By Stijn Aerts  

It is estimated that over the past few years, tens of thousands of unaccompanied minors went missing in the European Union. This is a problem on many different levels: fundamental rights, child protection, managing of migration flows and asylum. From the crime prevention perspective, the fact that children are unaccompanied and the fact that they are off the authorities’ radar are major risk factors. Unaccompanied minors run a significantly increased risk of being trafficked for sexual exploitation, labour exploitation, or criminal exploitation. Chapter one of this report describes the phenomena of child trafficking and unaccompanied minors going missing and how they relate to migration and migrant smuggling, without disregarding intra-EU trafficking. The report goes on to outline the most important international conventions, protocols and declarations for the fight against child trafficking in the EU (chapter two) and the most important EU-wide, cross-border actions to prevent child trafficking and to safeguard UAMs from going missing (chapter three). Chapter four offers the reader an overview of existing resources of the past few years, including research reports, handbooks, and recommendations. The fifth and final chapter highlights and explains some of the most pressing recommendations regarding the prevention of child trafficking, covering the following five categories, from determining the child’s best interest and child-friendly approaches, over cross-border and interagency cooperation, right through to addressing the offender and demand side.

Brussels; European Crime Prevention Network, 44p.

By Ritu Bharadwai, Danielle Bishop, Somnath Hazra,  Enock Pufaa and James Kofi Annan.

Contemporary forms of slavery are often categorised as slavery, slavery-like practices, bonded labour, debt bondage and forced sexual exploitation. These are all interrelated and constitute a continuum.1 According to the Global Estimate of Modern Slavery,2 40.3 million people are living in slavery worldwide, which disproportionately affects the most marginalised, such as women, children and minorities.3 Climate change and climate-induced migration heightens existing vulnerabilities of slavery. Drivers of vulnerability to modern slavery are complex and impacted by many layers of risk. While several socio-economic, political, cultural and institutional risks shape vulnerability, they are increasingly considered to be made worse by climate change impacts and environmental degradation. Climate-induced displacements are becoming unavoidable. The rise of sea levels, salination and flooding are already forcing entire coastal communities – in countries such as the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and Sierra Leone – to relocate. And as climate shocks are set to intensify, many more millions will be displaced by climate change in the coming decades. The World Bank estimates that by 2050 climate change will force more than 143 million people in sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and Latin America from their homes. …

• More.....

  Climate change policies increasingly recognise climate-induced migration and displacement as an issue. The Cancún Adaptation Framework (CAF), adopted during COP16 under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in 2010, provides a conceptual framework to navigate the complexities of climate mobility. CAF recognises three modes of mobility due to climate impacts – migration, displacement and planned relocation4 – allowing for specific climate policies aligned with the distinct features, mobility patterns and outcomes of each impact.5 In 2015, the Paris Agreement on climate change was an unprecedented development of action on migration and climate with the formal inclusion of ‘migrants’ in its Preamble.  

London:  Anti-Slavery International and The International Institute for Environment and Development, 2021. 38p.

By Business & Human Rights Resource Centre

  Modern slavery is everywhere. From the construction of FIFA World Cup stadiums in Qatar to the cotton farms of Uzbekistan, from cattle ranches in Paraguay to fisheries in Thailand and the Philippines to agriculture in Italy, from sweatshops in Brazil and Argentina to berry pickers in Sweden. The production chains of clothes, food and services consumed globally are tainted with forced labour. The world is three times richer in terms of global GDP than it was 30 years ago yet we have historic levels of inequality. Eighty percent of the world’s people say that the minimum wage is not enough to live on, work is more insecure with a predominance of short term contracts or other non-standard forms of employment and both informal work and modern slavery are not only growing but increasingly prevalent in the supply chains of large corporations. In the global private economy, the ILO calculates forced labour generates $150 billion each year but it could be even higher. In all countries, unscrupulous employers and recruiters are increasingly exploiting gaps in international labour and migration law and enforcement. After drugs and arms, human trafficking is now the world’s third biggest crime business.

New York: Business & Human Rights Resource Centre, 2017. 30p.

