Policing the Country’s Newcomers

Abstract

The U.S. has a long history of both welcoming immigration and then seeking to control its most recent immigrant populations through laws, regulations and policies and, at various times, tolerating the use of vigilante violence and state collective violence in exerting its will over immigrant groups. The stereotype of immigrants as cultural, economic and political threats to social stability has led to waves of extreme anti-immigration sentiments in the past two centuries. In recent decades, in the name of law and order and a “War on Drugs,” aggressive enforcement carried out by many police agencies observes problems of discriminatory profiling and unfair controlling of minority groups, including immigrant populations. The events of 9/11 terrorist attacks have further posed challenges to maintaining positive police-immigrant community relations, with people of Arab descent particularly becoming primary targets of the post-9/11 investigation. State and local police departments, under the current conservative political environment, have also faced progressively onerous demands for performing immigration law enforcement in connection with national security. When the lines between civil and criminal immigration consequences are increasingly blurred, crimmigration inevitably occurs and state and local police agencies often find themselves struggling with exercising sensitive and fair policing.