Abstract
Immigration is a widespread concern throughout the world and San Diego State University is located in the U.S.-Mexico border region, one of the most controversial areas. Also, located in this region is the Otay Mesa Detention Center which detains immigrants, asylum seekers, and undocumented persons seeking to cross legally into the U.S. With daily news stories about immigrants and border chaos, a group of concerned citizens, Detainee Allies, began to write and exchange letters with the detainees at the center in July 2018. The response from the detainees was immediate and continues to grow and the group quickly understood the import of the letters. They asked the SDSU library to archive, digitize, redact, and make the letters available to the public. This paper outlines a number of the legal and ethical issues surrounding this complex collection including the safety and privacy of the detainees, informed consent, the role of metadata, and the management of an archive growing in real time. Perhaps the collection will lead to a better understanding of the immigrants, or even help change public policy. At the very least the collection will be important for future research on immigration and the study of failed public policy.
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References
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Lamont, L. et al. (2019). The Immigration Dilemma; Legal, Ethical and Practical Issues in Creating a Living, Growing Archive. In: Doucet, A., Isaac, A., Golub, K., Aalberg, T., Jatowt, A. (eds) Digital Libraries for Open Knowledge. TPDL 2019. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 11799. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-30760-8_16
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-30760-8_16
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