Federal Immigration Research Articles

Local Policing and the Educational Outcomes of Undocumented College Students

A growing literature examines the impact of immigration and law enforcement on undocumented immigrants and their communities, but these studies are limited by the lack of reliable data on documentation status and their focus on federal immigration enforcement. Leveraging administrative student data from the City University of New York (CUNY) that reliably identify about 13,000 undocumented students among more than 350,000 first-year students, this article examines whether local policing practices that do not ostensibly target undocumented immigrants can affect the educational outcomes of undocumented young adults. Focusing on police stops around university campuses under the New York City Police Department's Stop, Question, and Frisk program, our findings show a substantial negative effect of police stops around campus on course credits for undocumented men but no impact on GPA or on the likelihood of receiving zero credits in the following term (stop-out). The negative effect is larger for Black and South Asian undocumented young men, groups that experience heightened surveillance by the local police. In contrast, campus police stops have little effect on documented students or undocumented women. The results illustrate how local policing practices, even in so-called sanctuary cities, can have chilling effects on undocumented groups with important implications for the links between the criminal justice system, immigration, and social inequality.

The Body as Borderland: The Abortion (Non)Rights of Unaccompanied Teens in Federal Immigration Custody in the Trump-Pence Era

In 2017, Scott Lloyd, the newly appointed director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) declared that henceforth pregnant teens in federal immigration custody could not obtain an abortion without his express consent. This quickly proved to be an impossibility on account of Lloyd’s deeply held and religiously saturated antiabortion beliefs. In justifying his denial of consent to all who sought it, Lloyd insisted that ORR had a statutory obligation to provide refuge to the unborn as well as to protect unaccompanied minors in the care and custody of the agency from the trauma of abortion regret.This article focuses on the origins and implementation of Lloyd’s abortion-consent policy within the broader context of the Trump administration’s “pro-life” and anti-immigrant agendas, and its contestation in the much-publicized Garza v. Hargan class-action lawsuit brought by the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project. As argued, by mapping these twinned commitments onto the transgressive bodies of undocumented pregnant teens in federal immigration custody, the policy appropriated the seemingly private and intimate in order to both punish these young women by compelling motherhood as a sanction for their infractions and deter those who might otherwise be tempted to breach the Southern border as “abortion tourists.”

They Call Me George: The Untold Story of Black Train Porters and the Birth of Modern Canada

They Call Me George: The Untold Story of Black Train Porters and the Birth of Modern Canada

Preventing Predatory Alienation by High-Control Groups: The Application of Human Trafficking Laws to Groups Popularly Known as Cults, & Proposed Changes to Laws Regarding Federal Immigration, State Child Marriage, & Undue Influence

In this article, I summarize some of the significant legal developments in the United States that have taken place within the past year. First, United States v. Raniere was a criminal case launched against the founder of a purported self-help organization, NXIVM, and several of his associates. The Raniere case established precedent for using the human-trafficking statutes, among other grounds, to pursue justice for victims of high-demand groups. Second, the number of asylum seekers is increasing annually, and some of these undocumented immigrants are escaping from their countries-of-origin cults, gangs, and other extremist groups. However, once they arrive in the United States, there are many statutory and court-imposed requirements for establishing asylum; lawmakers should clarify or eliminate some of these requirements in order to fulfill the original purpose of the Immigration and Nationality Act. Third, setting the minimum age for marriage would help to reduce the number of child brides who are often pressured by cults and high-control groups.Fourth, still in need of refinement is the legal theory of “undue influence,” which potentially could aid cult victims in civil lawsuits against overreaching organizations and individuals. And finally, pending in the New Jersey legislature is the Predatory Alienation Bill, which calls for ongoing public-awareness campaigns, alienation counseling, and other remedies.

How Many Immigrant-Friendly Communities Are in the United States? Classifying the Policy Stream

Abstract Dramatic federal immigration policy proposals and executive actions appear to be a reaction to state and local governments that have taken leadership in responding to immigration. Some local governments have endorsed welcoming immigrants to stabilize high-poverty urban neighborhoods and to enhance regional economic development. Others embrace immigrant incorporation consistent with the social work grand challenge to achieve equal opportunity and justice. This research estimates the number of immigrant-friendly cities and counties in the United States. To generate this estimate, authors prepared a local government policy scan of all municipalities and counties in the United States with a population of more than 500 persons to identify policies designed to recruit or specifically serve immigrants. Authors also categorized these immigrant-friendly policies on a continuum ranging from rhetoric to outreach, integration, and facilitation. Only 7% of cities and 6% of counties were found to have immigrant-friendly policy. However, when taking population into account, nearly half of all people in the municipal sample live in a place with an immigrant-friendly policy. Article concludes with the discussion of the implications for social policy and social work practice.

