Download Between Public Service and Social Control

Social Problems, 2016, 63, 111–126
doi: 10.1093/socpro/spv024
Advance Access Publication Date: 4 December 2015
Article
Between Public Service and Social Control:
Policing Dilemmas in the Era of
Immigration Enforcement
Amada Armenta
University of Pennsylvania
ABSTRACT
While research provides numerous insights about the fear and insecurity that Latino immigrants experience at the hands of the police, much less is known about the experiences
and practices of local police vis-à-vis Latino immigrant residents. This article contributes to
research on street-level bureaucracies and immigrant incorporation by examining police
practices in a new immigrant destination. Drawing on two years of fieldwork with the
Metropolitan Nashville Police Department, it offers an extended ethnographic look at policing dilemmas in the era of immigration control. As the findings reveal, police bureaucracies
respond to immigrant residents in contradictory ways. On one hand, the department has an
official community policing program to increase trust and communication with Latino immigrant residents. On the other hand, street-level patrol officers undermine these efforts by
citing and arresting Latino residents who lack state-issued ID. Thus, alongside ostensibly
sincere efforts to incorporate immigrant residents, ultimately, police produce a form of social control and urban discipline through their discretionary decisions.
K E Y W O R D S : police; immigrants; bureaucracies; immigration enforcement; crimmigration.
Although the presence of unauthorized immigrants in the United States is sometimes seen as proof
of the “gap” between the nation’s restrictive immigration policies and policy outcomes (Hollifeld,
Martin, and Orrenius 2014), an alternate view suggests that immigration laws are not designed to exclude, but to include unauthorized immigrants with subordinate status and “under imposed conditions of protracted vulnerability” (De Genova 2002:429; see also Chauvin and Garcés-Mascareñas
2012; Harrison and Lloyd 2012; Menjı́var and Abrego 2012). Increasingly, scholars argue that the
strict binary between legality and illegality misrepresents both the reality of immigrants’ lived experiences (Goldring, Berinstein, and Bernhard 2009; Gonzales 2011; Kubal 2013; Menjı́var 2006) and
tensions within the law itself (Bosniak 2006; Chauvin and Garcés-Mascareñas 2012). Scholars use
terms like “semi-legality” (Kubal 2013; Rytter 2012), “liminal legality” (Menjı́var 2006), “quasilegality” (Düvell 2008), and “illegal citizenship” (Chauvin and Garcés-Mascareñas 2012) to capture
The author wishes to thank colleagues at UCLA, UCSD, Cornell, OSU, and University of Pennsylvania for their generous comments
on various drafts of this article. The author is particularly grateful for suggestions provided by Roger Waldinger, Mathew Coleman,
Shannon Gleeson, Katharine Donato, Peter Moskos, Emilio Parrado, and the editors and anonymous reviewers at Social
Problems. Direct correspondence to: Amada Armenta, 113 McNeil Building, 3718 Locust Walk, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 191046299. E-mail: [email protected].
C The Author 2015. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for the Study of Social Problems. All rights reserved.
V
For permissions, please e-mail: [email protected]
111
112
Armenta
the ambiguity between unauthorized immigrants’ formal exclusion under the law, and their partial incorporation as members of the polity. For example, many unauthorized migrants living in the United
States send their children to local public schools, worship in neighborhood churches, and work alongside U.S. citizens. This integration provides some measure of protection, and scholars show that local
bureaucrats use unauthorized immigrants’ community membership as justification for providing them
services (Jones-Correa 2008; Marrow 2009; Ridgley 2008; Varsanyi 2006).
At the same time, undocumented immigrants often find themselves outside the law, not just in the
sense that their physical presence is unauthorized, but in more mundane ways as well. For example,
in Los Angeles, police and health department inspectors surveil, cite, and/or arrest undocumented
fruit vendors because informal vending is explicitly forbidden by city and county laws (Rosales
2013). Monica Varsanyi (2008) identifies similar practices with respect to the policing of undocumented day laborers. In most states, unauthorized immigrants are ineligible for various forms of
state-issued identification and driver’s licenses, making otherwise innocuous behaviors like driving
against the law (Coutin 2000; Stuesse and Coleman 2014). Indeed, across the country, the “crimes”
of fishing without a license (Echegaray 2010), running a stop sign while riding a bike (O’Brien
2011), and driving with a broken taillight (Harmon 2002) have all resulted in undocumented immigrants’ arrest by local police and subsequent removal by federal authorities.
