Multiple functions of immigration detention: Police measures in the governance of mobile populations

Abstract

Notwithstanding punitive implications, immigration detention as an administrative deprivation of liberty represents a characteristic police measure, targeting deportable noncitizens with limited rights and protections. Drawing on an analysis of the detention system in Finland, I discuss different functions of immigration detention, focusing on police powers in the governance of mobile populations. In Finland, immigration detention is separated from the criminal justice system and delegated to the police, who possess broad powers to impose coercive measures for the enforcement of immigration decisions and social control in the absence of effective judicial supervision. Despite being affiliated with the removal of rejected asylum seekers, immigration detention also is intertwined with crime prevention and control of irregular migration. In addition to deprivation of liberty in the first place, police measures support removal procedures that continue during detention, as well as other administrative strategies to control deportable people and deter unauthorized residency, involving varying degrees of coercion. Though connected with criminal justice and manifestations of penal power in border criminology discussions, immigration detention can arguably be better understood as a coercive police measure, which can be employed alongside other administrative means for immigration enforcement outside of the criminal justice system.

Introduction

The administrative detention of foreign nationals has become a common police measure in the governance of migration, involving different rationalities and purposes, depending on the context and the targeted noncitizens. In criminology, many scholars have highlighted the punitive nature of immigration detention and argued that immigration detention represents an expansion of penal power without the legal protections of criminal law measures (e.g., Bosworth, 2019; Bosworth et al., 2018; Franko, 2020; Hernández, 2014; Stumpf, 2006; Turnbull, 2017), building on analyses of the rather excessive and repressive “Anglo model” of detention (Mainwaring and Cook, 2019). Accordingly, immigration detention and other coercive measures targeting foreign nationals indicate a growing integration of the criminal justice system with border controls (Barker, 2018; Bosworth, 2019; Franko, 2020), if not a merger of criminal and immigration law (Stumpf, 2006). While the deprivation of liberty is the most severe form of criminal punishment in European countries, and closed detention centers resemble prisons (or are established in former prisons), administrative coercive measures have long histories in Western countries outside the criminal justice system. Notwithstanding acknowledged human rights concerns, different grounds, durations, and outcomes for detention covering a whole range of foreign nationals (from freshly arrived individuals to long-term residents) further complicate straightforward conclusions on immigration detention. Moreover, the police (or other state agencies) can detain foreign nationals in connection with removal procedures, immigration checks, traffic controls, or criminal investigations in order to prevent irregular migrants from absconding, hampering the work of authorities, committing criminal offenses, or disturbing public order. While detention systems vary considerably even in the EU member states, analyses of immigration enforcement practices, methods, and strategies may well elucidate obscure elements surrounding immigration detention.

While being a materialized space of the border regime and asymmetrical relations characterizing the governance of migration, immigration detention cannot be understood apart from the selective enforcement practices and administrative removal processes that define the dynamics of detention from the outside. In contrast to the well-regulated criminal justice system, immigration law provides the police with broad discretionary powers to control and detain foreign nationals through administrative measures. Notwithstanding similarities with prisons, the legal structure of immigration detention differs from that of criminal justice due to deportable foreign nationals’ limited rights and protections, and the prevalence of administrative police measures in immigration enforcement (see Campesi, 2020; Dubber, 2018; Napoli, 2011; Velloso, 2022). Preoccupation with the convergence of criminal and immigration law practices, together with “the focus on the state as the singular holder of the sovereignty” (Moffette and Pratt, 2020: 17), involves a risk of overlooking different operational rationalities, legal instruments, and administrative practices in immigration enforcement. Additionally, a tendency to analyze immigration detention in terms of punishment and penal power, and ultimately the state and sovereign power, can result in a reductionist and essentialist view of power. Or, as Foucault (2000: 343) argues, “one must analyze institutions from the standpoint of power relations, rather than vice versa” in order to avoid “to explain power by power.” In addition to epitomizing and manifesting the sovereign power of the state through the legitimate use of violence (Seigel, 2018), police measures represent a different mode of governance from criminal justice (Dubber, 2018). Therefore, analysis of police practices and methods in immigration enforcement provides a feasible perspective to better understand the operations of immigration detention.

In this article, I discuss different functions of immigration detention as a part of the governance of migration, drawing on my research on the detention and removal system in Finland, and analysis of Finnish immigration policy documents. While I have discussed empirical findings in detail elsewhere, this article places more theoretical focus on police powers in immigration enforcement and administrative police measures as a distinguished form of governance from law and criminal justice (Dubber, 2018; Neocleous, 2021); notwithstanding some important contributions (e.g., Campesi, 2020; Velloso, 2022; Walters, 2002; Weber, 2013), these questions have received rather limited attention in the analysis of immigration detention. In addition to deprivation of liberty in the first place, police measures support removal procedures that continue during detention, as well as other administrative strategies to control deportable people. Following an introduction to the theoretical framework and the immigration detention system in Finland, I discuss the application of detention in different contexts, applied police methods for the enforcement of removals during detention, and the other administrative strategies in immigration enforcement beyond detention. Despite the institutionalization and legalization of immigration detention, the Finnish case demonstrates wide discretionary police powers used for the control of foreign nationals through administrative measures taking place outside of the criminal justice system, with varying degrees of coercion. In addition to an empirically grounded analysis of multiple functions of immigration detention in the governance of mobile populations, this paper contributes to the ongoing discussions on border criminology by highlighting the significance of broad police powers in immigration enforcement.

