its tentacles across the world) pulls people into our country, then criminalizes them as they attempt to build lives here.
Thousands and thousands of people have been thrown into a prison system we euphemism as “immigrant detention.” In How to Close a Camp, journalist and translator John Washington offers a galvanizing, clear-eyed case for why we must close these camps—and how to do it.

In spite of the decades-long growth of immigrant detention, communities have been fighting back against camps—and winning. Washington distills strategies and lessons from successful campaigns to close camps and block or slow the opening of new ones, drawing on conversations with veteran organizers from the movement.
Washington will be joined in conversation by Lauren Markham and Julia Neusner.
Lauren Markham is the author of The Far Away Brothers: Two Young Migrants and the Making of an American Life (Crown), A Map of Future Ruins: On Borders and Belonging (Riverhead) and Immemorial (Transit).
Julia Neusner is a lawyer and researcher focusing on migration and human rights. She is the founder of the nonprofit Human Security Initiative and has worked as an attorney with the International Refugee Assistance Project, the Stanford Migration and Asylum Lab, and Human Rights First. Her work includes extensive field research at the U.S.-Mexico border examining the impact of U.S. policies and the intersection of climate change with human mobility.