Moral Boundaries in Perceptions of Immigration Enforcement Work

• In Event: Work, Education, and Migration

Abstract

A quickly growing federal law enforcement agency, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), is currently imposing a repressive order in cities like Minneapolis through violent attacks on organizers and abductions of immigrants. ICE has ramped up recruitment, dangling signing bonuses and lowering barriers to entry. Calls to abolish ICE began from its formation in 2003 but have spread across the widest sector of the public to date, as people are exposed to footage of ICE tactics from using children as bait to street executions. As critics condemn ICE agents and their abuses, the recruitment pipeline into ICE appears robust. How do people understand immigration enforcement work of ICE agents in the current context? What are moral boundaries that surround or bisect immigration enforcement work, demarcating good and bad actions and agents? In this paper, I present results of thematic analysis of about 2500 comments on two Reddit threads, identifying narratives of pathways into ICE work, the characteristics of good and bad ICE labor, moral boundary making, the stigma of ICE work, and narratives featuring ICE agents who are themselves of immigrant background. Turning the deservingness lens explored by migration scholars on migration regime enforcers, I ask: who on ICE payroll is deemed to be deserving of sympathy and understanding and who is seen as evil and irredeemable?

Author

• Sofya Aptekar, CUNY - School of Labor and Urban Studies