My former student and now project manager, Ella, and I waited for a guard to take us to the courtrooms at the Aurora, Colorado immigration detention center, owned and operated by the GEO Group (a private prison corporation). Next to me, an interpreter sang faintly in an operatic voice, a woman vacuumed around the security screener, and another cleaner glided by her with a dishrag and spray bottle. The lobby had an eerie rhythm, but it was a performance of order, hovering above “that great steaming morass of chaos that lie on the underside of order and without which order could not exist” (Taussig 1987, 4; in Aliverti 2023, 1025).

The following excerpts take readers into the bowels of detained immigration court, where due process, logic, and even common sense have become unmoored. I liken what occurs to being in the Upside-Down, a chaotic other-world characterized by decay, disturbing government experiments, and haunting terror. And yet what is most unsettling is not its otherness, but its uncanny refraction of the world as we know it. The cases below are from 477 detained master calendar (preliminary hearings akin to arraignments) and 117 bond hearings my team has documented at the GEO detention center between October 2025 and June 2026 on the Court Transparency Project collaboration between University of Denver and the Colorado Asylum Center.

One January morning in 2026, the immigration judge called up a Guatemalan man, Leonardo (pseudonym). He was unrepresented because immigrants in proceedings are not provided with government appointed counsel, and he could not afford an attorney. Leonardo expressed fear of returning to Guatemala, so the judge handed him an asylum application.

Leonardo: “[I don’t have a] way to apply for asylum [from detention].”

Poor detention conditions, costs of legal representation, stress on families, and pressure from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the GEO Group lead many to give up. Of the 477 detained master calendar hearings we’ve observed, 35.64 percent involved people who had already filed for a form of immigration relief, but 18.24  percent of these requested voluntary departure or removal at their master calendar hearing instead of continuing their applications.

The judge mentioned that Leonardo might be eligible for voluntary departure but never specified the requirements.

Leonardo then requested voluntary departure.

The judge asked whether he had funds for his return flight and a travel document to enter Guatemala. His documents, however, were in Florida. The judge offered him a few days to contact his family and see whether they could send them.

But Leonardo had lost his phone in Florida and didn’t remember anyone’s phone numbers.

Judge: “What do you want to do? Do you still want to be considered for voluntary departure?”

Leonardo: “Yes.”

Only after he said yes did the judge explain that, without a valid travel document, he was ineligible for voluntary departure.

The judge then informed Leonardo that if he did not want to pursue asylum, she could only issue a removal order. Still, she never explained the legal consequences of a removal order, including a multiple year or permanent bar on returning to the United States and criminal penalties for illegal reentry.

Judge: “Do you want to be removed to Guatemala?”

Leonardo: “Yes.”

Leonardo’s fear of returning to Guatemala was quickly transformed into the judge asking whether he “wanted” to be removed. Like a perverse game of musical chairs, the judge offered options before explaining their requirements or consequences, then pulled each away until only removal remained.

The judge stated she would enter an order of removal and confirmed he also waived his right to appeal. Then things became even more confusing.

Judge: “Do you agree or disagree?”

Leonardo: “Yes.”

This was not only a double-barreled question; it was an impossible one. Leonardo wanted to appeal but he did not understand that he would remain detained during the appeal process.

The judge repeated variations of the same double-barreled question for fifteen minutes, though it felt much longer. The courtroom groaned as the clock ticked past eleven. If the docket did not finish by noon, the remaining hearings would be reset.

Leonardo reserved his right to appeal. Stuttering, he asked where he would be tomorrow— Florida, Guatemala, or still here? “I [want to] plan my day tomorrow.”

The DHS attorney interrupted to ask the judge if the respondent understood that reserving appeal meant he remained detained. Leonardo then changed his mind, “I want you to deport me as quickly as possible.”

Later that same month, the judge started each bond hearing with a new question for the DHS attorney, “Has there been an initial determination?”

DHS: “Not that I am aware of.”

Judge: “Without that . . . lacking jurisdiction today, I will reserve the right to appeal.”

It happened so quickly that the respondent’s attorney never got to speak on his client’s behalf. He implored the judge to address the situation.

Judge: “The court only has jurisdiction to redetermine bond . . . My hands are tied.”

Because there supposedly was no initial determination, the court claimed that it lacked jurisdiction to conduct a bond redetermination.

The attorney was thrown: “I am in shock the court takes this position . . . If DHS sits on its hands, no court would ever be able to do a [bond re-determination] . . . ” He argued this presented clear due process violations that put liberty at stake.

When Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detains someone, they are required to issue a custody determination. Otherwise, it is an unlawful detention. DHS can orally confirm the decision, but as this attorney worried, what happens if they cannot—or will not?

When I told Ella, she was determined to research potential legal loopholes. I responded, “I fear you have too much faith in the law . . . Welcome to the Upside-Down . . .”

How can DHS “not be aware of” whether a decision was made? The fact that someone is detained indicates an initial custody decision has already been made. How else did they get there? Teleported? That is the ultimate absurdity—the initial detention determination cannot be confirmed, so the person seeking review of that very decision stays detained.

Observing master calendar hearings reveals the quotidian ways that DHS attorneys and judges prolong detention and incentivize voluntary departure and removal. This occurs not only through “deeply flawed” legal interpretations, Board of Immigration Appeals decisions, and agency pressures on immigration judges, but also through internally inconsistent and illogical behaviors. An ethnographical focus on these moments reveals the degree of disbelief required to sustain a system so cruel and incoherent.

In the first example, double-barreled questions rushed Leonardo into a decision he did not fully understand while it risked prolonging detention for remaining respondents if the judge didn’t finish the docket. Meanwhile, the judge never provided critical information up front, leading Leonardo to be removed to the place he feared and triggering a bar to reentry.

In the second, the DHS attorney effectively ignored the presence of the detainee sitting next to him, thereby extending his detention.

Immigration court has long been characterized by an excess simulacrum of law and legal processes, alongside curtailed due process and lack of access to justice (Crooke 2004). The concept of the Upside Down reveals how the brutal absurdities of the immigration court system are not contained to a separate realm. Instead, the Upside Down is a connecting bridge that holds up a mirror to wider forms of injustice and dehumanization we have tried to repress and conceal as it threatens to show how close we are to a descent into the abyss. In a stern 22-page February 2026 federal court order, District Judge Sunshine Sykes for the Central District of California warned of such broader consequences. . When government agencies deliberately defied a federal court ruling by continuing to deny bond to individuals eligible under a class action suit and claiming they were still subject to DHS’ expanded definition of mandatory detention, she asserted they “could only do so in a world where the Constitution does not exist . . . ; their “noncompliance . . . [a] threat to separation of powers.” A few weeks later, however, a federal appeals court paused the court ruling pending appeal from the Trump administration. As appellate courts have since issued split decisions, the administration’s interpretation of mandatory detention is likely headed to the Supreme Court.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank project manager Ella Iveslatt; research assistants Leticia Madrigal Tapia, Jasmine Salgado-Simental, and Jenni Gutierrez Marquez; Christina Brown at the Colorado Asylum Center; collaborators at the Rocky Mountain Immigrant Advocacy Network; Liz Jordan and the Sturm College of Law’s Immigration Law & Policy Clinic; and the Center for Immigration Policy & Research co-director Lisa Martinez.