Legal Violence: Unauthorized Mexican Immigrant Victimization

• In Event: Immigrants and the Criminal Justice System

Abstract

This paper examines how citizenship status affects an unauthorized immigrant’s ability to cooperate with the police during a routine police-civilian encounter. Drawing on the auto-ethnography method, this paper illustrates how unauthorized Mexican immigrants are unwilling to report their victimization to police as a result of their citizenship status. The ethnographic data gathered for this paper was collected by the author who worked as a police officer in a medium-sized police department located on the South Texas-Mexico border. Results reveal unauthorized Mexican immigrants are reluctant to report their victimization to police for a wide array of issues such as shooting incidents, domestic violence incidents, and workplace exploitation as a result of their citizenship status. Policy implications are discussed in order to address the lack of cooperation between unauthorized Mexican immigrants and the police in regard to their victimization.

Author

• Eric Gamino, University of Texas Rio Grande Valley