Federal Law Enforcement Research Articles

Determinants of county migrant regularization policymaking in the United States: Understanding temporal and spatial realities

While immigration policymaking has traditionally been the sole prerogative of nation states, research has documented increased instances of migration policymaking at sub-national levels across migrant-receiving societies. This paper examines the temporally and spatially distinctive dynamics that underscore the adoption of these policies at the county level in the United States. The study considers the implementation of migrant labor market regularizations (LRs) for the time period 2004–2014. LRs are defined as discrete arenas of policymaking at the sub-national level that affect aspects of migrant workers’ status in labor markets and include laws and ordinances related to: anti-solicitation, language access, local enforcement of federal immigration law, and employment verification. Utilizing a multilevel event histories model, we analyze data from a unique dataset of over 5000 LR policies across 2959 counties in the United States, and address two research questions: (1) What are the social, economic, and political factors that influence the adoption of LRs by counties and municipalities in the United States; and (2) do policy adoption trends that occurred during 2004–2014 indicate a unique type of diffusion pattern? We find that the adoption of LRs by county governments are influenced by the racialization of immigration discourse and by policy behaviors at the municipal and state government levels, while economic characteristics of the local labor market and perceived ethnic competition from migrants have little direct impact on the probability of policy adoption.

Glass Ceiling in Federal Law Enforcement: An Exploratory Analysis of the Factors Contributing to Women’s Career Advancement

In recent years, there has been limited focus on representative bureaucracy at the upper levels of government organizations. Scholarship on the glass ceiling has emphasized systematic and sociopsychological barriers as impediments for women to advance into upper level management positions. Despite the importance of continuing to highlight these obstacles, factors contributing to their success have received little attention in public administration. This study provides a descriptive analysis of the factors contributing to women’s career advancement in federal law enforcement. Using survey data collected from 32 senior female federal law enforcement officers working in 16 federal law enforcement agencies, nine themes emerge as factors contributing to their success. The topic of the glass ceiling continues to be relevant in today’s literature for responding to women’s lack of passive or active representation in the upper ranks of nontraditional occupations such as law enforcement.

Federal Supremacy and State Jurisdictional Duties

Federal Courts scholarship often focuses on access to federal courts for the decision of federal claims. At the same time, many Federal Courts scholars insist that state courts must hear affirmative federal causes of action, even when the lower federal courts are open to the same claims—the very federal courts regarded by such scholars as superior to state courts. This article takes issue with suggestions that the state courts have broad duties to entertain affirmative federal claims, whether statutory or constitutional. There is little early support for requiring state courts to entertain affirmative federal statutory and constitutional claims, and considerable evidence against it. In the twentieth century, however, the Court began to compel state courts to take jurisdiction of certain federal statutory actions in a line of cases associated with Testa v. Katt. Such compulsion, however, was not justified by the Supremacy Clause or related arguments. The Court also occasionally required state courts to provide certain constitutionally necessary affirmative remedies, in a different line of cases associated with General Oil v. Crain. The constitutionally compelled remedies strand was based on a requirement that the states supply adequate remedies for certain federal constitutional violations, rather than a Supremacy-based command that the states provide the same causes of action that the federal courts provide, as under Testa. The effect of more recent Supreme Court decisions such as Haywood v. Drown and scholarly proposals following the Court’s 2016 decision in Montgomery v. Louisiana threaten to submerge the Crain line of cases into the Testa line, possibly requiring greater state court conformity with federal courts as to causes of action for raising constitutional claims. Such uniformity, however, threatens to diminish the role of the states in fashioning different solutions to problems of governmental illegality. State variation may be all the more important in light of frequently-voiced dissatisfaction with the Court’s federal habeas corpus doctrine and constitutional tort doctrine under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. State court duties thus will not necessarily enhance the enforcement of federal constitutional law, and might actually undermine it.