Mayoral leadership, immigrant sanctuary, and multilevel policy dynamics in San Francisco

ABSTRACT This article analyses immigrant sanctuary policies and practices in San Francisco between 1985 and 2018 to theorise about the role of mayors in developing, defending, and adjusting city efforts to shield undocumented immigrants from federal immigration authorities. Drawing on assorted qualitative data, it makes the case that the multilevel context of US immigration policy is an important determinant for how mayors have addressed immigration issues locally. In particular, it highlights two strategies that San Francisco mayors have used to influence sanctuary policies and practices while navigating ongoing intergovernmental scrutiny of the city’s lenient treatment of undocumented immigrants. When the risk of intergovernmental antagonism over city policies and practices was low, mayors adopted facilitative, democratic leadership strategies characterised by collaboration with local governmental and non-governmental actors to strengthen or institutionalise immigrant sanctuary. When the risk of intergovernmental antagonism was high, mayors retreated to executive, less democratic leadership strategies characterised by top-down decision-making and mayoral insulation from local political actors to curtail immigrant sanctuary and protect the city from state or federal attacks. This research illustrates how state and federal interference in city affairs can make it challenging for mayors to govern democratically by collaborating with other local actors.

Collective (Mis)Representation of U.S. Immigration Laws

This paper examines historic federal immigration policies that demonstrate how the United States has rendered entire groups of people living inside and outside of its territory as outsiders. Collective representations like the Statue of Liberty suggest that the U.S. is a nation that welcomes all immigrants, when in reality, the U.S. has historically functioned as a “gatekeeper” that excludes specific groups of people at different times. The concurrent existence of disparate beliefs within a society’s collective consciousness influences the public’s views toward citizenship and results in policy outcomes that contrast sharply from the ideal values that many collective representations signify. As restrictive immigration controls are refined, insight into how immigrant exclusion via federal policy has evolved is necessary to minimize future legislative consequences that have the potential to ostracize current and future Americans.

The Relationship Between States' Immigrant-Related Policies and Access to Health Care Among Children of Immigrants.

States vary in their participation in federal immigration enforcement, leading to differing state-level policy contexts that profoundly shape the lives of immigrants. This paper examines the effects of sanctuary policies and driver’s licenses for undocumented immigrants on immigrants’ children’s access to preventative healthcare. The 2008–2016 Medical Panel Expenditure Survey merged with state-level policy data were analyzed using a difference-in-difference OLS regression. Outcome variables included whether the child had a usual source of care, any unmet medical needs, or a well child check-up. State driver’s license and sanctuary policies were associated with having a usual source of care and fewer unmet medical needs among children of immigrants. The recent pandemic highlights the importance of access to preventative health care. State policies that limit federal immigration enforcement involvement are associated with improved access to preventative health services among immigrants’ children, most of whom are U.S. citizens.

Policing, Profits, and the Rise of Immigration Detention in New York's “Chinese Jails”

“Policing, Profits, and the Rise of Immigration Detention in New York's ‘Chinese Jails’” explains how Chinese exclusion law created a “detention economy” in upstate New York. From 1900–1909, Northern New York jails held thousands of Chinese migrants who had been apprehended by immigration authorities crossing the U.S.-Canada border, and had filed habeas corpus claims in district courts. While scholarship on Chinese Exclusion has addressed the legal battles around due process, it has overlooked the detention infrastructure that these claims produced. Because the federal immigration service had no detention facilities in the region, they “boarded out” Chinese detainees at local jails, paying counties a nightly rate for each migrant held. These contracts transformed Chinese migrants into a commodity for rural communities looking to secure federal cash, with four Northern New York counties constructing separate “Chinese Jails” in order to increase the number of Chinese migrants they could incarcerate. This article challenges the scholarship that has presented immigration detention as a Cold War era development, instead showing how communities profited off jailing migrants at the turn of the century. Through the case of U.S. v. Sing Tuck, I argue that immigration officials eventually turned to the courts to streamline deportations and reduce their need for jail space.