Police as a mode of migration governance

While immigration detention has been affiliated with the criminal justice system and the expansion of penal power, administrative coercive measures targeting suspicious populations have long and varied histories in Western societies, both preceding and during the development of the modern criminal justice system. Immigration detention has been associated with the colonial history of camps and is regarded as a materialization of a state of exception based on martial law instead of criminal law (Agamben, 1998). However, maritime quarantine for the prevention of diseases, whether implemented on ships or in designated facilities later on, represented “one long experiment in state powers of preventive or even pre-emptive detention” extending to the 14th century (Bashford, 2016: 11). Likewise, deviant, diseased, poor, dangerous, or otherwise marginalized populations have been subject to confinement and preventive coercive measures as a police matter in Europe for centuries (Foucault, 2011: 43). Despite different interactions with the prison system, workhouses as a sanction for vagrancy offered a form of administrative detention implemented by discretionary police decrees, constituting “a flexible instrument that allowed the police and local communities to intervene against disorderly individuals” (Ulvund, 2012: 30; see also Nicolazzo, 2021). In addition to the wartime internment of enemy aliens, the police have possessed wide powers to control, surveil, and detain suspicious or delinquent foreign nationals outside the criminal justice system (Rosenberg, 2006). Notwithstanding various local histories, immigration detention represents administrative measures under police powers and, as Campesi (2020: 53) argues, “should essentially be regarded not as a form of punishment but as an example of the increasing influence of the logic of preventive control […] to anticipate alleged threats and contain risks.”

The control and prevention of irregular migration have become a key objective for the police and border control agencies due to presumed risks and threats to the social order connected to increasing mobility (Campesi, 2020; de Giorgi, 2010; Weber, 2013). Immigration law provides wide discretionary powers for the police to control suspicious foreign nationals and prevent potential disorder, based on the status of individuals as deportable noncitizens. Following Dubber's (2018) argument on the “dual penal state,” immigration enforcement measures represent a form of punitive discipline, targeting nonmembers under the rule of the police, instead of punishment presupposing the existence of equals under the rule of law. Or, as Walters (2002: 281) writes, “Deportation does not properly belong to this regime of liberal practices of rule, but to an older lineage—that of police.” Despite varying implications for membership (Stumpf, 2006), criminal punishments rely on the equality of all persons under the law (Dubber, 2018), whereas immigration law directly restricts the rights and protections of foreign nationals and makes them detainable and deportable objects subordinate to administrative police measures. From a historical perspective, immigration enforcement resembles vagrancy laws that were in force for decades in the postwar era and through administrative police measures, instead of the punishment of crimes, aimed to eliminate threats to the social order caused by mobile poor populations (Goluboff, 2016; Neocleous, 2021; Nicolazzo, 2021; Weber and Bowling, 2008). According to Neocleous (2021: 26), “Vagrancy legislation is the ultimate form of police legislation, then, because it criminalizes a status rather than an act, with the status itself being defined by the police.” Similarly, immigration law produces deportable foreign nationals who can be detained as a discretionary police measure based on the assumed risk of absconding or other undesirable conduct, implying a status offense due to noncompliance with immigration regulations. As it would not be possible to impose these measures on citizens (or under criminal law) under normal conditions, immigration detention can be understood as a structural equivalent of the precarious legal position of migrants.

Despite involving the same enforcing agencies and similar instruments of control, punishment and prevention represent different modes of governance with divergent temporal horizons: namely, the backward-looking logic of criminal law punishing acts committed in the past versus forward-looking preventive exercises of police powers anticipating potential threats and dangers to the social order (Dubber, 2018; Dubber and Valverde, 2008; see also Ashworth and Zedner, 2014; Weber and McCulloch, 2018). These two modes of governance to protect society and maintain the social order account for different procedures in police work: punitive juridical measures to deal with criminal offenses in the criminal justice system and preventive administrative measures to control conduct that is harmful to society (Dubber, 2018; Napoli, 2011). The police can also decide which legal or administrative procedures—for example, criminal law, public order regulations, police law, or immigration law—to employ (Moffette, 2020), often relying on immigration law even in the case of foreign offenders, due to broad jurisdiction (Franko, 2020; Könönen, 2023). Notwithstanding shifts towards the identification and management of dangerous groups in penal policies in the United States discussed as “new penology” (Feeley and Simon, 1992) or the penal state (e.g., Wacquant, 2009), and the preventative turn in crime policies also in European countries (Peeters, 2015), immigration detention as a future-oriented social control of suspicious and dangerous risk groups has long manifested preventive rationalities (Campesi, 2020; De Giorgi, 2010; Welch, 1996). Compared to criminal punishments, the justification of preventive measures relies on their effectiveness to prevent or reduce harm to society irrespective of their proportionality to any past or present actions (Ashworth and Zedner, 2014: 18). Or, the legitimacy requirement has not historically applied to police measures as they have included self-contained justification in the prevention of disorder (Dubber, 2018: 107). Nevertheless, immigration detention represents “a policy of risk management not of individual offenders, but of categories of people considered to be dangerous” (Broeders, 2010: 172). Instead of innate “dangerous individuals,” the conception of risk underlying preventive measures is based on “abstract factors which render more or less probable the occurrence of undesirable modes of behavior” (Castel, 1991: 297). Consequently, migrants arriving from poor countries and lacking permanent accommodations, demonstrable funds, or a confirmed identity are likely to be subject to police measures.

