Examining County Decisions to Partner with ICE for Immigration Enforcement

• In Event: Representation at the Frontline: Local Policing and Enforcement

Abstract

The federal government, by way of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency, is traditionally responsible for enforcing U.S. immigration laws. Due to perceptions regarding increased illegal immigration and related crime and public benefits abuse, the federal government has sought measures to manage enforcement more efficiently and effectively. The solution of choice was the creation of Section 287(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which permits delegation of immigration enforcement authority to state and local governments. The 287(g) agreements grant states and localities the opportunity to partner with ICE through a memorandum of agreement that permits local law enforcement officers to perform immigration enforcement in their jurisdictions.

Several problems have been reported in jurisdictions that partner with ICE through 287(g), such as racial profiling, abuse of power, and heightened fear among immigrant populations (Capps et al. 2011; DHS Office of Inspector General 2010). Critics of 287(g) challenge the basic premise of the program, alleging that communities partnering with ICE are motivated by a false sense of fear that accompanies increased migration to their communities, that partnering with ICE through 287(g) is racially motivated, and that community leaders are choosing to partner with ICE because of anti-immigration sentiments (Capps et al. 2011; Farris and Holman 2017; Lewis et al. 2012).

This paper aims to disentangle the motivations of communities that partner with ICE through 287(g) agreements. One particular interest, flowing from representative bureaucracy theory, has to do with how the characteristics of community leaders, including elected officials such as county sheriffs and legislators, and public managers, might influence the tendency to affiliate with ICE. Representative bureaucracy theory states that a closer demographic match between bureaucrats and the public will lead to better representation of citizen interests. We extend this theory to elected officials, who in counties take on some of the features of bureaucracy (Meier et al. 2003).

We rely on a novel dataset of 78 counties for the years 2015 to 2018. We examine community factors that might affect the propensity to partner with ICE through 287(g) agreements, including terminations and restarts of these agreements. We focus our county-level analysis on the characteristics of leaders, but also on a host of county-level indicators such as crime, public benefits use, population and labor market characteristics, pre-existing relationships with ICE, and others, in order to better understand which communities offer their services to supplement ICE enforcement.

Using a multi-method approach, to include in-depth interviews with relevant actors from 287(g) counties, we provide added detail on the mechanics of community choice and perceptions of the costs and benefits of these partnerships. Accordingly, our contributions include insights into how and why local governments decide to offer their services to augment federal immigration enforcement, and how community actors assess the impacts of these local-federal agreements.

Works Cited

Capps, R., Rosenblum, M. R., Rodriguez, C., & Chishti, M. (2011). Delegation and Divergence: A study of 287 (g) state and local immigration enforcement. Washington, DC: Migration Policy Institute, 1-20.

DHS Office of Inspector General. (March 4, 2010). “The Performance of 287(g) Agreements.”

Farris, E. M., & Holman, M. R. (2017). All politics is local? County sheriffs and localized policies of immigration enforcement. Political Research Quarterly, 70(1), 142-154.

Lewis, P. G., Provine, D. M., Varsanyi, M. W., & Decker, S. H. (2012). Why do (some) city police departments enforce federal immigration law? Political, demographic, and organizational influences on local choices. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 23(1), 1-25.

Meier, K. J., O'Toole Jr, L. J., & Nicholson‐Crotty, S. (2004). Multilevel governance and organizational performance: Investigating the political‐bureaucratic labyrinth. Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 23(1), 31-47.

Authors

• Zachary Bauer

• Jocelyn M. Johnston, American University