My Time Inside the Immigration Industrial Complex

During President Joe Biden’s term in office, the United States witnessed the largest surge in immigration in the nation’s history. The Congressional Budget Office found that the number of immigrants without legal permanent status grew by at least 8 million between 2021 and 2024. At the peak of this influx, I labored as a social worker at a humanitarian NGO. My agency was one of many within a larger, privatized ecosystem of NGOs contracted by the government to resettle and provide basic services to refugees and asylum seekers.