The development of liberal modes of governance has not replaced governmental mechanisms based on older police rationalities and coercive police measures (Dubber, 2018; Napoli, 2011; Valverde, 2008; Velloso, 2013), which remain prominent in the governance of marginalized and mobile populations. The legal regulation of immigration detention and the introduction of judicial supervision during recent decades have not intrinsically changed the nature of immigration detention as a police measure; instead, it can said to have “produced a mere proceduralization of the legal guarantees against arbitrary detention whose result has been to disguise police arbitrariness with a façade of legality” (Campesi, 2014: 162). Due to varying jurisdictions and institutional arrangements across countries, border guard or other security agencies can possess similar police powers to impose coercive measures (see Velloso, 2022); immigration enforcement also involves collaborations between different state institutions in detecting deportable noncitizens (Weber, 2013). Different forms of confinement intertwining humanitarian assistance with police control have also become an integral part of the humanitarian governance of refugees and asylum seekers (Agier, 2011). In addition to the enforcement of removals and the control of irregular migrants and asylum seekers at external borders, immigration detention provides a flexible instrument to manage risks affiliated with mobile populations in the urban space (Campesi and Fabini, 2020) and deter illegal residence (Leerkes and Broeders, 2010). While immigration detention as a “border spectacle” demonstrates sovereign power and tight policies on immigration (de Genova, 2002), the police (or other enforcing agencies) are the key institutions defining the operation of immigration detention through everyday practices.

Immigration detention in Finland

In Finland, the detention of foreign nationals in police custody facilities and prisons was a common police measure for immigration enforcement purposes long before the establishment of the immigration detention system in the 2000s. Already the governmental alien status from 1919 after independence, regulating the entry and residence of foreign nationals, stipulated the use of detention in connection with entry or removal, when needed. The first border-crossing site established at the Russian border in 1919 also included a quarantine station, which served as a de facto detention facility to control both the spread of diseases and suspicious communist revolutionaries (Engman, 2007). During the Second World War, enemy aliens were placed in security detention as a police measure alongside communists and other suspicious citizens (Sana, 2003). The police possessed almost unchecked powers in immigration matters due to the vague alien statuses, which enabled the deportation of nationals whose residency in Finland was not desirable through administrative decisions without any right to appeal. The first immigration law (Alien Act) introduced only in 1983 stipulated the legal grounds for deportation as well as detention, although only in an indeterminate manner concerning the enforcement or preparation of removal decisions, and the detention of asylum applicants. In addition to immigration enforcement and criminal investigation, preventive coercive measures have long histories in the health and social sectors, as well as in vagrancy control (Ahtee, 1950). In general, the Finnish word for detention, säilöönotto, refers to nonpunitive administrative deprivation of liberty, and it also is used for the custody of intoxicated persons.

Notwithstanding the use of prisons and police custody facilities for immigration enforcement purposes, immigration detention has been detached from the criminal justice system in Finland. While immigration matters—as well as the police and the border guard—are currently under the Ministry of Interior, the Ministry of Labor coordinated the reception of asylum seekers and also immigration detention in the early 2000s. Following increased immigration as well as international criticism concerning the detention of foreign nationals and asylum seekers in prisons, the first detention unit was established in 2002 in a former prison in Katajanokka, Helsinki; not without irony, it had been closed due to insufficient conditions to meet modern prison standards. The temporary Katajanokka unit was replaced by the 40-place Metsälä unit in Helsinki built in a former office building in 2004, with modest facilities for outdoor and other recreational activities. In 2014, a second detention unit intended for complicated cases was again established in a former prison in Konnunsuo, near the eastern border, with a separate section for women and families enabled by the larger premises; the initial capacity of 30 places was later expanded to 70 places. Both detention units operate in connection with reception centers for asylum seekers, which have provided a humanitarian model for the organization of immigration detention. However, the National Immigration Service has been in charge of the Konnunsuo unit, as well as the Metsälä unit since 2018, with a more security-orientated approach to immigration detention. Additionally, police custody facilities are still commonly used for holding immigrants when far away from the detention units or those are full; the border guard also has detention spaces at the border-crossing sites.

