After 9/11 the federal government began to partner with state and local law enforcement to defend the U.S. from potential terrorist attacks. This expansion in law enforcement was a partnership with state and local governments, which allows law enforcement to enforce civil and criminal immigration violations. Mai Thi Nguyen examines the impacts of these new partnerships on local communities, finding that when local law enforcers become de facto immigration agents, the fear of deportation can lead to a reduction in civic engagement from immigrant communities, and to a breakdown in trust. She argues that in order to improve public safety without alienating immigrant communities, agencies granted enhanced immigration authority should be placed under greater scrutiny, especially at the local level

Thi Nguyen, Mai

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blogs.lse.ac.ukhttp://blogs.lse.ac.uk/usappblog/2015/02/11/when-local-law-enforcement-officers-become-immigration-agents-communities-suffer/When local law enforcement officers become immigrationagents, communities sufferAfter 9/11 the federal government began to partner with state and local law enforcement todefend the U.S. from potential terrorist attacks. This expansion in law enforcement was apartnership with state and local governments, which allows law enforcement to enforce civil andcriminal immigration violations. Mai Thi Nguyen examines the impacts of these new partnershipson local communities, finding that when local law enforcers become de facto immigration agents,the fear of deportation can lead to a reduction in civic engagement from immigrant communities,and to a breakdown in trust. She argues that in order to improve public safety without alienatingimmigrant communities, agencies granted enhanced immigration authority should be placedunder greater scrutiny, especially at the local level.After the 11 September 2001 (9/11) attacks, the federal government began to partner with state and local lawenforcement agencies through the ICE ACCESS 287g Program (287g) in order to defend its interior fromterrorists. Believing that the ‘war on terror’ was insufficiently staffed, interior enforcement strategies spread rapidlyacross the country.The attacks also raised concerns about the security challenges posed by the estimated 11–12 millionunauthorized immigrants living in the U.S. Following numerous failed attempts to reform immigration at the federallevel throughout the mid-2000s, state and local agencies began policing immigration using a variety of existinglocal regulations and ordinances. State and local government officials also passed new anti-immigrationlegislation, such as Hazleton, Pennsylvania’s ‘Illegal Immigration Relief Acts’ , Arizona’s SB 1070 and Alabama’sHB 56. The two statewide bills expanded the authority of public employees to ask for proof of legal immigrationstatus.These attempts by state and local governments to develop new immigration legislation have been controversialand challenged in court primarily because they overstep federal immigration authority. In contrast to these otherstrategies for immigration enforcement, 287g is a federal program, authorised through Section 287g of theImmigration and Nationality Act of 1996. Section 287g enables the federal government to partner with state andlocal law enforcement agencies to enforce civil and criminal immigration violations. A civil immigration violationinvolves illegal presence in the country, such as crossing theCanadian border illegally or overstaying atravel orstudent visa. Criminal immigrationviolations involve such acts as smuggling anunauthorised immigrant.The ability to enforce civil immigration violations through 287g has broadened the legal authority of state and locallaw enforcers and expands the geographic territory that the federal government can police immigration. Given therapid expansion of local interior enforcement programs, it is important to understand the effects of these programson local communities. In new research, we take a look at two neighboring jurisdictions in North Carolina – a newdestination state for immigration– that adopted the 287g program: the city of Durham and Alamance County, NorthCarolina.We found that when local law enforcers become de facto immigration agents and start to enforce immigrationlaws, this can have far-reaching consequences for local law enforcement practices and marginalising immigrantfamilies. The ambiguity about the role of law enforcement after the adoption of 287g and fear of deportation havemade immigrants less civically engaged, less inclined to access public services and fear becoming victims ofcrime because they cannot turn to local law enforcement to protect them. Furthermore, immigrant businessesexperienced a disruption in economic activity and immigrants report greater exploitation by employers andlandlords. These are social and economic concerns relevant to the entire community, not just immigrants.In Alamance County, North Carolina, the combination of local officials’ anti-immigrant attitudes and themobilisation of police mechanisms that increase contact with immigrant populations in routine daily activities,created the possibility– and the normalised expectation – that local law enforcement should consistently be on thelookout for unauthorized immigrants. The knowledge that immigration status will be checked at the local jailenabled a wide range of individuals the authority to initiate the process of deportation, including public officials,law enforcers, public employees and the community at-large.  