By Rachel Feldman

This study was undertaken because generally available information about local government policy regarding inquiry about immigration status, use of this information, and interaction with federal immigration authorities was limited to a few New Mexico jurisdictions and was not upto-date or complete. The study identifies the variation and reasons for variation in these policies across the state, including the lack of any formal policy, and the function of informal policy. The study introduces the term “policy infrastructure” to refer to the function of written policy, procedure, monitoring and enforcement systems in directing local government employees and contractors, regarding their obligations to use public resources as directed by any policy that exists1 . A study assumption is that where no formal policy exists and where policy infrastructure is incomplete, public employees and contractors may use public resources at their discretion, regardless of consequences for affected persons. The problem motivating the study is the apparent situation in which residents and visitors to New Mexico experience different practices regarding the identification of and treatment related to their immigration status across the state, including within overlapping jurisdictions (e.g., city and county). Such variation in treatment raises questions regarding the extent to which immigrant rights (legal and undocumented) are respected across the state. It raises the question as to whether such variation is consistent with the intent of state and federal civil and human rights. The study was conducted between September and December in 2018, and inquiries were made by phone and formal requests for public records to all 33 counties and the 10 largest cities in the state. Contacts focused on county and city managers, sheriff and police departments and detention facilities operated by local governments. Some level of information was provided by all 33 counties and all cities contacted. A summary of results is shown in Table 1. Analysis of all documents and interview notes is provided below as study findings.   

Albuquerque, NM: ACLU of New Mexico, 2019. 51p.

By Tom K. Wong, Karina Shklyan, Anna Isorena and Stephanie Peng

How does interior immigration enforcement affect the day-to-day behaviors of undocumented immigrants? Although there is some evidence that points to a broad range of “chilling effects” that result when local law enforcement officials work with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on federal immigration enforcement, the academic literature is surprisingly sparse. In this study, we embedded an experiment in a survey (n = 594) drawn from a probability-based sample of undocumented immigrants in order to better understand how the behaviors of undocumented immigrants are affected when local law enforcement officials do the work of federal immigration enforcement. When respondents are told that local law enforcement officials are working with ICE on federal immigration enforcement, they are 60.8 percent less likely to report crimes they witness to the police, 42.9 percent less likely to report crimes they are victims of to the police, 69.6 percent less likely to use public services that requires them to disclose their personal contact information, 63.9 percent less likely to do business that requires them to disclose their personal contact information, and are even 68.3 percent less likely to participate in public events where the police may be present, among other findings.

La Jolla, CA: U.S. Immigration Policy Center, University of San Diego, 2019. 24p.

By New York University School of Law. Immigrant Rights Clinic, Immigrant Defense Project, Families for Freedom

New York City is home to over three million foreign-born residents.1 Yet, immigrant New Yorkers have been forced to struggle with the harsh realities of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (“ICE”) operations in their city for years—families broken apart by midnight raids, parents of U.S. citizen children sent to far-away detention facilities in Texas and Louisiana and held without bond, immigrants arrested after a “stop-and-frisk” encounter with the NYPD, only to find themselves thrown into a pipeline that sends thousands of New Yorkers from Rikers Island to ICE detention every year. However, even as advocates, the City Council, and other city stakeholders debate how to limit the damage that ICE policies inflict on New York and the city’s large immigrant community, there has been little data on what exactly happens to immigrant New Yorkers who are apprehended by ICE, and the extent of the agency’s enforcement operations in the city. In response to this urgent need for information, the community groups Families for Freedom and the Immigrant Defense Project filed a request for information with ICE under the Freedom of Information Act (“FOIA”). The agency initially did not comply with the request, instead stating that the organizations needed to pay over $1.3 million in fees to secure the necessary documents.2

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  The organizations filed a lawsuit in federal district court against ICE, and the case was settled in May of 2011. As a condition of the settlement, ICE provided data to the Vera Institute for Justice, for use in conjunction with immigration court data for a wide-ranging study on immigrant New Yorkers’ access to counsel. That study was released in early 2012.3 ICE also provided a spreadsheet of data on every individual apprehended by the New York City Field Office from October 2005 through December 2010. Nineteen distinct data fields were included for each individual apprehended, and that never before released data is the subject of this report. The data provided by ICE, as a condition of the settlement of the lawsuit, is significant in two key ways. First, it allowed researchers at the Vera Institute to accurately assess the impact of detention and, in particular, ICE’s transfer policy, on the issues that face immigrant New Yorkers in immigration court, such as access to legal counsel and the availability of relief from deportation.4 Second, the spreadsheet provided by ICE that is the basis of this report provides hard evidence of the effects of immigration detention and deportation on New York City communities. For example, there had previously been no way for local leaders and community members to assess how many individuals of a certain nationality were detained by ICE in New York or how many individuals in a given New York City zip code or neighborhood were detained. Likewise, there was no way for them to know how many parents of U.S. citizen children were swept into the system. Other issues, like the frequency of bond settings for New Yorkers and ICE transfers of New Yorkers to far-away detention facilities, remained equally murky. However, while the data is in many respects new, it only confirms what groups like Families for Freedom and the Immigrant Defense Project have known for years: that ICE enforcement in New York City is terrorizing the city’s immigrant community.

New York: NYU School of Law Immigrant Rights Clinic, Immigrant Defense Project, Families for Freedom, 2012. 29p.