A Nation of Informants: Reining in Post-9/11 Coercion of Intelligence Informants

This article challenges the adequacy of the existing legal and regulatory framework governing informant recruitment and coercion practices to protect fundamental rights, informed by the Muslim-American experience. It looks at the growing law enforcement practice of recruiting informants among Muslim-American communities for intelligence gathering purposes. Although the coercion of law-abiding individuals to provide information to federal law enforcement agencies for intelligence gathering purposes implicates significant rights, it is left unregulated. Existing, albeit limited, restraints on the government agents’ ability to coerce individuals to provide information either assume a criminal context, or are driven by historical concerns over FBI corruption. As the U.S. government engages in widespread surveillance of Muslim-American communities, it relies heavily on recruiting members of those communities as informants. These individuals are targeted for their community ties, or their religious or linguistic knowledge — and not because of any nexus they might have to criminal activity. This has led FBI agents to search for coercive levers outside of the criminal process and that have far fewer procedural protections — namely, immigration and watch-listing authorities. Thus, existing protections that have evolved to prevent civil rights violations in the criminal informant context — limited as those protections may be — do not apply. In light of these expanding authorities and the significant rights at stake, this article makes several proposals that would regulate the recruitment of intelligence informants.

A Few Armed Drones, Judiciously Stationed, Might at a Small Expense Be Made Useful Sentinels of the Law:: The Sufficiency of Existing Law as Applied to the U.S. Coast Guardds Inevitable Use of Unmanned Aircraft Capable of Employing Airborne Use of Force in the Maritime Counter-Drug Mission

The U.S. Coast Guard is unique in the American Federal government in that it is at all times, both an armed force and a federal law enforcement agency. Maritime law enforcement and drug interdiction are two of the Coast Guard’s eleven statutory missions. Starting in the late-1990s, the Coast Guard has enjoyed significant success employing helicopter airborne use of force (AUF) to execute its counter-narcotics mission. The service will likely continue to leverage this capability well into the future as it continues to combat the persistent threat to national security, “institutions, governance, U.S. economic competiveness, and strategic markets” posed by Transnational Criminal Organizations (“TCO”). Indeed, “[i]t is . . . clear that proceeds from the sale illicit narcotics are a core enabler of the most dangerous [transnational organized crime] networks that threaten U.S. security interests. As such . . . , denying/disrupting the flow of illicit narcotics and combating TCOs has never been more complementary.” More recently, the Coast Guard has also begun exploring developing unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) in earnest. While the Coast Guard’s UAS use is still nascent, currently limited to the very early stages intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR), it is completely foreseeable and increasingly likely that sometime in the near future, the Coast Guard will follow in the footsteps of its Department of Defense (DoD) counterparts and look to employ armed, as well as perhaps UAS with varying degrees of significant autonomy, as a means to expand current AUF capacity and capabilities. The Coast Guard’s use of AUF in the execution of its maritime counter-narcotics mission is well grounded in international and U.S. law. My position is that current international and U.S. law provides no obstacle for the Coast Guard, should it decide to employ armed UAS, even UAS with great degrees of autonomy, in the execution of AUF operations, provided the Coast Guard continues to employ its existing policy, which requires a Flag officer-level Statement of No Objection before employing warning shots and disabling fire on the high seas, in the counter-drug mission space. Furthermore, existing law, specifically 14 U.S.C. § 637 provides the Coast Guard sufficient personal and criminal indemnification protections for its foreseeable use of armed UAS for counter-drug AUF missions on the high seas. Finally, existing claims statutes and their corresponding regulations, would remain applicable in instances where armed Coast Guard UAS misapplied force to the same extent they are currently applicable in the context of manned AUF operations. This article analyzes these issues.

Reorganizing the Federal Administrative State: The Disutility of Criminal Investigative Programs at Federal Regulatory Agencies

President Donald Trump has directed federal agencies and has invited the public to suggest ways to reorganize the federal government to make it more effective and efficient. One possibility is to reorganize at least part of federal law enforcement. Numerous federal regulatory agencies have criminal investigative divisions. Congress and the President should consider consolidating those programs and transferring them to a traditional federal law enforcement agency. The FBI is a possible home for those agents, but the U.S. Marshals Service may have certain advantages that the FBI does not possess, including the possibility of a less costly transition. Either agency would make a more suitable home for investigative programs currently housed in administrative agencies.

