The Architecture Lobby (TAL) and Architects/Designers/Planners for Social Responsibility (ADPSR) are calling on designers to boycott any efforts to design and construct infrastructure related to the immigration detention and deterrence. 

In a statement announcing their efforts, the two organizations write, "[TAL and ADPSR] continue to condemn the current administration’s assault on immigrant rights. These violent and racist policies are designed to cause fear and chaos; target those seeking asylum and refuge; and weaponize the built environment against immigrants." 

Instead of helping design detention centers and border walls, the groups call on individual designers, groups of architectural workers, design students, and entire firms to organize against the unjust policies and practices they are being asked to support and perpetuate through their work. That includes speaking out against cruel immigration policies directly to local representatives, refusing to participate in the design and construction of detention and deterrence infrastructure generally, and organizing within the workplace or university setting to speak out against these practices collectively. 

In addition, TAL and ADPSR call on members of the design community to view "politics" not as an annoying, personal endeavor, but instead, to realize the intrinsically political role architects play in shaping, maintaining, and bettering the built environment through their work and ideas.

Regarding how architects and designers see themselves in relation to political activities, TAL writes, "A way we find helpful to think of politics is: The mechanisms of or how any group of people chooses to distribute resources and power amongst themselves," adding, "Everything is political in this way as it is affected by and is an expression of how power and resources are allocated, architecture is especially so. In fact the pressures on your life that might make it difficult to worry about 'politics'-such as long work hours, debt, and housing costs-are precisely politics and why taking a position is so critical."

The move comes in response to a recently issued statement from the American Institute of Architects (AIA) that objects to the "misuse" of existing detention centers by Trump administration officials. In their statement, the AIA calls upon building inspectors to help ensure that the conditions at these sites fall within acceptable safety standards. 

In recent months the ghastly conditions that detained immigrants experience under the current administration's "zero tolerance" immigration policies have come to light across the country, prompting soul-searching and much discussion by the general public and among design professionals.  

Addressing AIA's statement directly, Architecture Lobby and ADPSR write: "While we welcome AIA’s focus on human rights at the border, we need to recognize that our profession’s commitment to health, safety, and welfare is about more than the enforcement of building codes. A detention center where toddlers have been separated from their families is not a healthy building, regardless of fire safety, ventilation and code compliance. It is not the health of buildings that is at stake today, but the health of our society and democracy. The architectural profession must unequivocally denounce the racist policies that underlie the creation of immigration detention centers: there is no ‘good design’ for the infrastructures of inhumane and violent policies rooted in white supremacy."