Instead of belonging to a separate agency, immigration controls form a part of everyday police work in Finland. The police around the country—as well as the border guard at the border-crossing sites—can detain foreign nationals subject to confirmation by designated officers, while the Helsinki police department coordinates the enforcement of removals. Notwithstanding a significant drop in detention orders due to mobility restrictions following the COVID-19 pandemic, detention has been a routine police measure in immigration enforcement in Finland: around 1250 foreign nationals were detained annually during the 2010s, accounting for roughly half of all effective removals in many years (Police of Finland, 2022). Immigration detention has been affiliated with the asylum system in Finland, in particular after the arrival of a record number of 32,136 asylum seekers in 2015 (around 10 times more than in previous years) and subsequent harsh changes in the recognition rates for international protection (Näre, 2020; Vanto et al., 2022). While most removal decisions have followed rejected asylum applications—in particular, for Afghan, Iraqi, and Somalian citizens—individual situations of detained foreign nationals vary considerably. During the last decade, the largest groups of detainees have been EU citizens from Romania and Estonia, comprising around a third of all detentions, followed by citizens from Gambia, Iraq, Russia, Belarus, Nigeria, Afghanistan, and Morocco (Police of Finland, 2022). A large majority of the detainees have been young men, whether rejected asylum seekers, irregular migrants, or foreign offenders. In addition to EU citizens, third-country nationals can be removed to other EU member states, instead of the country of citizenship, based on either the Dublin regulation defining the country in charge of the asylum investigation or residence permits obtained in other European member states (Könönen, 2021a). While up to 90% of detentions in Finland have ended up in removals (Könönen, 2022), overall the main destination countries of removal have been Estonia, Russia, Italy, Sweden, Romania, and Germany, with the exceptions of voluntary returns mostly to Iraq (Police of Finland, 2022).

In this article, I provide an empirically grounded theoretical analysis of police powers in immigration enforcement, building on insights from my previous research on the detention and removal system in Finland. Mainly in 2016, I conducted ethnographic fieldwork in detention units (75 visits in total), observations of more than 100 detention hearings at district courts, interviews with lawyers, detention unit workers and other actors, and analysis of the detention records from 2016, covering more than 1000 administrative detention orders. (For more information on the research methodology, see Könönen, 2021b.) In addition to detainees’ struggles and varying situations, my multisited and mixed-methods research provided insights into the role of different actors and processes in immigration enforcement. My analysis of immigration policy documents, legislation, and police statistics has enabled me to reflect on police practices in the wider context of immigration enforcement. The following sections discuss the employment of police measures in the detention, removal, and control of foreign nationals, with a focus on police as a distinct mode of governance from criminal justice.

Different applications of immigration detention

By default, immigration detention is an administrative security measure subject to police discretion that aims to prevent absconding or other noncompliant conduct during immigration proceedings. In general, immigration detention is connected to the immigration system, which determines the legal preconditions for entry and residency and, inversely, produces deportable and detainable migrants (de Genova, 2002). Likewise, the current Finnish Alien Act (301/2004) connects immigration detention to the enforcement or preparation of immigration and removal decisions, or investigation of preconditions of entry and residence. From a legal perspective, immigration detention is the last resort among administrative security measures, as alternative less coercive means—including reporting obligations, residency requirements (for asylum seekers), placing a deposit, and confiscation of travel documents—should be used prior to detention orders. Subject to individual assessment, the police (or border guard) can detain foreign nationals based on six specific grounds, including risk of absconding, identification, crime prevention, multiple asylum applications, transfers to another EU member state under the Dublin regulation, and national security reasons. Notwithstanding the stipulated legal grounds for detention and the specific restrictions for the detention of minors, immigration law leaves considerable discretion for authorities to decide when and against whom coercive measures should be employed in different contexts.

First, the preremoval detention of rejected noncompliant asylum seekers—or other foreign nationals receiving negative residence permit decisions—based on a presumed or demonstrated risk of absconding is a common administrative police measure to secure the enforcement of removal decisions made by immigration officials. Following the notification of negative asylum or residence permit decisions, the police organize removal hearings in order to persuade deportable foreign nationals to return voluntarily (see Cleton and Chauvin, 2020); they also make risk assessments on the reliability of the individual and the need for coercive measures (National Police Board, 2021a). While alternative security measures should be used prior to detention, based on my prior research, a mere verbal objection toward removal and an unwillingness to voluntarily return have been sufficient grounds for detention. Ultimately, the message of removal hearings is that if foreign nationals do not return voluntarily, they will be detained and their removal implemented with force. The police can also issue a two-year entry ban as an additional administrative sanction for noncompliant foreign nationals during the removal proceedings (National Police Board, 2021a). In addition to non-compliance with a reporting order or disappearance from a reception center resulting in a warrant and subsequent detention, the police have apprehended deportable people at workplaces, schools, or their residences (Könönen, 2022). Alongside specific deterrence for deportable individuals, immigration detention is also an instrument of general deterrence for other deportable subjects in the country by manifesting coercive consequences for noncompliance (see Leerkes and Broeders, 2010). However, the actual removability has constrained the detention of certain nationalities: in particular, Iraq and Afghanistan have only readmitted voluntarily returning citizens and individuals deported due to criminal offenses (see Näre, 2020; Vanto et al., 2022). In fact, the detention of Iraqi and Afghan asylum seekers has mainly been related to transfers to other EU countries under the Dublin regulation (Police of Finland, 2022).