From Violent Crime to Terrorism: The Changing Basis of the Federal, State and Local Law Enforcement Dynamic

Two lines of questions dominate discussions about how the nation ought to respond at home to the new (or rather newly perceived) terrorist threat: How do we ensure that information about potential terrorist activities is effectively gathered, shared, and used? And how do we ensure that the Government neither abuses the investigative authority we give it, nor demands more authority than it needs? Each line can profitably be pursued in its own terms. Yet to keep the conversations separate is to miss seeing how the very process of creating an effective domestic intelligence network may introduce a salutary level of accountability and balance in the system. The key lies in the relationships among the local, state, and federal units out of which the network must be created, and their organic characteristics. And the seeds of this promising institutional dynamic can be found in the recent history of the interaction among federal, state, and local governments in the policing area. This essay explores that history and its salience to current issues.

Work-Life Balance: An Exploratory Analysis of Family-Friendly Policies for Reducing Turnover Intentions Among Women in U.S. Federal Law Enforcement

ABSTRACTRecent scholarship has emphasized the influence of family-friendly policies on work attitudes such as turnover intentions. However, little research in public administration has explored the preferences of family-friendly policies or the discretionary implementation of these policies. This article provides an exploratory analysis of a U.S. federal workgroup that is less adaptive to family-care needs in response to mission requirements. Using survey data collected from 1,111 female officers employed by a large federal law enforcement agency, work-family conflict is reported as the main reason for turnover intentions and five family-friendly policies are identified for potentially reducing turnover intentions among women. In addition, comparisons are made between female officers with children and unmarried female officers with children.

An Exploratory Analysis of the Strategies Women Employ to Cope with the Challenges They Face in Federal Law Enforcement

For a study of women’s occupational persistence in federal law enforcement, qualitative data are generated from semi-structured interviews with 20 sworn female federal officers working in 10 federal law enforcement agencies. Interviews provide descriptions of the strategies women employ to cope with the negative attributes and challenges in federal law enforcement and the factors that influence women’s persistence to remain in federal law enforcement. Despite the obstacles, women not only persist against the challenges, they highlight the unique attributes of federal law enforcement to the policing research community.

Gender and Public Agency Hiring: An Exploratory Analysis of Recruitment Practices in Federal Law Enforcement

Census data indicate that women are grossly underrepresented in federal law enforcement. As all agencies must compete to attract quality candidates to reflect the diversity of the communities they serve, recruiting and hiring more women should be a priority for all agency leaders. This descriptive and exploratory analysis seeks to understand the recruitment process in federal law enforcement using both qualitative and quantitative data generated from surveys collected from 201 new federal law enforcement officers working in 32 federal law enforcement agencies. The study finds that although recruitment usually precedes hiring, federal law enforcement agencies do not appear to actively recruit their officers. The study further highlights proactive efforts to recruit more women into federal law enforcement.

Toyobo resolves suit over defective body armor

The Japanese company Toyobo has agreed to pay the U.S. government $66 million to resolve claims that it sold a defective high-performance fiber used in bulletproof vests purchased by federal and state law enforcement agencies. The agreement settles a 14-year-old lawsuit charging that Toyobo knew its Zylon poly-benzobisoxazole (PBO) bullet-resistant fiber could fail prematurely when subject to body heat and humidity. The suit also claimed that Toyobo didn’t disclose problems when it knew about them and misled both the U.S. government and vest manufacturers. “Selling material for these vests that one knows to be defective is dishonest, and risks the lives of the men and women who serve to protect us,” said U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions in a statement. Toyobo’s own statement said it settled with the Department of Justice (DOJ) without admitting any legal liability to avoid the uncertainty and cost of a jury trial. The firm argues

Interrogative Specialists and False Confessions: Debunking the Con Artist Myth

Within the criminal justice system, confessions are an extremely powerful form of evidence. Unfortunately, innocent people sometimes falsely confess to crimes they did not actually commit. Such travesties of justice have sparked a significant degree of academic research into the false confession phenomenon. Within the existing literature, there exists a conceptual framework that the interrogative methods and actions of law enforcement officers are a key cause of false confessions with some researchers going so far as to suggest that law enforcement interrogators act as confidence men who trick criminal subjects into confessing. However, few researchers have actually questioned law enforcement officers about false confessions and even fewer have consulted with officers who specialize in interrogation. This study is a subset of a larger qualitative case study designed to explore the experiences of 13 federal law enforcement polygraph examiners who specialize in interrogation regarding their approach to criminal interrogation and their experiences with both true and false confessions. This study focused on the personal processes federal law enforcement polygraph examiners use in reviewing Miranda rights and documenting confessions. NVivo software was used to organize the data. Common themes in interview responses were then identified and revealed that participants employ an open, detailed, and straightforward approach in reviewing Miranda rights and documenting the confessions of criminal subjects. These findings contradict the premise that law enforcement interrogators inherently operate as confidence men by tricking and manipulating criminal subjects.

