Immigration Enforcement

In response to growing concerns about the impact of harsh immigration enforcement policy since the 2016 presidential campaign, we examined its overall impact on the nation's schools, using survey data completed by over 3,600 educators across the country. Our study results show that immigration enforcement is affecting all students-both those from immigrant homes and those that are not. In particular, Title I schools are the most affected by immigration enforcement. Our results also show that the higher the percentage of White students, the more educators reported immigrant students being exposed to a hostile, anti-immigrant environment. We conclude that the current policy of immigration enforcement significantly dismantles an equitable education for all students and creates a critical threat to their futures.

This synthetic chapter addresses the causes of the massive escalation of border immigration enforcement at the U.S.-Mexico boundary since 1994 (and in some ways, since the early 20th century).  It argues that hierarchical citizenship in which Mexican origin people are slotted as commodity-migrant laborers (though resisted as such) now is interacting with a national and global political economy in which there are increasing sources of conflict and anxiety (economic and social inequality worsening, capitalist driven insecurity and globalization, continual failures of the United States as a militaristic global hegemon) to result in scapegoating of feared subordinate servant populations: immigrants.  It looks at the specific symbolic role of borders (as a boundary between purity and danger) in this cultural-political economy.  It argues that the current immigration and border policy conjucture is emerging from a three sided struggle between capitalist managerial elites (favoring managed subordinate labor flows), xenophobic populist right wing sectors (as analyzed above), and human/labor rights coalitions battling under difficult circumstances.

A pdf is available by request to jmheyman@utep.edu .  Article is in Spanish (translation of Núñez and Heyman 2007).  In processes of entrapment, police and other state agencies impose significant risk to moving around, while people themselves exercise various forms of agency by both limiting themselves and covertly defying movement controls. Recent US immigration and border enforcement policy has entrapped undocumented immigrants, in particular on the United States side of the US-Mexico border region. We explore how to operationalize this "macro" pattern in ethnographic research, making the conceptually and methodologically significant point that political-legal forces are only one among many elements leading to entrapment and immobilization; other factors include transportation constraints, poor health, etc. The concept of "morality of risk" is also introduced to help us understand how and why trapped people would take severe risks to defy immigration policing. Three ethnographic cases are examined, noting the complex mix of movement and barriers found in them. We conclude with the significance of entrapment for applied and basic social science: first, for the analysis of spatial mobility, enclosure, and inequalities of movement; second, for public policy; and third, for the methods and ethics of researching trapped and hidden populations.

Restrictive U.S. immigration policies and enforcement have led to concerns among providers about how these changes affect service utilization among Latinx and immigrant communities. This study outlines perceptions from twenty service providers in health care, mental health, legal affairs, and immigrant advocacy in El Paso, Texas. Nearly all respondents stated that their work has been negatively affected by immigration enforcement policies under the current federal administration. Most reported changes in utilization among undocumented immigrants and families of mixed immigration status, as well as legal permanent and temporary residents, refugees or asylum seekers, and U.S. citizens. Negative effects were related to immigration-related fear and uncertainty in the community, a need for public education about policies and individu-als' rights, and changes in immigration policy enforcement. Further research about the impacts of immigration enforcement policies on service utilization is needed. To protect the well-being of immigrant communities, policy makers should be aware of the human rights implications of immigration enforcement policies with regard to service utilization. In a global environment of increasing nationalism and xenophobia, nations must carefully consider the implications of harsh anti-immigrant narratives and strict immigration enforcement on the well-being of minority and immigrant populations.

A public policy report that addresses a major element of the Trump administration's border and immigration plans.

https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/research/why-caution-needed-hiring-additional-border-patrol-agents-and-ice-officers

The last time the Border Patrol received a large infusion of money to hire thousands of new agents, cases of corruption and misconduct spiked in the agency. New hires were not sufficiently vetted, novice agents were not adequately supervised, and agents who abused their authority acted with impunity. Now the Trump administration wants to repeat history by hiring thousands of additional Border Patrol agents, as well as Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers, without introducing the reforms and safeguards needed to avoid the abuses and scandals of the past. Corruption is likely to ensue from such a rapid acceleration in hiring, problems which could easily be averted with rigorous hiring practices.

The administration’s plans are encapsulated in two memos issued on February 20, 2017, by Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly. The memos implement President Trump’s executive orders on border security and immigration enforcement and call for hiring 5,000 additional Border Patrol agents  within Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and 10,000 additional ICE officers—ostensibly as a means of enhancing public safety and national security.  But these two branches of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) are poorly prepared to recruit, train, and supervise new personnel. While the Border Patrol experienced some improvements in the aftermath of its last expansion, most recommendations for reform remain unimplemented.

Given this history, there are serious concerns that rapid expansion will bring about a resurgence of problems in the Border Patrol and also cause similar problems in ICE. The proposed surge is also stunningly expensive. Yet there is little justification for this expense at a time when undocumented immigration has fallen to historic lows. If the goal is to enhance border security, this money would be better used in many other ways.

The issue of irregular migration is experiencing heightened attention in political, social and legal arenas. While deterrence and crime-control discourse and practices dominate current approaches to irregular migration, this article seeks to focus on the problematic neglect of the treatment of irregular migrants in destination countries, in relation to their ability to access fundamental rights and basic public services. This article will put forth an argument for the establishment of firewalls – a separation between immigration enforcement activities and public service provision. This article will canvass existing trends and practices that have both contributed to the erosion of firewall protections, and have built and maintained meaningful firewalls between immigration and public service provision.

Three successive presidential administrations have opposed the practice of immigrant sanctuary, at various intervals characterizing state and local government restrictions on police participation in federal immigration enforcement as reckless, aberrant, and unpatriotic. This Article finds these claims to be ahistorical in light of the long and singular history of a field the Article identifies as “police federalism.” For nearly all of U.S. history, Americans within and outside of the political and juridical fields flatly rejected federal policies that would make state and local police subordinate to the federal executive. Drawing from Bourdieusian social theory, the Article conceptualizes the sentiment driving this longstanding opposition as the orthodoxy of police autonomy. It explains how the orthodoxy guided the field of police federalism for more than two centuries, surviving the War on Alcohol, the War on Crime, and even the opening stages of the War on Terror. In constructing a cultural and legal history of police federalism, the Article provides analytical leverage by which to assess the merits of immigrant sanctuary policy as well as the growing body of prescriptive legal scholarship tending to normalize the federal government’s contemporary use of state and local police as federal proxies. More abstractly, police federalism serves as an original theoretical framework clarifying the structure of police governance within the federalist system.