By United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC)

The present issue paper explores the extent and circumstances under which different forms of marriage may fall within the scope of the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children, supplementing the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime. It combines research methodology and legal analysis to arrive at policy recommendations for countries to consider. The primary data collection was based on 75 expert interviews, involving almost 150 participants from nine countries.1 The interview tool was constructed in a deliberately broad manner to elicit conversations that would capture the reality of these phenomena, which manifested themselves differently in every country, and not to rush to conclusions about whether the conduct fell within the scope of the Trafficking in Persons Protocol…..

• More.....

  Out of the almost 150 people who participated in the interviews, the great majority knew about or had direct experience of cases involving certain types of marriage and trafficking in persons. However, others had not made any connections between marriages and trafficking in persons in their line of work or had not encountered any relevant cases. In the cases presented during the interviews, it became apparent that trafficking in persons was most often linked to cases of marriage that showed signs of force, abuse or exploitation. Thus, these characteristics could be recognized as initial indicators for consideration of trafficking in persons. Experts, including from non-governmental organizations, who had interacted with victims noted that there was a low level of reporting of trafficking cases in general, but also of trafficking cases involving elements of marriage.

Vienna: UNODC, 2020. 116p.

By Tadesse Simei Metekia

Based on extensive interviews and field research in Ethiopia, this brief puts forward actionable recommendations. Ethiopia has recently brought perpetrators to justice for trafficking Ethiopian immigrants and subjecting them to various forms of exploitation in countries such as Kenya, Tanzania, Sudan and Libya. The state has also demonstrated a growing political will to prevent and prosecute transnational forms of trafficking in persons. Yet, effective prosecution will elude Ethiopia unless it removes the impediments that are limiting its ability to ensure witness availability and bring more masterminds to justice.

ENACT (Africa): 2022. 16p.

By Arezo Malakooti

A number of policy and security changes in the Mediterranean, North Africa and the Sahel over the last five years have led to a decrease in mobility options towards Europe. The study aims to measure whether the pattern of vulnerability towards trafficking has shifted for migrants in light of the increased difficulty in reaching Europe. This is achieved through an innovative methodology where a 1600-person survey was conducted with migrants along the routes to North Africa and proxies were used to gauge changes in patterns of vulnerability. Respondents’ experiences with trafficking were also tracked, thereby creating a new set of data in relation to trafficking along routes to Europe.

Geneva: Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, 2020. 108p.

By Christopher Paolella

Human trafficking has become a global concern over the last twenty years, but its violence has terrorized and traumatized its victims and survivors for millennia. This study examines the deep history of human trafficking from Late Antiquity to the Early Modern Period. It traces the evolution of trafficking patterns: the growth and decline of trafficking routes, the ever-changing relationships between traffickers and authorities, and it examines the underlying causes that lead to vulnerability and thus to exploitation. As the reader will discover, the conditions that lead to human trafficking in the modern world, such as poverty, attitudes of entitlement, corruption, and violence, have a long and storied past. When we understand that past, we can better anticipate human trafficking’s future, and then we are better able to fight it.

Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2020. 280p.

By Amy D. Lauger, Danielle Kaeble, and Mark Motivans

This report describes BJS’s activities during 2021 and 2022 to collect data and report on human trafficking as required by the Combat Human Trafficking Act of 2015 (34 U.S.C. § 20709(e)). It details ongoing and completed efforts to measure and analyze the nationwide incidence of human trafficking, to describe characteristics of human trafficking victims and offenders, and to describe criminal justice responses to human trafficking offenses. Additionally, it provides information on human trafficking suspects referred to and prosecuted by U.S. attorneys, human trafficking defendants convicted in U.S. district court, and admissions to state prison for human trafficking.

Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice Office of Justice Programs Bureau of Justice Statistics,. 2022. 6p.

By Lucia Bird

Through a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods, including literature reviews, national surveys and key informant interviews, this exploratory research points to some level of internal and/or external human trafficking in all the countries studied. Victims of human trafficking in the Caribbean region were found to be men, women, boys and girls from the Caribbean as well as from countries outside the region. These victims were found in multiple forms of exploitation including sexual exploitation, forced labour and domestic servitude. This Exploratory Assessment (second edition) was primarily a qualitative exercise and not intended to supply statistics as to the numbers of trafficking victims within each country. The purpose of the research was to provide a starting point for the participating countries to examine human trafficking within their local context and to encourage dialogue about how to combat this crime within the region. Human trafficking exists at some level in the eight countries that participated in this study. The potential for human trafficking to grow makes a strong, pro-active approach to addressing the crime an important issue for the nations of the Caribbean and the region as a whole.