These everyday “illegalities” undoubtedly cause tensions for immigrants and their families
(Goldring et al. 2009; Gonzales 2011; Menjı́var 2010), but they also create problems for local police
who face the dual challenges of serving residents regardless of citizenship status, while working in a
regulatory context where their arrests may result in immigrants’ deportation (Eagly 2013; Pedroza
2013; Taylor et al. 2014). Today, the criminal justice system and immigration enforcement apparatus
are so intertwined that they have converged into one large “crimmigration” system (Stumpf 2006).
Because local police figure prominently in unauthorized immigrants’ potential exclusion, and are often immigrants’ first point of contact with criminal justice institutions, the following questions
emerge: What are police policies and practices with respect to immigrant residents, particularly those
who may be undocumented? How do police understand and respond to migrants’ everyday
“illegalities?”
Unfortunately, answers to these questions are incomplete. Latino immigrants report negative experiences with the police, including fear of immigration enforcement and perceptions of racial profiling
(Menjı́var and Bejarano 2004; Romero 2006), but one limitation of this work is its exclusive focus on
immigrants’ views of the police rather than the attitudes of the police towards immigrants. Another
strand of literature draws from surveys and interviews with police administrators (Decker et al. 2008;
Lewis and Ramakrishnan 2007; Lewis et al. 2012; Varsanyi et al. 2012), but these methods are particularly ill suited to capture the behavior of street-level patrol officers.
This article draws on two years of ethnographic fieldwork with the Metropolitan Nashville Police
Department (MNPD) in Tennessee to analyze police responses to an emerging Latino immigrant
community. It complements extant research by offering an on the ground account of policing in the
era of immigration control, identifying conflicting professional dilemmas directly related to unauthorized immigrants’ semi-legality. As the findings reveal, in an effort to build trust and improve its relationship with Latino immigrant residents, the MNPD devotes significant resources to a prized
community policing program. At the same time, patrol officers routinely cite and arrest Latino immigrants who cannot identify themselves with state-issued identity documents. Thus, alongside ostensibly sincere efforts to “bureaucratically incorporate” Latino residents (see Lewis and Ramakrishnan
2007; Marrow 2009), officers produce a form of social control and urban discipline through their discretionary decisions.
This study makes important contributions to research on immigrants and bureaucracies, policing,
and immigration control. First, while there is a long tradition of utilizing ethnographic methods to
understand police behavior (for an extensive review, see Manning 2014), this is the first study to extend these methods to the policing of immigrants. As such, this article offers crucial insights regarding
Between Public Service and Social Control
113
how police, from administrators to patrol officers, make sense of immigrants and the law. Second, by
detailing coexisting inclusive and exclusionary police policies and practices, this study poses a significant corrective to extant research that tends to emphasize either incorporation (see Lewis and
Ramakrishnan 2007; Marrow 2009) or social control (Romero 2006; Stuesse and Coleman 2014).
Lastly, this analysis adds to the growing literature on the intermediary bureaucracies and actors that
participate, either directly or indirectly, to the immigration control apparatus (Coleman 2012; Gilboy
1991; Lakhani 2014; Lakhani and Timmermans 2014; Menjı́var and Abrego 2012; Varsanyi 2008).
IMMIGRANTS AND THE POLICE
Strained relationships between Latino immigrant communities and the police are a persistent problem in the United States. Research suggests that Latinos have less favorable opinions of the police
than do white Americans (Weitzer and Tuch 2004). Latino immigrants’ mistrust of the police is
linked to language barriers, negative experiences with police in their countries of origin, and fear of
immigration enforcement (Menjı́var and Bejarano 2004). The scope of the police’s authority to enforce immigration laws is incredibly complex, but historically, state and local police do not enforce
civil immigration violations such as unlawful presence (Wishnie 2004). Even though most police
agencies report that they do not directly enforce immigration laws (Lewis et al. 2012), state and local
jails have become primary sites through which Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) identifies, detains, and removes noncitizens from the United States (Eagly 2013; Pedroza 2013). While it is
clear that these shifting immigrant enforcement tactics have exacerbated immigrants’ anxiety about
police contact (Nguyen and Gill 2015; Stuesse and Coleman 2014), it is less clear how (or if) this
reconfiguration changes how police officers do their jobs on a daily basis.
