Pitzer was widely cited in 2019 over whether the camps where the United States Border authorities detained refugee claimants were or weren't canonical
concentration camps. She said that while the
Nazi death camps were the best known concentration camps, they have been used around the world. She said she found that concentration camps were hard to close, and that authorities found them so convenient, they were re-used for other groups. She cited how French camps first used to house refugees from the
Spanish Civil War were later used by the
Vichy French to house Jews rounded up to hand over to their Nazi occupiers, and a camp at the
Guantanamo Naval Base to house Haitian and Cuban refugees was later used to house captives from Afghanistan. She also said her book began when she "looked to see how this idea, of rounding up a whole bunch of civilians—noncombatants—and putting them in detention, without trial... How did that get to be seen as a good idea?" Pitzer has described the internment systems for ethnic
Uyghurs in China's
Xinjiang province,
Japanese Americans during
World War II,
Rohingya Muslims in
Myanmar, and the immigration detention facility
Alligator Alcatraz in
Florida as concentration camps. ==References==