Geneva: International Organization for Migration (IOM), 2010. 268p.

By Beth Mullan-Feroze and Kamena Dorling

The Home Office routinely detains people who are subject to immigration control only to release them again back into the community,1,2 causing them significant harm in the process.3 This includes survivors of trafficking and slavery.4 Survivors are detained either after imprisonment, with many having been wrongly convicted for offences they were forced to commit by their traffickers, and/or because they do not have permission to remain in the UK and have not received the support necessary to enable them to disclose that they have been trafficked. For example, many survivors of trafficking are detained for removal after being picked up during raids on brothels, nail bars and cannabis farms. 1 See Immigration Detention in the UK - Migration Observatory - The Migration Observatory. 2 Out of the 25,282 people who entered detention in the year ending March 2022, there were only 3,447 enforced returns (14%) - Home Office National Statistics, How many people are detained or returned?, May 2022 3 Helen Bamber Foundation, The impact of immigration detention on mental health – research summary 4 The terms ‘trafficking’ and ‘slavery’ are used interchangeably throughout this report, with the primary term being ‘trafficking’. ….

• More.....

  The term ‘survivor’ is used throughout this report unless specific reference is being made to Home Office policy, where the language is mirrored and ‘victim’ is used. 5 The Modern Slavery Act 2015 section 49 Statutory Guidance on Identification and Care recognises the impact of trauma and lists the reasons why a person may not self-identify and/or be reluctant to disclose their situation of exploitation. 6 These include the 2016 Shaw Report, the 2018 progress report also undertaken by Stephen Shaw, and the 2019 reports by the Joint Committee on Human Rights and by the Home Affairs Select Committee. 7 Home Office, Draft revised guidance on adults at risk in immigration detention, February 2021 8 Home Office admits new immigration plans may see more trafficking victims locked up | The Independent 9 Home Office National Statistics, How many people are detained or returned? , May 2022 It is well recognised, including in the UK Modern Slavery statutory guidance,5 that survivors can be highly traumatised, and afraid of sharing their experiences of trafficking and exploitation for a multitude of reasons, including but not limited to: shame, fear of stigmatisation, and threats from traffickers who may still be controlling them. Survivors are often fearful of authorities and those authorities frequently fail to identify trafficking indicators, or to act appropriately when such indicators are apparent. Numerous government-commissioned or parliamentary reports and inquiries have already highlighted that the Home Office is failing to identify vulnerable people, or even to release people from detention once identified as vulnerable or trafficked.6 Instead of taking urgent steps to address these existing problems, the government has introduced changes to law and policy over the past year that have worsened the situation. While previous Home Office policy stated that victims of trafficking (among other vulnerable groups) were only suitable for detention in exceptional circumstances, in 2021 survivors of trafficking were brought entirely under the scope of the controversial ‘Adults at Risk’ (AAR) policy,7 despite the government recognising that this would result in more survivors of trafficking being detained.8 Under this policy, being a potential and confirmed victim of trafficking is only an ‘indicator’ that someone is an adult at risk who is more vulnerable to suffering harm in detention. The Home Office has stated that this policy should strengthen this presumption against the detention of those who are particularly vulnerable to harm in detention. However, it has actually increased the detention of victims of trafficking who now face increased evidential requirements to show the harm that detention is causing them. In addition, their immigration and criminal offending history, which could be linked to their trafficking experience, is more likely be weighed up in favour of their continued detention rather than understood in the context of the exploitation they have suffered.

London: Helen Bamber Foundation, 2022. 31p.