Emerging research has begun to fill this gap by examining police practices with respect to immigrant residents. For example, new research applies theories of immigrant political incorporation to local government bureaucracies—including police departments, public libraries, and schools—to
examine how these institutions respond to immigrant newcomers (Culver 2004; Gleeson and
Gonzales 2012; Jones-Correa 2005, 2008; Lewis and Ramakrishnan 2007; Lucio 2013; Marrow 2009,
2010; Winders 2012). This research overwhelming suggests that local institutions engage in “bureaucratic incorporation” by substantively responding to immigrants’ needs (Jones-Correa 2005, 2008;
Marrow 2009). For example, in their study of police departments in California, Peter Lewis and
S. Karthick Ramakrishnan (2007) show that police administrators draw on their sense of professional
responsibility to develop culturally sensitive policing practices. However, while local law enforcement
agencies are sensitive to the challenges that come with policing immigrant communities, the police
bureaucracy’s regulatory mission is often at odds with its orientation towards public service (Culver
2004; Lewis and Ramakrishnan 2007; Marrow 2009).
More expansive research draws from mail-in surveys of municipal police chiefs regarding their departments’ policies and practices vis-à-vis immigrants (Decker et al. 2009; Lewis and Ramakrishnan
2007). Surveys reveal that most police departments do not have an official immigration policy
(Decker et al. 2009). Moreover, police administrators’ expectations of patrol officers’ cooperation
with ICE varies greatly across departments and by circumstance, with some police chiefs indicating
that officers cooperate with ICE and others indicating they do not (Decker et al. 2009).
While patrol officers’ discretionary and ad-hoc decisions are particularly difficult to capture in surveys of police administrators, turning to the ethnographic literature on policing offers some additional
insights. This research suggests that an officer’s decision to invoke the law is contingent on a number
of personal, situational, and subjective factors, including the suspect’s attitude and demeanor (Van
Maanen 1978), the police officer’s orientation, culture, or style of policing (Brown 1988; Herbert
1998; Manning 1989; Moskos 2009; Terrill, Paoline III, and Manning 2003; Wilson 1968), and the
bureaucratic preferences of police administrators (Skolnick and Bayley 1986; Wilson 1968). The present study complements the existing ethnographic and survey research by examining bureaucratic priorities and police practices as they pertain to a burgeoning Latino immigrant community.
114
Armenta
METHODS AND CONTEXT: POLICING MUSIC CITY
This article forms part of a larger project on the devolution of immigration enforcement, and the
growing participation of state and local law enforcement agencies in federal immigration control
(Armenta 2012; Coleman 2012; Varsanyi 2010). It draws from 21 months of intensive fieldwork in
Nashville between January 2009 and September 2010, as well as short follow-up trips in 2011, 2012
and 2013. Nashville is an appropriate site for examining the relationships between Latinos and the
police amidst changing federal immigration enforcement tactics for two reasons. First, like other
“new destinations” in the U.S. South, Nashville has experienced tremendous growth in its Latino immigrant population since the late 1990s, with immigrants largely drawn to its booming construction
industry and service sector (Winders 2013). Latino residents were a negligible population in 1990,
but they made up almost 5 percent of Nashville’s population in 2000, and doubled in size to almost
10 percent in 2010 (Haas and Echegaray 2011). Nashville, and more specifically Davidson County,
has the largest proportion of Latino residents in the state of Tennessee (Haas and Echegaray 2011).
Second, as I will outline in more detail below, the Davidson County Sheriff’s Office was a relatively
early adopter of a program called 287(g), a federal initiative to devolve federal immigration enforcement authority to local law enforcement agencies, making it an important site to understand on-theground enforcement practices as they pertain to the immigrant community.
The project draws on ethnographic observations, as well as formal and informal interviews.
Ethnographic observations included over 120 hours of ride-along in Nashville’s South precinct, where
the majority of Latino residents live. Like the “go-along,” the ride-along is a hybrid ethnographic
method that combines pure ethnographic observations and formal interviewing; the observer can ask
clarifying questions and the respondent can explain particular courses of action (Herbert 2010;
Kusenbach 2003). In the earliest ethnographic studies of police behavior, researchers limited their interactions with officers out of concern they might change the officer’s behavior, but more recent
work argues that how the officer responds, and how that response changes over time, is information
that can be used as data (Herbert 2010).
Ride-alongs began in the precinct roll call room, where patrol officers would gather to be assigned
to their particular zones (a geographic area) or enforcement priorities (when officers are given specific tasks, such as traffic enforcement, but not tied to a geographic area). During roll call the police
administrator also makes announcements about opportunities for overtime, trends in crime, reminds
officers about the department’s and the precinct’s enforcement priorities, and makes general comments about the precinct’s performance. I rode with one officer at a time for the entirety of a shift,
but interacted with numerous officers during each shift through participation in roll call, answering
calls for service (often more than one officer answers a call so they can serve as each other’s back
up), and taking meal breaks (officers often coordinated their shift to eat meals together, most often
at a fast food restaurant).
