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Paper short abstract

This presentation focuses on a set of crip photographs and videos I recorded during two protests outside Broadview Detention Center, Illinois. These images, and crip protest ethnography more broadly, represent one way to witness and contest contemporary state violence against migrant communities.

Paper long abstract

In this paper, I reflect on preliminary research I have recently begun related to the “disabling of asylum” by the current US administration. I will focus on a set of photographs and videos I recorded during two protests in Fall 2025 outside of Broadview Detention Center, Illinois. These recordings were taken in the context of “Operation Midway Blitz,” an ongoing, militarized attack by the US government against migrant, refugee, and related racialized communities in the Chicago area, part of a broader project of white nationalism and a “thickening” borderlands condition (Rosas 2006). These recordings are “crip” in that they center disability and disablement, and they challenge the status quo of state power. I argue that crip images, and crip protest ethnography, represent one way to witness and confront contemporary state violence.