Understanding hate crimes against immigrants: Considerations for future research

AbstractFollowing the passage of the Hate Crimes Statistics Act of 1990, hate crime research grew with the ability to use data collected by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Nevertheless, limitations in the data collection led to a dramatic decline in research by the end of the 20th century. This review provides an overview on the development of the hate crime legislation and data collection in order to address and understand the prevalence of hate crimes in the United States. Despite the limitations found in the national hate crime data collected by federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies, a rise in the level of hate crimes against immigrants has renewed scholarly interest in identifying the causes and effects of hate crimes. Recent studies have taken a different approach to explain the rise in the level of hate crimes against immigrants given the passage of anti‐immigrant legislation and inflammatory rhetoric against immigrants. By examining the link between hate crimes against immigrant groups and the demographic, economic, and political changes within the local context, researchers can begin to explain the variation in hate crimes and inform future research as well as local policies and practices to prevent these crimes from occurring.

International Law and Extraterritoriality: Brief of International and Extraterritorial Law Scholars as Amici Curiae (U.S. v. Microsoft)

Written by international and extraterritorial law scholars, the attached amicus brief was submitted in the U.S. v. Microsoft case. That case involves whether Congress, when it enacted the Stored Communications Act, intended to provide federal and local law enforcement authority to unilaterally seize the private email communications of foreign citizens stored abroad. The amicus brief explains how the Charming Betsy canon and the law of extraterritoriality are part of a well-defined body of law the U.S. Supreme Court has developed for determining how American law applies abroad. These doctrines exist independently: one aims to avoid unsanctioned violations of international law. The other prevents the improper projection of American legal power beyond our borders. But they share much in common. Both rest on a properly restrained understanding of the judiciary’s place in our constitutional order, under which the often-delicate issues of foreign affairs in lawmaking are properly reserved to Congress, not courts. And both are grounded on shared insights the Court has gained over time about Congress’s approach to lawmaking: Its preference for “domestic, not foreign matters;" its respect for other nations’ sovereignty; its regard for international law; its inclination toward international collaboration; and perhaps most importantly of all, its avoidance of international friction and strife — unless some overriding policy need compels congressional action despite the risk of such strife. The brief explains why the Court should preserve the assumptions about extraterritoriality that the legislative and judicial branches have shared since the Republic’s early days. These shared assumptions properly constrain law enforcement and other governmental actors. They also prevent the march of technological progress from introducing an extraterritorial creep into laws that Congress intended to remain domestically fixed. And they push the Executive to engage with Congress to address cross-border challenges, including transnational crime. It explains why the electronic seizure of electronic records physically located in another country is an exercise of extraterritorial enforcement jurisdiction in violation of international law, and why the Court's extraterritoriality jurisprudence prohibits assuming, when no indication exists in the statute, that Congress authorized borderless law enforcement.

Presidential Obstruction of Justice

Federal obstruction of justice statutes bar anyone from interfering with law enforcement based on a “corrupt” motive. But what about the president of the United States? The president is vested with “executive power,” which includes the power to control federal law enforcement. A possible view is that the statutes do not apply to the president because if they did they would violate the president’s constitutional power. However, we argue that the obstruction of justice statutes are best interpreted to apply to the president, and that the president obstructs justice when his motive for intervening in an investigation is to further personal or narrowly partisan interests, rather than to advance the public good.

The Opioid Crisis and Federal Criminal Prosecution.

This article examines how federal law enforcement has responded to the opioid epidemic nationally and in a variety of locales. We focus in depth on two initiatives, including prosecution in opioid-death cases, undertaken by the U.S. Attorney's Office in Connecticut.

