Policing Immigrants
Subtitle
Local Law Enforcement on the Front Line
The United States deported nearly 2 million illegal immigrants during the first five years of the Obama presidency — more than during any previous administration. President Barack Obama stands accused by activists of being “deporter in chief.” Yet despite efforts to rebuild what many see as a broken system, the president has not yet been able to convince Congress to pass new immigration legislation, and his record remains rooted in a political landscape that was created long before his election. Deportation numbers have actually been on the rise since 1996, when two federal statutes sought to delegate a portion of the responsibilities for immigration enforcement to local authorities.
“Policing Immigrants” traces the transition of immigration enforcement from a traditionally federal power exercised primarily near the U.S. borders to a patchwork system of local policing that extends throughout the country’s interior. Since federal authorities set local law enforcement to the task of bringing suspected illegal immigrants to the federal government’s attention, local responses have varied. While some localities have resisted the work, others have aggressively sought out unauthorized immigrants, often seeking to further their own objectives by putting their own stamp on immigration policing. Tellingly, how a community responds can best be predicted not by conditions like crime rates or the state of the local economy but rather by the level of conservatism among local voters. What has resulted, the authors argue, is a system that is neither just nor effective — one that threatens the core crime-fighting mission of policing by promoting racial profiling, creating fear in immigrant communities and undermining the critical community-based function of local policing.
Bios
Doris Marie Provine is a professor emerita in the School of Social Transformation at Arizona State University.
Paul G. Lewis is an associate professor in the School of Politics and Global Studies at Arizona State University.
Scott H. Decker is the Foundation Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Arizona State University.
Praise for this book
'Policing Immigrants' is one of the few books to comprehensively analyze the devolution of immigration enforcement into the ‘patchwork’ of policies and practices that defines contemporary immigration policy in the United States. Drawing on a large cache of original data, the authors trace in careful detail the historical development of the variations across local jurisdictions and provide clear and in-depth analysis of how devolution is proceeding, including the challenges and implications. The book makes an important contribution.
Kitty Calavita Author of "Invitation to Law and Society"
How to address immigration is among the most significant political issues in the United States. With the political parties increasingly polarized on whether or how to integrate the 11 million undocumented immigrants presently in the country, 'Policing Immigrants' makes a major contribution to our understanding of U.S. legal policy on immigration and will contribute to the debate for years to come. No other book so well describes the dramatic variations in local immigration enforcement or the implications for local communities and federal policy.
Charles R. Epp Author of "Pulled Over: How Police Stops Define Race and Citizenship"