“Reasonable” Force at the U.S.-Mexico Border

Abstract While social scientists have studied the relationship between police culture and use of force for decades, federal immigration agents have been left out of these analyses. Addressing this gap is urgent given patterns of excessive force at the militarized U.S.-Mexico border. Drawing on bureaucratic documents and interviews with active Border Patrol agents, this article examines the culture of force within this organization. I show that the Border Patrol produces a sense of exceptional threat and power among agents through 1) narratives that construct the border as a uniquely dangerous work environment, and 2) lessons that encourage an overly-individualistic view of reasonableness, the constitutional standard that governs police force in the United States. Together, these organizational messages foster in agents a disproportionate sense of threat coupled with an awareness of the low probability of legal sanction for force violations. This paradoxical combination of vulnerability and power undergirds agents’ conceptions of their force authority.

Linking national immigration data to provincial repositories: The case of Canada.

BackgroundCanadian health data repositories link datasets at the provincial level, based on their residents’ registrations to provincial health insurance plans. Linking national datasets with provincial health care registries poses several challenges that may result in misclassification and impact the estimation of linkage rates. A recent linkage of a federal immigration database in the province of Manitoba illustrates these challenges.Objectivesa) To describe the linkage of the federal Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada Permanent Resident (IRCC-PR) database with the Manitoba healthcare registry and b) compare data linkage methods and rates between four Canadian provinces accounting for interprovincial mobility of immigrants.MethodsWe compared linkage rates by immigrant’s province of intended destination (province vs. rest of Canada). We used external nationwide immigrant tax filing records to approximate actual settlement and obtain linkage rates corrected for interprovincial mobility.ResultsThe immigrant linkage rates in Manitoba before and after accounting for interprovincial mobility were 84.8% and 96.1, respectively. Linkage rates did not substantially differ according to immigrants’ characteristics, with a few exceptions. Observed linkage rates across the four provinces ranged from 74.0% to 86.7%. After correction for interprovincial mobility, the estimated linkage rates increased > 10 percentage points for the provinces that stratified by intended destination (British Columbia and Manitoba) and decreased up to 18 percentage points for provinces that could not use immigration records of those who did not intend to settle in the province (New Brunswick and Ontario).ConclusionsDespite variations in methodology, provincial linkage rates were relatively high. The use of a national immigration dataset for linkage to provincial repositories allows a more comprehensive linkage than that of province-specific subsets. Observed linkage rates can be biased downwards by interprovincial migration, and methods that use external data sources can contribute to assessing potential selection bias and misclassification.

The Effect of Intergovernmental Policy Conflict on Immigrants’ Behavior: Insights from a Survey Experiment in California

AbstractAs Congress remains gridlocked on the issue of comprehensive immigration reform, immigration policy debates, particularly with respect to interior immigration enforcement, are increasingly taking place at state and local levels. Scholarship on immigration federalism has focused on federal and local governments, while states are passing laws that tighten or delimit cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (i.e., “sanctuary policies”). Simultaneously, cities are passing laws contradictory to state policy. We examine how these state and local enforcement ambiguities affect undocumented immigrants’ trust in the efficacy of sanctuary policies. Using California as a case, we embedded an experiment in a survey of undocumented immigrants and find trust in sanctuary policies decreases when cities seek to opt out of statewide sanctuary laws. Further, “opting out” has negative implications for the daily behavior of undocumented immigrants, like the chilling effects resulting from local law enforcement cooperation with federal immigration enforcement.

Barriers and Facilitators to Implementation of Health System Interventions Aiming to Welcome and Protect Immigrant Patients: a Qualitative Study.