Secondly, immigration detention functions as an instrument to control irregular migration both at the external borders and inland. In Finland, the use of detention has been rather limited in connection with border controls, as persons without legal entry permits or valid documents are directly denied entry to the country at the border-crossing sites. The border guard has issued around a hundred detention orders annually for investigating the legal entry conditions for foreign nationals, usually resulting in a transfer to a reception center following an asylum application (Könönen, 2022). Relaxed visa policies for Russian citizens have been an important factor in limiting irregular migration to Finland, despite the longest external border of the EU. While the absence of internal border controls within the Schengen area complicates the governance of migration inside Europe, border controls increasingly take place in the urban space (e.g., van der Woude and van der Leun, 2017). The police can detain foreign nationals inland in connection with immigration checks, traffic controls, criminal investigation, or other instances, involving also ethnic profiling of racialized groups (see Himanen, 2019). In Finland, Eastern European and African nationals are overrepresented in immigration detention, often being detained for crime control. In particular, Estonian EU citizens subject to national entry bans are detained and removed several or even as many as ten times a year due to their persistent mobility back to Finland (Könönen, 2021a). While the detention of irregular migrants is a straightforward matter due to their demonstrated noncompliance toward immigration regulations, identification provides a pretext for the control of suspicious foreign nationals (Broeders, 2010). In fact, most release decisions are made by the police themselves due to unfounded or revoked detention grounds, with cases including legally residing foreign nationals (Könönen, 2022); immigration checks resulting in a quick release can also take place without official registration.

Thirdly, immigration detention is connected to crime control, as the police examine by default the conditions for legal residency in connection with criminal investigations. Based on my earlier research, as many as half of all detention orders in Finland have been related to the implementation or preparation of removals based on criminal offenses or previous convictions, primarily concerning EU citizens from Estonia and Romania, and to a lesser extent other Eastern European or West and North African nationals. Apart from foreign prisoners awaiting removal, detainees tend to be mainly charged with rather minor drug and property offenses. The police have detained (suspected) foreign offenders without consideration of alternative security measures or individual assessment of the risk of absconding (Könönen, 2022). Notwithstanding apparent resemblances, immigration and criminal law measures remain separate instruments for the police to control mobile populations (Franko, 2020; Könönen, 2023, Moffette, 2020). In contrast to pretrial criminal detention for criminal charges, the police can detain deportable foreign nationals suspected of minor offenses for the prevention of new offenses under immigration law. Moreover, the police themselves can issue removal orders for visiting third-country nationals suspected of minor offenses, even without criminal convictions (Könönen, 2023). In addition to carceral trajectories concerning foreign prisoners transferred from prison to detention units to wait for removal after serving their criminal sentences (Turnbull and Hasselberg, 2017), foreign nationals can be sent from immigration detention to pretrial detention, or the other way round, depending on criminal charges; the police can also change the legal grounds for detention while individuals are in police custody. Immigration detention also can be used for the extradition of foreign nationals to other countries, or for national security reasons.

Ineffective and procedural judicial supervision has been an important factor contributing to the normalization of detention as a preferred police method in Finland, instead of alternative security measures. While administrative detention orders are subject to expost judicial review at district courts within 96 hours, and thereafter in 14 days at the earliest by request, detention hearings tend to be a mere formality: judges have accepted the necessity of detentions without attention to alternative measures in short proceedings, releasing only around 1% of detainees despite rather cursory detention orders (Könönen, 2022; see Kmak and Seilonen, 2015). Moreover, a significant share of short-term detentions lasting only few days are left entirely unsupervised due to delays in the organization of judicial reviews. The introduction of a legal framework can be understood as a strategy to evoke a “veneer of legality” for administrative coercive measures (Dubber, 2018: 108), having only limited impact on the nature of immigration detention as a police measure.

