State Facilitated Harm and a White Supremacist Project: Sheriff Departments Cooperation with ICE

• In Event: Immigration and Crime: Comparative and Theoretical Studies

Abstract

White supremacy is reinforced at the meso-level through sheriff departments collaboration with the federal agency Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE). Utilizing conflict and state crime theoretical frameworks coupled with tenets of Blalock’s Power Threat Theory, the work is an investigation into sheriff’s departments’ collaboration with ICE on the 287 (g) policy. The study is an extensive analysis of the discourses and narratives regarding the policy in sheriff departments found in Southern Border states, and the belief systems these narratives propagate. In focusing on the discourses from the sheriff’s departments and their supporters, the collaboration is understood as state facilitated harm and a white supremacist project.

Author

• Ida Oesteraas, Old Dominion University