Like an echo of recent migration movements, the number of repatriation cases is increasing. Whenever immigration authorities suspect the risk of absconding, they detain the migrant by producing detention documents. This paper presents research on these administrative-judicial practices concerning migrant detention, with the goal of reconstructing their social and political moments — which become invisible once the documents are signed and executed. In this regard, documents are circulated in a legal-administrative network — separate from the migrants they represent. As a consequence, the objectification of migrants as references within these bureaucratic practices results in »documentary detention«. By producing legal documents, authorities legitimize their version of truth, even when the entanglements of migrants in documents can be retraced to incorrect translations of a person into its textual representation. Therefore, by critically questioning those practices of truth production and negotiation, migrant detention is re-politicized.