During traffic stops and calls for service, I paid attention to how officers and civilians interacted
with one another and paid attention to the officers’ decisions. After each incident or event, I asked officers questions about their decision-making process. Asking respondents to talk about the cognitive
steps by which they arrived at particular decisions is a useful technique to understand officer discretion (Ericsson and Simon 1985; Worden 1989). After each ride-along, which spanned between 6 and
11 hours, I recorded my observations as field notes.
While field notes detailed the entirety of the shift and included interactions with all residents,
I was primarily interested in police-Latino relations. As such, I made assumptions about one’s Latino
immigrant status based on name, phenotype, language, and accent. These are imperfect markers of
both Latino and immigrant status, but were appropriate given my interest in documenting policies
and practices towards those police perceive to be Latino immigrants.
Many officers were curious about my presence at first and assumed I was a police dispatcher.
I told officers that I was a student working on a article about how police do their jobs in diverse
neighborhoods. When officers realized that I spoke Spanish, more than one responded
Between Public Service and Social Control
115
enthusiastically by raising his fists in triumph and bragging to another officer about having a bilingual
rider in the car. Over time, officers stopped trying to figure out why I was there and instead greeted
me by name, joked about my regular attendance, and suggested that I join their ranks.
In addition to ride-alongs, I conducted observations at the department’s Citizen’s Police Academy,
a 12-week course hosted by the department to introduce community members to a variety of policing
issues. I also attended dozens of community events for the immigrant community that were hosted
or attended by police officers. Examples include Hispanic community festivals, health fairs, soccer
tournaments, car seat safety inspections, meetings with Latino business owners, and Mexican consular
events. These events provided numerous opportunities to observe more service-oriented policeimmigrant interactions, and conduct informal field interviews with Latino attendees who were concerned about policing. Four times a year I attended closed meetings of the “287(g) Advisory
Council” where law enforcement officials from the police and Sheriff’s office met with city officials
and immigrant advocacy organizations to discuss the program’s implementation. These events were
also recorded in field notes.
Lastly, I completed 47 in-depth interviews with law enforcement personnel, employees in immigrant advocacy organizations, and Latino immigrants in Nashville. I designed three semistructured interview guides, one each for law enforcement, stakeholders, and immigrants. The majority of these
interviews took place in people’s place of employment, but several occurred in public spaces or in
people’s homes. These interviews, which ranged in length between 45 minutes and two and a half
hours, were audio recorded and subsequently transcribed.
My field notes and interviews yielded hundreds of pages of data, which I coded to identify analytic
themes for analysis. I drew from grounded-theory methods for coding, organization, and analysis
(Glaser and Strauss 1999). Quotation marks indicate when subjects’ words are quoted verbatim; otherwise data are paraphrased. All names in this article are pseudonyms.
POLICING DILEMMAS IN THE ERA OF IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT
We are living in an era of heightened interior immigration enforcement, bolstered by restrictive immigration policies at the state and local level (Chavez and Provine 2009; Ramakrishnan and Wong
2010; Seif 2010; Varsanyi 2010). Police bureaucracies, with both service and regulatory missions
(Marrow 2009; Maynard-Moody and Musheno 2003), are often at the center of these immigration
related tensions. The MNPD does not enforce immigration laws; that is, officers may not arrest people on immigration-related charges. Police do, however, enforce laws and make requests that are challenging for unauthorized Latino immigrants to follow. For example, while unauthorized immigrants
were once eligible for Tennessee driver’s licenses and identification cards, in 2006, state legislators
stripped unauthorized immigrants of their eligibility for both cards. In the years that followed, driver’s
licenses that the state had legally issued to unauthorized migrants expired, with no possibility for renewal. Not only did this act criminalize driving, but it also made it virtually impossible for undocumented immigrants to provide local police with the department’s preferred form of identification,
placing many Latino immigrants outside the agency’s identification scheme (see Scott 1998; Torpey
2000).
In 2007, Nashville became a site of local immigration control after the Davidson County Sheriff’s
Office (DCSO) sought immigration enforcement authority through a program called 287(g). Made
possible through a provision of the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility
Act, 287(g) allows state and local law enforcement agencies to apply for training to implement federal
immigration laws. Although initially ignored, 287(g) became popular amidst a flurry of other state
and local efforts to control unauthorized immigrants across the country (see Donato and Armenta
2011; Newton and Adams 2009; Ramakrishnan and Wong 2010; Varsanyi 2010). From 2007 until
the program’s end in 2012, DCSO deputies enforced immigration laws by screening foreign-born arrestees for immigration violations and identifying removable immigrants for deportation (Armenta
2012).