By Mark Micallet and Matt Herbert

Irregular migration and human smuggling through the Sahel and North Africa are often assessed and framed through the metric of arrivals in Europe by migrants on boats. According to that metric, 2021 was an important year. On the three major routes connecting Africa to Europe – through the Central Mediterranean, the Western Mediterranean and via north-west Africa – 108 541 migrants arrived in Europe that year. This was the highest number witnessed since 2017, when there was a dramatic collapse in arrival numbers following the rapid growth seen between 2013 and 2017.1 Data for the number of migrants intercepted prior to arriving in European waters is not as comprehensive, but likely to be high, with Tunisia and Libya alone recording 54 512 disembarkations in 2021, the highest levels ever recorded by both countries.2 However, focusing only on the metric of disembarkations of migrants in Europe is problematic. Assessed alone, these figures skew the perspective of what is a highly complex situation. Disembarkation levels, while measuring success or failure of a migrant’s journey, otherwise speak to little, if anything, of how the human smuggling ecosystem in North Africa and the Sahel is changing. Moreover, these statistics obscure the significance of dynamics and shifts in zones of both embarkation and transit, which are

Geneva: Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, 2022. 46p.

By Thomas Pearson

This dissertation consists of three chapters concerning migration and immigration policy. The first chapter studies how increased U.S. deportations affect Mexican labor markets using variation in migrant networks and Secure Communities (SC), a policy which expanded local immigration enforcement. I show that in the short run, deportations increase return migration and decrease monthly earnings for local Mexicans with less than a high school degree. Deportations also increase net outflows within Mexico and emigration to the U.S. The negative short run effects are not driven by falls in remittance income or increases in crime as deportations increase both the share of households receiving remittances and the total amount received and they do not affect homicide rates. The results instead point to increased labor market competition as a result of return migration. Lastly, I show that the negative short run effects of this labor supply shock are larger in localities with worse infrastructure and less access to the financial sector. These results help explain the large negative effects on earnings as many migrants return to less developed regions where these frictions are prevalent. The second chapter studies how immigration status affects crime reporting and victimization. I focus on Deferred Action for Early Childhood Arrivals (DACA), a policy that temporarily protects youth from deportation and provides work authorization. For identification, I compare likely undocumented immigrants around the policy's age eligibility cut-off over time. DACA eligibility of the victim increased the likelihood that the crime was reported to the police, which is consistent with DACA reducing fears of deportation. DACA eligibility also decreased victimization rates for women. Overall, the results suggest that immigrant legalization increases engagement with police and reduces the likelihood of victimization. The third chapter provides a novel perspective on the Great Migration out of the U.S. South. Using a shift-share identification strategy, my coauthors and I show how millions of Southern white migrants transformed the cultural and political landscape across America. Counties with a larger Southern white share by 1940 exhibited growing support for right-wing politics throughout the 20th century and beyond.

• More.....

  Racial animus, religious conservatism, and localist attitudes among the Southern white diaspora hastened partisan realignment as the Republican Party found fresh support for the Southern strategy outside the South. Their congressional representatives were more likely to oppose politically liberal legislation, such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and to object to the Electoral College count in 2021. These migrants helped shape institutions that reinforced racial inequity and exclusion, they shared ideology through religious organizations and popular media, and they transmitted an array of cultural norms to non-Southern populations. Together, our findings suggest that Southern white migrants may have forever changed the trajectory of American politics.

Boston, MA: Boston University, 2022. 255p.

By The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC)

The detention of immigrants has skyrocketed in the United States. On a given day in August 2019, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) held over 55,000 people in detention – a massive increase from five years ago when ICE held fewer than 30,000 people. Unsurprisingly, the United States has the largest immigration incarceration system in the world. What’s more, the federal government spends more on immigration enforcement than for all principal federal law enforcement agencies combined, according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General. As of April 2019, Florida had the sixth-largest population of people detained by ICE in the United States, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University. On a daily basis, ICE currently detains more than 2,000 noncitizens in the state, mostly in South Florida, which is home to four immigration prisons: Krome Service Processing Center (Krome), owned by ICE; Broward Transitional Center (Broward), operated by GEO Group, a Boca Raton-based for-profit prison corporation; and two county jails, Glades County Detention Center (Glades) and Monroe County Detention Center (Monroe). Despite the fact that immigrants are detained on civil violations, their detention is indistinguishable from the conditions found in jails or prisons where people are serving criminal sentences. The nation’s immigration detention centers are little more than immigrant prisons, where detained people endure harsh – even dangerous – conditions. And reports of recent deaths have only heightened concerns.

Montgomery, AL: Southern Poverty Law Center, 2019. 104p.