By The National immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild, Immigrant Defence Project, and Mijente

Tech is transforming immigration enforcement. As advocates have known for some time, the immigration and criminal justice systems have powerful allies in Silicon Valley and Congress, with technology companies playing an increasingly central role in facilitating the expansion and acceleration of arrests, detentions, and deportations. What is less known outside of Silicon Valley is the long history of the technology industry’s “revolving door” relationship with federal agencies, how the technology industry and its products and services are now actually circumventing city- and state-level protections for vulnerable communities, and what we can do to expose and hold these actors accountable. Mijente, the National Immigration Project, and the Immigrant Defense Project — immigration and Latinx-focused organizations working at the intersection of new technology, policing, and immigration — commissioned Empower LLC to undertake critical research about the multi-layered technology infrastructure behind the accelerated and expansive immigration enforcement we’re seeing today, and the companies that are behind it. The report opens a window into the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) plans for immigration policing through a scheme of tech and database policing, the mass scale and scope of the tech-based systems, the contracts that support it, and the connections between Washington, D.C., and Silicon Valley. It surveys and investigates the key contracts that technology companies have with DHS, particularly within Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and their success in signing new contracts through intensive and expensive lobbying.

Washington, DC: National Immigration Project, 2018. 74p.

Edited by Michele L. Waslin, David C Brotherton, Daniel L Stageman and Shirley P Leyro

Outside Justice: Undocumented Immigrants and the Criminal Justice System fills a clear gap in the scholarly literature on the increasing conceptual overlap between popular perceptions of immigration and criminality, and its reflection in the increasing practical overlap between criminal justice and immigration control systems. Drawing on data from the United States and other nations, scholars from a range of academic disciplines examine the impact of these trends on the institutions, communities, and individuals that are experiencing them. Individual entries address criminal victimization and labor exploitation of undocumented immigrant communities, the effects of parental detention and deportation on children remaining in destination countries, relations between immigrant communities and law enforcement agencies, and the responses of law enforcement agencies to drastic changes in immigration policy, among other topics. Taken as a whole, these essays chart the ongoing progression of social forces that will determine the well-being of Western democracies throughout the 21st century. In doing so, they set forth a research agenda for reexamining and challenging the goals of converging criminal justice and immigration control policy, and raise a number of carefully considered, ethical alternatives to the contemporary policy status quo.Contemporary immigration is the focus of highly charged rhetoric and policy innovation, both attempting to define the movement of people across national borders as fundamentally an issue of criminal justice. This realignment has had profound effects on criminal justice policy and practice and immigration control alike, and raises far-reaching implications for social inclusion, labor economies, community cohesion, and a host of other areas of immediate interest to social science researchers and practitioners.

New York: Springer, 2013. 280p.

Edited by Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, Gil Loescher, Katy Long and Nando Sigona

This Handbook critically traces the birth and development of Refugee and Forced Migration Studies, and vividly illustrates the vibrant and engaging debates that characterize this rapidly expanding field of research and practice. The contributions highlight the key challenges faced by academics and practitioners working with and for forcibly displaced populations around the world, as well as identifying new directions for research in the field. Since emerging as a distinct field of study in the early 1980s, Refugee and Forced Migration Studies has grown from being of concern of a relatively small number of scholars and policy analysts to become a global field with thousands of students worldwide studying displacement, either from traditional disciplinary perspectives or as a core component of newer interdisciplinary programmes across the Humanities and Social and Political Sciences. Today the field encompasses both rigorous academic research as well as action-research focused on advocating in favour of refugees’ needs and rights and more directly concerned with influencing policy and practice. The Handbook’s fifty-two state-of-the-art chapters, written by leading academics, practitioners, and policymakers working in universities, research centres, think tanks, NGOs, and international organizations across every continent, provide a comprehensive and cutting-edge overview of the key intellectual, political, social, and institutional challenges arising from mass displacement in the world today.

Oxford, UK; New York: Oxford University Press, 2014. 800p.

By Torrie Hester

Before 1882, the U.S. federal government had never formally deported anyone, but that year an act of Congress made Chinese workers the first group of immigrants eligible for deportation. Over the next forty years, lawmakers and judges expanded deportable categories to include prostitutes, anarchists, the sick, and various kinds of criminals. The history of that lengthening list shaped the policy options U.S. citizens continue to live with into the present.

Deportation covers the uncertain beginnings of American deportation policy and recounts the halting and uncoordinated steps that were taken as it emerged from piecemeal actions in Congress and courtrooms across the country to become an established national policy by the 1920s. Usually viewed from within the nation, deportation policy also plays a part in geopolitics; deportees, after all, have to be sent somewhere. Studying deportations out of the United States as well as the deportation of U.S. citizens back to the United States from abroad, Torrie Hester illustrates that U.S. policy makers were part of a global trend that saw officials from nations around the world either revise older immigrant removal policies or create new ones.

A history of immigration policy in the United States and the world, Deportation chronicles the unsystematic emergence of what has become an internationally recognized legal doctrine, the far-reaching impact of which has forever altered what it means to be an immigrant and a citizen.

Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017. 252p.

By Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, Office of the Special Representative and Co-ordinator for Combating Trafficking in Human Beings

The publication takes stock of technology tools and initiatives developed to combat trafficking in human beings in its different forms in the OSCE area and beyond. It also examines the ways technology can be misused to facilitate trafficking in human beings. It is the first known publication to conduct a global analysis of how different stakeholders, including law enforcement, civil society, businesses and academia can take advantage of technology to advance the fight against the human trafficking crime. The publication also provides recommendations to governments and organizations funding technology projects on how to maximize the value of technology-based solutions.

Vienna: Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, 2020. 78p.

By Georgios Papanicolaou

Mounting a vigorous critique on existing approaches to transnational policing, this book lays out an argument situating transnational policing within contemporary transformations of the capitalist state and imperialism, looking at the particular case of regional police cooperation against sex trafficking in Southeast Europe.

Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. 254p.