Enforcement of removals and micropolitics of detention

For the police in charge of immigration enforcement, immigration detention is an effective and convenient instrument to control deportable foreign nationals, being comparable to the apprehension of suspicious individuals for the prevention of crimes, public disorders, or self-harm, falling under the domain of general police powers. As the police are also responsible for the enforcement of removals in Finland, immigration detention facilitates police work by keeping foreign nationals available for removal or pending immigration processes potentially resulting in a removal order. Notwithstanding different contexts and individual situations, the enforcement of removals constitutes the main horizon in immigration detention: detention units are logistics centers for the border regime. In general, the country of removal significantly affects the detainees’ level of compliance and consequently shapes the removal arrangements, the methods used by the police, and the duration of detention. In Finland, most detentions have lasted only a few days—average detention times have been close to two weeks (National Police Board 2021b: 50)—owing to the fact that most removals from detention are implemented by commercial transport connections to other European countries. Many detainees do not object to removal after being apprehended, as the outcome of detention usually tends to be clear for people with an enforceable removal order; as seen in my earlier research, some even urge the police to implement the removal through a quick process (Könönen, 2021a). Rather than attributing legitimacy to the detention and removal system (Leerkes and Kox, 2017), detainees’ compliance with the removal procedures is often motivated by remigration aspirations (Könönen, 2021a). Only a minority of removals from detention are enforced by force, as most often the police only escort the detainees to the departing plane (or ferry, in the case of Estonia); in practice, these removals, called “controlled exits,” resemble supervised “self-deportation” (see Park, 2019).

The police have considerable discretion in the enforcement of removals, having the power to decide which persons to remove, when, and how. In practice, the police prioritize the removal of foreign offenders and others considered to pose a threat to public order and security (see Kalir, 2022). Detainees’ levels of resistance affect police methods in immigration enforcement: in many cases, immigration detention is a response to migrants’ resistance toward removal. While the police can use a “suddenness strategy” to detain migrants just before prescheduled removal flights in order to minimize opportunities for resistance (Eule et al., 2019: 169–171), immigration detention also provides an instrument for the police to pressure non-compliant foreign nationals to cooperate with the removal procedures (Leerkes and Kox, 2017). Immigration detention demonstrates the function of waiting as a disciplinary form of power that aims to produce compliant subjects (de Genova, 2020). Due to ineffective judicial review, the police can continue detention up to the maximum limit of 12 months for noncompliant detainees. Based on my research, detentions extending to several months usually concern noncooperative foreign nationals awaiting removal to African or Middle Eastern countries, which often require complicated logistic arrangements (Könönen, 2021a). In addition to removal hearings on voluntary returns, noncompliant detainees are subject to administrative police measures that may violate their privacy, such as confiscation of mobile phones and computers, or unauthorized voice recordings, in order to define their identity, often in cooperation with embassies (see Griffiths, 2012). Although detention should not be continued if the police cannot enforce the removal, a few detainees are released annually due to the 12-month maximum detention time, indicating a punitive element in the extension of detention (Könönen, 2021a).

Rather than imprisonment for criminal sentences, immigration detention resembles police custody due to its indeterminate nature, ongoing administrative and legal processes, and asymmetrical negotiations that define the dynamics and outcome of detention, even if these largely take place out of sight in detention units. While removal is not an event but a process that can begin long before and continue during detention (Peutz, 2006), detainees can have a significant impact on the duration of detention—as well as detention in the first place—depending on their cooperation with the police. Even if uncertainties related to the outcome and duration of detention are highlighted as defining features of immigration detention compared to imprisonment (Griffiths, 2014; Turnbull, 2016), detainees can shorten their detention time by complying with the removal procedures. Instead of being passive objects of the deportation system, detainees estimate their available options and related (dis)advantages, even when facing unthinkable choices limited to the form and speed of removal. Based on my research, resorting to legal processes to revoke the removal order and submitting a new residence permit or asylum application tend to be the main forms of resistance (Könönen, 2021a; see Hasselberg, 2016). In addition to active resistance towards removal, foreign nationals can try to become undeportable by refusing cooperation and communication with the police (Campesi, 2014). However, the police can enforce removals despite pending residence permit applications if the person has already received a negative decision on an asylum application. Considering their lack of motivation for absconding, the detention and removal of these individuals represent a discriminatory if not malevolent police practice.

Immigration detention involves a dual structure due to the division of labor between institutions: detention unit workers coordinate meetings with immigration authorities whereas the police are in charge of the removal arrangements and other measures (such as transfers to other facilities or between the detention units). Similar to Sweden (see Lindberg, 2022), a humanitarian approach has largely characterized immigration detention in Finland. When it was institutionalized in 2002, immigration detention was regarded as a nonpunitive institution with a social work framework aiming to mitigate the burdens of deprivation of liberty alongside security duties. Compared to the integrative and rehabilitating aims of the prison system still prevalent in Nordic countries (see Lappi-Seppala, 2012), immigration detention is an empty holding place for the enforcement of immigration decisions, or a waiting room of immigration law, with limited organized activities and social and healthcare services. While appearing as punishment for noncompliance and resembling prisons for foreign nationals, the possibility to use mobile phones and the internet mitigates isolation in immigration detention. At the same time, detainees are subject to administrative measures and sanctions, including regular security checks and possible restrictions of visits, stipulated in a separate law regulating the organization of detention units; considering its brevity, it stands in stark contrast to the extensive Prison Act. Ultimately, detention as an instrument of governance relies on the potential use of physical coercion through police measures: misbehaving, violent, or self-harming detainees can be placed in solitary confinement (which in practice comprises detention inside detention) or transferred to police custody facilities (or from Helsinki to the more isolated Konnunsuo detention unit) as a disciplinary measure; in the end, removals are implemented with force, if necessary.