By Tess Hellgren, Rebecca Cassler, Gracie Willis, Jordan Cunnings, Stephen Manning, Melissa Crow, and Lindsay Jonasson

Since its creation, the contemporary immigration court system has been perpetually afflicted by dysfunction. Today, under the Trump administration, the immigration court system—a system whose important work is vital for our nation's collective prosperity—has effectively collapsed. This report explains how the collapse came to be and why the immigration court system cannot be salvaged in its current form. Decades of experience incontrovertibly demonstrate that the immigration courts have never worked and will never work to, as Chief Justice John Roberts says, “do equal right” to those who appear before them. The immigration courts will never work because the structure of the immigration system is fundamentally flawed. Under the Immigration and Nationality Act, the attorney general of the United States is required to craft a functioning immigration court system: a system that provides genuine case-by-case adjudications by impartial judges who apply existing law to the evidence on the record following a full and fair hearing. Yet every attorney general has failed to do so. Despite the life-or-death stakes of many immigration cases, the immigration court system that persists today is plagued by decades of neglect and official acquiescence to bias. These trends have created a system where case outcomes have less to do with the rule of law than with the luck of the draw. And under the Trump administration, the attorneys general have gone even further by seeking to actively weaponize the immigration court system against asylum seekers and immigrants of color.

• More.....

  Overwhelming evidence shows that the Office of the Attorney General has long allowed immigration judges to violate noncitizens’ rights in a systemic Was the Central American Migrant Caravan created in the United States? , pervasive manner that undermines the integrity of the court system. In speaking with immigration practitioners across the country, the authors of this report have heard first-hand accounts of how the attorney general’s unitary power shapes adjudication practices that are biased, inconsistent, and driven by politics: Judges fail to apply binding legal standards, make decisions based on illegally invented rules, engage in abusive treatment of noncitizens and their counsel, and even decide cases before holding hearings

Portland, OR: Innovation Law Lab; Montgomery, AL: Southern Poverty Law Center, 2019. 40p.

By Daphné Bouteillet-Paquet

Migrant smuggling has been an issue of increasing concern. The negative consequences of this type of transnational crime include the erosion of state sovereignty and the loss of control over who enters and leaves the territory, the potential security implications of clandestine entries and document smuggling, the large profits that accrue to human smugglers and organized criminal groups, the increasingly brutal treatment of migrants by careless smugglers leading to a growing number of deaths by drowning, dehydration, freezing or suffocation, and the high smuggling fees that migrants have to pay for the illegal transfer to destination countries, often leading to high debts for smuggled migrants and making them vulnerable to exploitation and human trafficking. Despite the fact that migrant smuggling has attracted great media and political attention over the last two decades, there has not been any comprehensive analysis of the state of expert knowledge. Great confusion still prevails about what is migrant smuggling within the global context of irregular migration.

• More.....

  UNODC is currently developing and implementing a number of new projects to assess and counter the various threats posed by human smuggling. To do so effectively, and to learn from already existing research on migrant smuggling for current and future programme design, it is imperative to gain an overview of the current state of knowledge on the subject by consolidating the existing literature on the subject in one comprehensive and informative background document.

  The Global Review and Annotated Bibliography of Recent Publications on Smuggling of Migrants (Global Review) replies to this need by surveying existing sources and research papers on migrant smuggling, to provide a summary of knowledge and identify gaps based on the most recent and relevant research available on migrant smuggling from a worldwide perspective.

  The Global Review is structured in thematic chapters which also address the issue at a regional level. Conceptual challenges, scope of migrant smuggling, profiles of smuggled migrants and of migrant smugglers, their relationships, the organizational structures of smuggling networks, modus operandi and smuggling fee as well as the human and social cost of migrant smuggling are addressed in this Global Review, based on well-informed journalistic books, reports and academic articles.

Vienna: United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime, 2011. 148p.

Read/Download

By Steven W. Bender

Mexico and the United States exist in a symbiotic relationship: Mexico frequently provides the United States with cheap labor, illegal goods, and, for criminal offenders, a refuge from the law. In turn, the U.S. offers Mexican laborers the American dream: the possibility of a better livelihood through hard work. To supply each other’s demands, Americans and Mexicans have to cross their shared border from both sides. Despite this relationship, U.S. immigration reform debates tend to be security-focused and center on the idea of menacing Mexicans heading north to steal abundant American resources. Further, Congress tends to approach reform unilaterally, without engaging with Mexico or other feeder countries, and, disturbingly, without acknowledging problematic southern crossings that Americans routinely make into Mexico.

