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America's Offshore Refugee Camps, Harold Hongju Koh

University of Richmond Law Review

America's offshore refugee camps rank among the most startling, yet invisible, features of United States foreign policy in the post-Cold War era. Since 1991, our Government has almost continuously maintained tent cities holding thousands of men, women, and children, surrounded by rolls of razor-barbed wire, amid the sweltering heat of the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and the former Panama Canal Zone. Those incarcerated in the camps have witnessed birth and death, hope and despair, and untold waves of frustration and tedium.