The confluence of settlement, immigration and detention illustrates the complex issues that are in the headlines and in our identity. In the books We were Illegal: Uncovering a Texas Family’s Mythmaking and Migration and After the Last Border: Two Families and the Story of Refuge in America, Jessica Goudeau takes two hard looks at the making of America and the stories we tell ourselves about our place in the nation. In the book, The Migrant's Jail: An American History of Mass Incarceration, Brianna Nofil examines the cruelty of the U.S. immigration bureaucracy and the criminal justice system it gave rise to.