Police measures beyond immigration detention

While immigration detention and deportations demonstrate the sovereign power of the state, in practice the police epitomize “the sovereign state” for foreign nationals by possessing powers to issue detention orders, enforce removals, and themselves make removal orders for visiting third-country nationals charged with minor offenses (Könönen, 2023). Despite symbolizing tight immigration policies for the antiimmigrant electorate, immigration detention has received limited public attention in Finland apart from the recent struggles of rejected asylum seekers (see Näre, 2020). Immigration detention has been an inconspicuous police matter, regarded as an inevitable part of the immigration and asylum system, without further legitimation in governmental documents (e.g., Ministry of the Interior, 2014). In practice, “the dirty work” of immigration detention and removal is largely delegated to the police, similar to the immigration administration in charge of individual immigration decisions (Eule et al., 2019; Fassin, 2011). The National Police Board also has an influential role in the policymaking and preparation of immigration legislation, starting from providing information on the current state of affairs. Not surprisingly, administrative documents present detention as a carefully considered exceptional measure without information on actual practices of detention and alternative security measures (e.g., Ministry of the Interior, 2014; National Police Board, 2017), in contrast to the common use of detention, in particular, for crime prevention. Unlike well-regulated criminal justice procedures and the oversight of legality covering also the treatment and rights of criminal offenders under the Prison and Probation Service of Finland, immigration detention is subject to rather superficial detention hearings and occasional inspections by human rights authorities and organizations.

Notwithstanding the criminalization of illegal entry, the role of the criminal justice system in immigration enforcement has been rather insignificant in Finland. Instead, immigration law provides the police with flexible administrative instruments of control compared to criminal law proceedings (Leerkes and Broeders, 2010: 846), including immigration checks, fines for immigration offenses, and security measures in Finland. Although having a wider deterrence function for deportable migrants in the country, immigration detention is only one strategy to enforce removals. Even in the case of complicated removal arrangements, the police can issue periodic reporting orders at the designated police station to control deportable people and eventually detain them for removal. In addition to residency restrictions for rejected asylum seekers, the confiscation of identity documents during the asylum process (or as a separate action) likewise represents an administrative measure aiming to facilitate removals. Although the extent of alternative security measures remains unknown due to the lack of statistics, various police measures tend to increase insecurity among deportable people and complicate their livelihood. Moreover, the police in Helsinki have even refrained from advising undocumented migrants on available services as they are regarded as an extra incentive for unauthorized residency (Koivula, 2020: 39). In addition to financial and material support as incentives for voluntary return, limited social services in Finland (mainly including urgent medical care and temporary social assistance) for undocumented migrants and the termination of reception services for rejected asylum seekers after an unsuccessful appeal process likewise aim to promote self-deportation (Park, 2019). Notwithstanding the possibility of favorable discretion, the mode of police governance based on hierarchical differentiation extends to social services, in contrast to egalitarian identification characterizing the criminal justice system as well as the welfare state (see Dubber, 2018).

In contrast to the criminal justice system with its emphasis on rehabilitation and reintegration, immigration enforcement aims to prevent the emergence of the irregular population, or the “parallel society,” by excluding “unwanted” noncitizens (National Police Board, 2021b). In Finland, the police have framed irregular migration as a significant security issue, connected to social exclusion, criminal activities, the gray economy, extremist activities, deterioration of the security situation, and an added burden on social and health services, regarded as “recognized risks related to illegal residents” (National Police Board, 2017: 12). In addition to the low threshold for detention, the police often use general phrases concerning the lack of social and employment ties in Finland, an absence of funds, unconfirmed identity, or the lack of permanent accommodation as a justification for detention orders (Könönen, 2022). Again, the rather impersonal reasoning stands in stark contrast to criminal convictions and implies a conception of irregular migrants (including rejected asylum seekers) as a risk for the social order that needs to be controlled through preventive police measures. While selective detention and deportation policies are often explained by the need for flexible labor (de Genova, 2002; de Giorgi, 2010), strict enforcement policies in Finland aim to protect the regulated labor markets and prevent irregular migrants from becoming a burden on the welfare state (Barker, 2018). Despite the overrepresentation of Eastern European and African nationals in immigration detention, detention and removal practices target all deportable foreign nationals, including Western citizens in Finland. These inflexible policies differ considerably from the management of illegality involving nonenforcement practices for deserving irregular migrants in Southern Europe (e.g., Fabini, 2017).

