National Security and/or Public Safety: Negotiations amongst Crimmigration Law Entities

• In Event: 225 - Section on Latino/a Sociology Paper Session. Latino/a Crimmigration Politics

Abstract

Between 2008 and 2011, Secure Communities, an immigration enforcement initiative that allows local law enforcement to share information about arrestees with federal immigration enforcement, was implemented in all local law enforcement agencies in North Carolina. In November 2014, it was announced that this national program would end, replaced by the Priority Enforcement Program. A similar level of communication results from 287(g) partnerships. Although the latter types of partnerships initially gained popularity after 9/11 to deter national security threats, often depicted at controlling racialized Muslims, the racialized immigrant group most (in number) impacted by these initiatives are Latinos, predominantly of Mexican and Central American origin (Golash-Boza and Pierette-Hondageneu 2014; Saenz and Manges Douglas 2015). These programs remain understudied in the realms of policing, the prison industrial complex, and mass incarceration, subareas where scholars remain focused on the disproportionate impacts on the black community. Crimmigration (Stumpf 2006) scholars have taken on this challenge to showcase the “criminalization of immigration law” (Coleman and Kocher 2013), indicating the involvement of many state actors other than local law enforcement.
This research stems from an in-progress case study of a North Carolina county where the Sheriff’s Office adopted a 287(g) program and a North Carolina county without the program. This paper provides insights into public meetings and summarizes perspectives from local law enforcement, the 287(g) program coordinator, legal counsel, and representatives from community organizations, with an emphasis on public officers, local and state county prosecutors, and judges.

Author

• Felicia Arriaga, Duke University