During World War I, the federal government imprisoned German civilians living in the United States in internment camps, one of which was in Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia. Between 1917 and 1920, this camp housed more than 3,600 people. Most of them had committed no crime. They were simply not American citizens. Among the challenges these imprisoned people faced were a flu pandemic as well as separation from their families and property.

A century later, non-citizens are incarcerated in Georgia at the Stewart Detention Center, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) prison in Lumpkin, Georgia. For most of the detained people, their only crime was coming to the United States. While awaiting asylum hearings, they are subjected to civil and human rights abuses, and, in 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic.

These sites represent bookends of a century in which the United States incarcerated non-citizens, depriving them of their freedom and civil and human rights.