From the perspective of governance, removals are necessary for the legitimacy and integrity of immigration policies; a failure to deport rejected asylum seekers or irregular migrants threatens the credibility of the immigration system and state sovereignty. Despite demonstrated deficiencies in asylum policies (Vanto et al., 2022), the Finnish government has been reluctant to introduce regularization programs for undeportable rejected asylum seekers, as exceptional legalization would undermine state policies and give a false signal for law-abiding migrants (see Ministry of the Interior, 2022). While immigration detention involves a self-proving rationale, preventing undesirable conduct and presumed risks for society regardless of individual intentions, it fails to provide a sustainable solution for the shortcomings of immigration policies because of the difficulties in detaining and removing all deportable migrants. Moreover, the effectiveness of the detention and removal system to exclude unwanted people remains questionable, as the same detained and removed individuals keep returning—or move elsewhere in Europe after removal (Könönen, 2021a). In this regard, immigration detention is part of the governance of the circulation of mobile populations, for whom detention and deportations can become “a way of life” (Khosravi, 2016). In addition to mobile EU citizens and third-country nationals subject to entry bans, tight asylum policies produce new geographies of irregular migration as rejected asylum seekers in fear of detention and deportation leave to other European countries, where they have better opportunities to integrate into informal economies or obtain legal residency status—unless detained by the local police authorities.

Conclusions

Immigration detention as an administrative police measure can serve different purposes, depending on the targeted noncitizens and contexts of detention. In Finland, immigration detention has been separated from the criminal justice system and delegated to the police, who have broad powers to impose coercive measures for the enforcement of immigration decisions and social control. In the absence of efficient judicial review, the threshold for detention has been relatively low, as the police can detain foreign nationals without individual justifications or consideration of alternative measures. In Finland, immigration detention is employed for the removal of noncompliant foreign nationals and the control of irregular migrants and foreign offenders, and thus it is intertwined with the asylum and immigration system, border controls, crime control, and everyday police work in general. The police methods in immigration enforcement vary, depending on compliance among deportable migrants, including the use of immigration detention in the first place. While foreign nationals tend to comply with removal procedures once they are detained—an aspect that is often related to the removal to other European countries and remigration aspirations—the possibility of extending detention up to one year can become a means to pressure noncompliant individuals to cooperate with the police. In addition to removal procedures, various police measures support administrative strategies to advance “voluntary” returns. In facilitating removals (directly or indirectly through deterrence effects for deportable people), immigration detention serves as an instrument for preventing the emergence of an irregular migrant population and for protecting public order and security.

Immigration detention needs to be analyzed in the wider context of immigration policies and social control, rather than as a detached institution with its own inherent rationalities (see Fernández-Bessa, 2021). Notwithstanding varying detention practices across countries (and spatial and institutional arrangements under different titles), detention facilities are logistics centers of the border regime that can serve different functions in the governance of mobile populations, from the enforcement of removals to flexible means of social control (Campesi and Fabini, 2020; Leerkes and Broeders, 2010). While varying enforcement capacities and the de facto deportability of certain nationalities constrain immigration detention, the significant role of the police in immigration enforcement in many European countries shapes detention and removal practices (e.g., Kalir, 2022); even more than in crime control (see Peeters, 2015), executive police powers are pivotal in the formation of detention policies due to broad discretionary powers and indeterminate legal frameworks. Compared to the strictly regulated criminal justice system, which is predicated on the autonomy and equality of all participants (Dubber, 2018), immigration law produces deportable and detainable foreign nationals with only limited rights and protections, consequently differentiating them as subordinate objects under police rule. Rather than criminal justice, immigration enforcement measures targeting mobile poor people represent a mode of police governance in the public order and security framework (Dubber, 2018), historically resembling the control of vagrancy as a police matter (see Neocleous, 2021; Weber and Bowling, 2008). In addition to the administrative deprivation of liberty as a characteristic police measure (Campesi, 2020; Napoli, 2011; Velloso, 2022), the police can use other, less coercive means to control deportable migrants and advance removals alongside immigration detention. Ultimately, coercive and preventive police measures targeting foreign nationals are related to the enforcement of social order and the eradication of potential disorders and risks for society, irrespective of the rather negligible threats posed by irregular residency or minor offenses.

Notwithstanding the punitive experiences of administrative deprivation of liberty, the multiple functions of coercive police measures in the governance of mobile populations complicate the analysis of immigration detention in the framework of punishment and penal power. Considering that immigration detention is connected to the regulation of entry and residency, the argument begs the question of whether all border control measures—or all coercive measures, for that matter—are then punishment as well. The application of the criminal justice framework to analyse administrative immigration enforcement measures poses the risk of what Velloso (2013) has called “criminocentric dogmatism,” referring to the epistemological obstacles caused by the tendency to uncritically frame noncriminal law measures in terms of criminal justice and punishment (see also Campesi, 2020; Moffette and Pratt, 2020). Moreover, framing the problem in terms of the state, criminal justice, and punishment implies a repressive idea of power that overlooks different governmental rationalities in immigration enforcement as well as deportable migrants’ strategies and resistance. While epitomizing the sovereign power of the state in immigration enforcement, the main operational rationales for the police are order and security instead of justice or punishment (see Dubber, 2018; Foucault, 2007; Neocleous, 2021; Peeters, 2015). Focusing on the police and the preventive logic of governance moves the discussion beyond the criminocentric framework without rendering immigration detention any less problematic or any more legitimate. Instead, on the contrary, it points to the need for critical analyses of police powers and the unaccountable employment of administrative police measures as a key problem in immigration detention.