Books Have the Power to Shape Public Policy

In our digital information age, news and ideas come at us constantly and from every direction—newspapers, cable television, podcasts, online media, and more. It can be difficult to keep up with the fleeting and ephemeral news of the day. Books, on the other hand, provide a source of enduring ideas. Books contain the researched hypotheses, the well-developed theories, and the fully formed arguments that outlast the news and analysis of the moment, preserved for the ages on the written page, to be discussed, admired, criticized, or supplanted by generations to come. And books about the law, like the ones reviewed in these pages, can spark ideas that lead lawyers and policymakers to consider new issues and think in new ways. Legal books are not merely academic musings, but vehicles of thought that can lead decisionmakers to develop programs and priorities that can shape public policy. When I served as U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan during the Obama Administration, books frequently influenced the work of federal law enforcement, the Department of Justice, and its ninety-four U.S. Attorney’s Offices around the country. I would hear about these books at conferences or in conversations with others in law enforcement, and the books became must-reads. Some books were more scholarly than others, but they each had great influence on decisionmakers.

Cultural Fragmentation as a Barrier to Interagency Collaboration: A Qualitative Examination of Texas Law Enforcement Officers’ Perceptions

Public management scholars have long speculated on the importance of interagency collaboration among public agencies in the delivery of public services. This study examines barriers to public interagency collaboration in the area of public safety. Interjurisdictional collaboration among law enforcement agencies at all levels has become emblematic of “new governance” models for enhanced public safety delivery. However, such collaborative efforts encounter many challenges. The purpose of this research is to examine the ways in which cultural fragmentation among law enforcement officials constrain interagency collaboration. This study collected information from 45 law enforcement officers and command personnel from 18 different local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies in a large metropolitan area in Texas. Data were gathered through in-depth interviews and focus groups. Analysis of the data revealed three potential dimensions of cultural fragmentation that impede collaborative efforts between agencies and departments: the agency-type dimension, the rank-segment dimension, and the leadership style dimension. Implications for practice and future research are discussed as well.

Synthetic Cannabinoid and Mitragynine Exposure of Law Enforcement Agents During the Raid of an Illegal Laboratory — Nevada, 2014

Synthetic cannabinoids (SCs), commonly known by the street name "Spice," are designer drugs of abuse that mimic the psychoactive effects of marijuana. Intentional SC use has resulted in multiple toxicities (1,2), but little is known about occupational SC exposure. After a federal agency's law enforcement personnel in Nevada reported irritability and feeling "high" after raiding illegal SC laboratories and processing seized SCs, a request for a health hazard evaluation was made by the agency to CDC's National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) in 2014 to evaluate agents' occupational SC exposures. After making the request for a health hazard evaluation, federal agents conducted a raid of an illegal SC laboratory, with assistance from local law enforcement and Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) personnel and with NIOSH investigators observing from a distance. After the raid, agents collected and processed material evidence. NIOSH investigators tested agents' urine for SC levels before and after the raid and measured SCs in the air and on surfaces after the raid. DEA determined that AB-PINACA (an SC compound) and mitragynine (a plant material with opium-like effects, also known as "kratom") were present in the illegal laboratory. AB-PINACA, its metabolites, and mitragynine were not detected in agents' urine before the raid; however, one or more of these substances was found in the urine of six of nine agents after the raid and processing of the SC evidence. AB-PINACA was detected in one surface wipe sample from the SC laboratory; none was detected in the air in the laboratory or in the offices of the law enforcement agency where the materials were processed after the raid. No policies were in place regarding work practices and use of personal protective equipment (PPE) during raids and evidence processing. To protect agents from SC exposures, NIOSH recommended that the agency require agents to wear a minimum level of PPE (e.g., protective gloves and disposable clothing) and undergo training in PPE and in handling and storing of contaminated evidence from SC laboratory raids. Showers and locker rooms also need to be provided so that agents can reduce contamination and prevent take-home exposure.

Big hover or big brother? Public attitudes about drone usage in domestic policing activities

Unmanned aerial systems (that is, UAS or drones) have been increasingly proposed and used by federal and state law enforcement agencies as an evolving technology for general surveillance, crime detection and criminal investigations. However, the use of UAS technology, in general, and within the particular context of domestic policing activities raises serious concerns about personal privacy and the greater intrusion of new forms of ‘big brother’ surveillance in people’s daily lives. On the basis of a national survey, the current study provides empirical evidence on public attitudes about UAS usage in various policing activities. Socio-demographic differences in the public support for drone usage in this context are also examined. Our general findings of context-specific variability in public support for UAS usage in policing operations are discussed in terms of their implications for developing public policy.