Brianna Nofil

Background

Brianna Nofil is a historian of the modern United States, with a focus on migration, incarceration, and law. She received her Ph.D. from Columbia University. Her first book, The Migrant's Jail: An American History of Mass Incarceration, was published by Princeton University Press in 2024. The Migrant's Jail demonstrates how a century of political, economic, and ideological exchange between the immigration bureaucracy and the criminal justice system gave rise to the U.S.’ vast immigration detention system, and how the federal government relied on sheriffs, police, and local governments to make mass deportations possible. 

 Her work has been featured in publications including the New Yorker, El País, The Financial Times, The Independent, and The Marshall Project, and has been covered on NPR. The Migrant’s Jail has received multiple prizes including the Frederick Jackson Turner Award and the Ellis Hawley Prize from the Organization of American Historians, and the First Book Prize and the Theodore Saloutos Book Award from the Immigration & Ethnic History Society. Her public-facing writing on immigration detention can be found here.

 At William & Mary, Brianna teaches courses on immigration, public health, policing, and U.S. political and legal history.