BackgroundAt the same time that federal policymakers have enforced restrictive immigration policies, healthcare systems across the USA are developing, and have implemented, interventions aimed at addressing immigration-related stressors faced by immigrant communities. Yet, little is known about the contextual determinants that influence their implementation success. Using the Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research (CFIR), this study identifies factors enabling or challenging the implementation of interventions aimed at mitigating immigration-related stressors in the healthcare context.MethodsWe used a qualitative research design to conduct 38 semi-structured interviews with stakeholders involved in implementation of interventions at 25 healthcare facilities across 5 states with the highest undocumented immigrant populations (California, Texas, New York, Florida, and Illinois). Interviews were conducted from May through August 2018. Constant comparative analysis was used to identify barrier and facilitator themes. Deductive coding was thereafter used to categorize themes according to CFIR domain.ResultsBarriers to implementation included perceptions of legal complexity and challenges to adopting such systemic strategies. Facilitators included a national policy climate that had brought immigrant health to the forefront, allowing for leveraging momentum towards institutional change; communication among healthcare personnel; existing community partnerships with immigrant rights and service organizations; and a shared sense of mission centering health equity. Local variation in immigration-related policies (e.g., local law agencies enforcing federal immigration laws) and heterogeneity of local immigrant communities also impacted implementation. Champions and informal leaders were integral to institutional efforts but not sufficient for sustainability. Perceived urgency to act superseded evaluation considerations, with all interventions in initial phases of implementation. Future iterations and evaluations of these interventions are needed to establish best practices and implementation determinants.ConclusionThis is the first systematic study describing implementation determinants of immigration-related interventions across health systems. Identifying these determinants provides guidance to other healthcare organizations to effectively strategize and ensure implementation success.Supplementary InformationThe online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11606-021-06788-4.

The information practices of law enforcement: Passive and active collaboration and its implication for sanctuary laws in Washington state

AbstractAlthough Washington state sanctuary policies of 2017 prohibit collaboration between local law enforcement and federal immigration enforcement in noncriminal cases, compliance with sanctuary policies has not been systematically studied. We explore information practices and collaboration between local law enforcement and federal immigration enforcement in Grant County, Washington, based on records from November 2017 to May 2019 obtained by the University of Washington Center for Human Rights through Public Records Act (PRA) requests. Qualitative analysis of over 8,000 pages reveals a baseline of passive and active information sharing and collaboration between local law enforcement and federal immigration agencies before Washington sanctuary laws went into effect in May 2019, a practice that needs to stop if agencies are to comply with the laws. We employ a systematic methodology to obtain (through PRA and other Access to Information requests) and analyze official records through qualitative content analysis, to monitor and hold local law enforcement accountable in their compliance with sanctuary laws. This method can be used to examine law enforcement information behaviors in other counties in Washington, and in other states that offer sanctuary protections, as a way to monitor compliance with sanctuary laws and strengthen the protection of immigrants' rights.

Immigration law enforcement, social support, and health for Latino immigrant families in Southeastern Michigan

RationaleSocial support is a key determinant of physical and mental health outcomes. Implementation of restrictive immigration policies in the U.S. under the Trump administration impacted the way mixed-status Latino families (i.e., those with varying legal statuses, including undocumented) maintained social relationships and provided social support. ObjectiveThis paper examines how federal immigration policies introduced after the 2016 U.S. presidential election impacted social networks and support related to health for undocumented and mixed-status Latino families. MethodsWe interviewed 23 clients and 28 service providers at two Federally Qualified Health Centers and one non-profit organization in Southeast Michigan. The interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed, and analyzed thematically. ResultsPolicies introduced during the Trump administration increased opportunities for deportation and contributed to the isolation of mixed-status Latino families by transforming safe spaces of social interaction into prime locations for immigration enforcement activity. Despite the limitations created by these restrictive policies, mixed-status families employed alternative mechanisms to maintain access to vital informal and formal support systems while simultaneously navigating emerging immigration-related threats. ConclusionsElections have health consequences and immigration policies are needed that promote the health and well-being of Latino immigrant communities.

The Roles of Settings in Supporting Immigrants' Resistance to Injustice and Oppression: A Policy Position Statement by the Society for Community Research and Action: A Policy Statement by the Society for Community Research and Action: Division 27 of the American Psychological Association.