In Run for the Border, Steven W. Bender offers a framework for a more comprehensive border policy through a historical analysis of border crossings, both Mexico to U.S. and U.S. to Mexico. In contrast to recent reform proposals, this book urges reform as the product of negotiation and implementation by cross-border accord; reform that honors the shared economic and cultural legacy of the U.S. and Mexico. Covering everything from the history of Anglo crossings into Mexico to escape law authorities, to vice tourism and retirement in Mexico, to today’s focus on Mexican border-crossing immigrants and drug traffickers, Bender takes lessons from the past 150 years to argue for more explicit and compassionate cross-border cooperation.

New York; London: New York University Press, 2012. 233p.

By Joseph Nevins

By 1994 American anti-immigration rhetoric had reached a fevered pitch, and throngs of migrants entered the U.S. nightly. In response, the INS launched "Operation Gatekeeper," the centerpiece of the Clinton administration's unprecedented effort to "regain control" of our borders. In Operation Gatekeeper, Joseph Nevins details the administration's dramatic overhaul of the San Diego-Tijauna border-the busiest land crossing in the world-adding miles of new fence and hundreds of trained agents.

New York: London: Routledge, 2002. 296p.

By Tom K. Wong

To better understand the attitudes and preferences that border residents have on border policies, the U.S. Immigration Policy Center (USIPC) at UC San Diego surveyed 2,750 voters across the four southwestern border states—Arizona, California, New Mexico, and Texas. The survey was fielded from October 8 to October 22. The margin of error is +/- 2.1%. For more, see methodology section. The data show that the majority of registered voters across the four southwestern border states—Arizona, California, New Mexico, and Texas—disapprove of the way that the president is handling issues at the U.S.-Mexico border. The results also reveal a general lack of trust in the Border Patrol agency, which includes: lack of trust that Border Patrol officials will protect the rights and civil liberties of all people; lack of trust that Border Patrol officials will keep border residents safe; and lack of trust that Border Patrol officials who abuse their authority will be held accountable for their abuses. Moreover, registered voters in the southwestern border states generally prefer policies opposite to those of the current administration.

• More.....

  These policies include: alternatives to detention for families seeking refuge in the U.S.; placing unaccompanied minors caught attempting to cross the border illegally into the care of child welfare specialists, not border or immigration enforcement officials; providing aid to migrants in distress (e.g., food and water) rather than criminally prosecuting those who provide aid to migrants in distress; investing more in making ports of entry more efficient rather than spending more on border security; and admitting asylum seekers into the U.S. in order to ensure their safety rather than making asylum seekers wait in Mexico. When it comes to spending, whereas the majority of registered voters across the four southwestern border states oppose additional federal spending on border walls and fencing, the results are mixed when it comes to additional federal spending on hiring more Border Patrol agents. Lastly, the results show that just over 3 out of 10 have been stopped and questioned about their citizenship status at an interior border checkpoint.

La Jolla, CA: U.S. Immigration Policy Center, UC San Diego, 2019. 23p.

By Tom K. Wong, Karina Shklyan, Andrea Silva and Josefina Espino

As 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 thus far focused mostly on the relationship between the federal government and localities. However, states are increasingly passing laws that either tighten cooperation with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) or that delimit when and under what conditions local law enforcement officials can do the work of immigration enforcement (i.e., so-called sanctuary policies). Simultaneously, cities within these states are doing just the opposite. In this study, we examine how these ambiguities in interior immigration enforcement policies at state and local levels affect the trust that undocumented immigrants have in the efficacy of sanctuary policies. Moreover, we examine how these ambiguities affect the day-to-day behaviors of undocumented immigrants. Using California as a case, we embedded an experiment in a survey (n = 521) drawn from a probability-based sample of undocumented immigrants. We find that when cities want to opt out of statewide sanctuary laws, this undermines the trust that undocumented immigrants have in the efficacy of sanctuary policies. We also find that “opting out” has negative implications for the day-to-day behaviors of undocumented immigrants that are similar to the chilling effects that result when local law enforcement officials do the work of federal immigration enforcement.

La Jolla, CA: U.S. Immigration Policy Center, UC San Diego, 2019. 29p.

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.