This led to widespread abuses of the program bythe Sheriff’s Office and to the eventual dissolution of immigration enforcement powers due to egregious violationsof racial profiling and civil rights abuses of Hispanics.Credit: Andrew Herington (Flickr, CC-BY-NC-SA-2.0 )In Durham, North Carolina, a city often considered a sanctuary for immigrants, and where 287g is limited topursuing serious and violent crimes, the impacts to the immigrant community resemble those in Alamance County.Many immigrants living in Durham do not understand that the Durham Police Department’s 287g implementationstyle has been different from all other agencies throughout the state of North Carolina. Moreover, knowledgeabout specific cases of police abuse or human and civil rights violations from other jurisdictions, such asneighboring Alamance County, had damaging effects on police–immigrant relations in Durham. Durham policeofficials have admitted that negative effects from other jurisdictions make their work with the immigrant communitymore challenging.  Immigrants became wary of police and were less likely to report crime or cooperate in crimeinvestigations.Up until recently, the 287g Program was being replaced by Secure Communities, a local interior enforcementprogram in the process of nationwide implementation that closely resembles the 287g jail model. As of January2013, the biometric information sharing capability of Secure Communities was activated by the U.S. Departmentof Immigration and Customs Enforcement in 3181 jurisdictions in 50 states, US territories and Washington DC.Though it was discontinued last November, Secure Communities was envisioned by the federal government to bemore uniformly implemented, with less opportunity for racially biased discretion than 287g because everyindividual that is booked into jail is fingerprinted.The realities on the ground, however, appeared to be much different than the federal government’s expectationsfor the implementation of Secure Communities.  We believe that these interior immigration enforcement programstransfer too much power to local law enforcement without enough oversight and transparency to make usconfident that the abuses and violations in Alamance County are not repeated.What steps should be taken to harness the capacity of state and local law enforcers to improve public security andsafety while limiting the fear and harmful consequences to communities?  First, greater scrutiny should be takenbefore and after an agency is granted enhanced immigration enforcement authority. Local agencies with historiesof racial profiling or human and civil rights abuses should not be given greater immigration enforcement authority.Second, federal scrutiny should be applied to local jurisdictions with 287g and Secure Communities programs.There needs to be clear penalties for state and local enforcers who abuse their powers, engage in racial profiling,and fail to protect all residents from harm, regardless of their immigration status. To date, the consequences ofprogram abuses have been long-term federal investigations and lawsuits, as in the cases of Maricopa County,Arizona, and Alamance County, North Carolina. It is unclear how effective these measures are in deterring andchanging abusive and discriminatory practices.Third, advisory or oversight boards comprised of community members not affiliated with law enforcement may beone way to check on local abuses of authority. Because of the limitations of the federal government in policing,monitoring and even cognizance of local-level variations in the implementation of local immigrant enforcementprograms, greater scrutiny should be applied at the local level.The existence of the 287g Program, Secure Communities and other interior immigration enforcement programs,as well as the uncertain future of federal immigration reform, indicates that subfederal agencies will become moreinvolved in interior immigration enforcement in the future. As such, the federal government needs to have aclearer and more consistent interior immigration strategy, provide more education to eliminate abuses of theprogram, implement effective strategies to deter program abuses, and provide more oversight and monitoring atthe local level to identify when problems or abuses arise.This article is based on the paper, ‘Interior immigration enforcement: The impacts of expanding local lawenforcement authority’, in Urban Studies.Please read our comments policy before commenting .Note:  This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of USApp– American Politics and Policy, norof the London School of Economics.Shortened URL for this post: http://bit.ly/1AkI3iW_________________________________ About the authorMai Thi Nguyen – University of North Carolina at Chapel HillMai Thi Nguyen, is an Associate Professor at the Department of City & Regional Planning at theUniversity of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her research focuses on social and spatial inequality,urban growth phenomena and governance, the relationship between the built and socialenvironments, and socially vulnerable populations.CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 2014 LSE USAPP

When local law enforcement officers become immigration agents, communities suffer

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