Doctoral Dissertation Research: Policing Immigrants: Immigration and Local Governance

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Although the federal government has the exclusive authority to regulate migration in the United States, increasingly, cities are creating immigration policies aimed at expelling immigrants from their localities. This project focuses on how local bureaucracies implement immigration control, using Nashville, Tennessee, and its application of 287(g) as a case study. Authorized under Section 287(g) of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Responsibility Act, 287(g) allows local law enforcement officials to check immigrants' citizenship status and, if necessary, process them for deportation. In Nashville, both the Police and Sheriff's Departments are implicated in 287(g) implementation; police officers arrest people who are subsequently screened for immigration violations by Sheriff's deputies.The research strategy for this project involves interviews with stake-holders in the 287(g) policy arena and ethnographic observations, including police ride-alongs. Interviews with administrators and employees in local law enforcement agencies are conducted to understand employee preferences with respect to 287(g) implementation, as well as bureaucratic practices, professional identity, professional norms, and perceived levels of external pressure. Interviews with immigrant advocates uncover how, or if, their organizations pressure local agencies for non-implementation, and get at the effects of 287(g) on the local immigrant population.Drawing from theories of bureaucracy suggesting that people on the front lines of policy implementation make policy through their actions, this project examines how 287(g) implementation depends on the preferences of actors in the policy arena, and the institutional characteristics of local law enforcement agencies. This research is important because it challenges assumptions about the growing trend toward local immigration enforcement by demonstrating the on-the-ground rules of immigration policing.