“Bed Checks” is an authentic look inside one of the hundreds of thousands of relationships affected, and endangered, by the limits on freedom of movement imposed by the state.

A “Bed Checks” is an immigration enforcement tactic wherein government agents knock on the married couple’s door, seeking proof that the citizen and “the alien” sleep in the same bed or live together. This project began as a reaction to the government’s perverse attention to the photographers’ mixed immigration status marriage. Combining photographs with the documents from the so-called “alien file” obtained through a freedom of information request, the project negotiates the territory between surveillance and privacy, intimacy and performance, individual and the state.

Despite its reputation as the easiest path to U.S. residency, marriage-based immigration demands costly, invasive scrutiny. Couples must prove their relationships through financial and personal evidence, while failing to meet these standards can result in separation or deportation, exposing
broader inequalities of race, class, and power.

As the camera’s point of view shifts from inside to the outside of the relationship, the project confronts the viewers’ notions of family, migration, and photographic evidence.