In 2018, in response to increasingly oppressive and widespread federal immigration enforcement actions in the United States (U.S.) and around the globe – including family separation, immigration raids, detention, deportation of people who have lived in the country for much of their lives – the Society for Community Research & Action produced a statement on the effects of deportation and forced separation on immigrants, their families, and communities (SCRA, 2018). The statement focused exclusively on the impacts of deportation and forced family separation, documenting the damage done by oppressive U.S. policies and practices. We felt it was imperative to document this harm, and yet were uncomfortable producing a narrow paper that focused solely on harm. There are multiple ways immigrants and their allies resist deportation and other forms of oppression. This resistance is done individually, collectively, and in settings that vary in size and scope, including community‐based, faith‐based, direct care, and educational settings, as well as entire municipalities and transnational organizing settings. Settings facilitate resistance in many ways, focusing on those who are oppressed, their oppressors, and systems of oppression. In this statement, we describe the unique and overlapping ways in which settings facilitate resistance. We situate this review of the scientific and practice literature in the frameworks of change through social settings, empowering settings, healing justice, and decolonization. We also document recommendations for continued resistance.

Police trust and domestic violence among immigrants: evidence from VAWA self-petitions

AbstractDomestic violence is a serious under-reported crime in the United States, especially among immigrant women. The Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) was an attempt to partially address this problem by allowing battered immigrants to petition for legal status without relying on the sponsorship of an abusive U.S. citizen or legal permanent resident spouse. The tougher immigration policy climate may have made immigrant women more vulnerable to domestic violence, as well as more reluctant to report domestic violence to law enforcement. Sanctuary policies, which limit local law enforcement’s cooperation with federal immigration authorities, may counteract these effects. After exploiting the temporal and geographic variation in the adoption of interior immigration enforcement and sanctuary policies, we can successfully identify the impact of sanctuary policies, which help boost the rate of VAWA self-petitions. Additionally, we provide suggestive evidence of the channel through which this impact is likely taking place—namely through victims’ increased willingness to report cases and leave their abusers. Understanding survivors’ responses to immigration policy is crucial given growing police mistrust and immigrants’ vulnerability to crime.

Intergovernmental Implementation in a Time of Uncooperative Federalism: Immigration Enforcement and Federal Secure Communities Program, 2011–14

Immigration and Custom Enforcement’s (ICE) Secure Communities (SComm) program produces substantial county‐level variation in immigrant removals. We examine the role components of uncooperative federalism and immigration federalism play in shaping this variation. We do so by employing multilevel mixed‐effects negative binomial regression models to predict the numbers of removals by ICE under the S‐Comm program at the county‐level. Building on past examinations of the program, we integrate additional explanations for the variation in removal rates, including the role of immigration‐related state and county policies, such as so‐called “sanctuary” laws. We find that state and county policies, as well as other political, social, and economic factors predict local implementation of the federal S‐Comm program.

Expanding the geographies of ‘sanctuary’ and the deepening and contentious nature of immigration federalism: the case of California’s SB 54

ABSTRACT This article examines the concept and practice of sanctuary jurisdictions in the United States, including its secularization through its codification in state and local laws. It traces the political and legal battles that involve the contentious dynamics in the development and expansion of such jurisdictions. The article will highlight and examine California's Senate Bill 54 (SB-54), also known as the California Values Act. SB-54 was the first state bill to establish a statewide sanctuary jurisdiction expanding the ‘geographies of sanctuary' beyond cities and counties. It was a bill enacted in response to the most anti-immigrant policies in contemporary U.S. history under the Trump administration. I will argue that the expansion of ‘geographies of sanctuary' through state laws fosters more inclusive immigration federalism, directly challenging the enforcement of today’s immigration laws considered by many as unfair and inhumane.

Examining the Impact of Restrictive Federal Immigration Policies on Healthcare Access: Perspectives from Immigrant Patients across an Urban Safety-Net Hospital.

The Trump Administration instituted a series of restrictive policies including the expansion of the public charge ruling, which created barriers to healthcare access for immigrant communities. This study examined immigrants’ knowledge, attitudes, and health-seeking practices as a result of the public charge proposal. Thirty semi-structured interviews were conducted in English or Spanish with foreign-born adults at an urban safety-net hospital in Boston from May 2019 to August 2019. Thematic content analysis identified barriers and facilitators of healthcare access and usage. Approximately half of participants were aware of the public charge proposal. Six participants expressed concern about its implications, but only two discontinued benefits. Barriers to care included fear of deportation, interaction with law enforcement, and competing socioeconomic needs. Facilitators of care included supportive communities, immigrant-friendly environment, and personal beliefs. Hospitals can develop community-centered services for immigrant patients that offset the barriers to healthcare access resulting from adverse federal immigration policies.