116
Armenta
To understand immigration policing in Nashville, it is crucial to recognize the division of labor between the DCSO and the MNPD. As the primarily law enforcement agency in Davidson County,
MNPD officers answer calls for service and have the authority to cite and arrest suspected lawbreakers throughout the county’s 567 square miles. In contrast, the DCSO is primarily responsible
for the security and administration of the county jail, and the agency does not patrol or make arrests.
During the 287(g) program’s tenure, Sheriff’s deputies investigated foreign-born arrestees’ immigration status, but the agency did not control who police delivered to their custody. Local police did not
enforce immigration laws, but their arrests resulted in immigration screenings. Thus, police navigate a
complex legal terrain where they alternately protect, serve, and regulate Latino immigrant residents.
Police as Public Servants: Community Policing in Southeast Nashville
From language barriers, to fear of the police in their countries of origin, to associating local police
with ICE, Latino immigrants create special challenges for local police departments (Khashu, Busch,
and Latif 2005; Lewis and Ramakrishnan 2007; Menjivar and Bejarano 2004). Since 2004, the
MNPD has relied on a community policing program called El Protector to address these challenges.
As part of the El Protector Program, two veteran Latino bilingual officers, Officer Iglesias and Officer
Moreno, spend their time addressing crime prevention and educating the public about the role of law
enforcement in the community.
During an interview, Officer Moreno explained that he tries to get “the Hispanic community involved and let them know that we’re out there to help them out . . . (and) let them know that it’s
okay to call the police.” With the support of the department, El Protector officers plan and host a variety of events for the Latino immigrant community, including cultural festivals, health fairs, car seat
safety inspections, soccer tournaments, and a Hispanic Teen Police Academy. Through these activities, El Protector officers strive to make personal connections with residents, community groups, and
local businesses.
In the spring of 2010, Officers Moreno and Iglesias invited Hispanic business owners to a meeting
to discuss property crime. The meeting was held at a large Mexican restaurant located on a bustling
commercial corridor in Southeast Nashville and was attended by the 2 El Protector officers, a precinct
commander, and 13 Latino business owners. Switching between English and Spanish, Officer
Moreno praised those in attendance, saying “Es muy importante que están aquı́ (It’s very important
that you are here) so we’ll know if we’re doing a good job or not.” As is the case at every event, officers addressed immigration enforcement, emphasizing that the MNPD and DCSO are different agencies and that the MNPD has no control over the DCSO’s implementation of 287(g). Officers also
reiterated that police do not enforce immigration laws and that officers will help victims of crime, regardless of their immigration status. As if on cue, the precinct commander stood up, cleared his
throat, and spoke earnestly:
One thing is, we want you to leave knowing we are on your side when it comes to the
safety of your business, your patrons, and your workers. We have an open door policy in
the precinct. We want to hear from you. I just want you to know that’s my heart and my
intention.
By inviting residents to come to the precinct, articulating that the police were sensitive to the needs
of both business owners and their Latino workers and patrons, and referencing his heart, the commander’s words seemed to demonstrate a personal and emotional commitment to serving the community. When I asked him weeks later, in an interview, why the precinct dedicated time and
resources to Latino residents, he answered, “Because it’s the right thing to do.”
The existence of the El Protector Program is an example of what some scholars call “bureaucratic
incorporation,” which identifies how bureaucrats in a variety of organizations work to serve the needs
of immigrant communities in a restrictive local context (Marrow 2009). The bureaucratic
Between Public Service and Social Control
117
incorporation literature suggests that efforts to integrate immigrants are motivated by an “extreme devotion to public service” (Marrow 2009:765), but as the community policing literature demonstrates,
incorporative responses like these stem from more practical considerations. Ultimately, police bureaucracies hope that community policing will result in information that officers can use to solve crime
and reduce disorder (Fielding 2005; Skogan 2006).
According to the literature, effective community policing requires police and residents to work together to define and solve community problems (Skogan 2004, 2006). Although the El Protector
Program incorporates some community policing philosophies, such as listening to residents’ concerns
and trying to improve its relations in the community, ultimately the El Protector Program primarily
serves to educate Latino immigrants, not incorporate them as partners to solve problems.
Furthermore, the goals and philosophy of the El Protector Program are not integrated into the department writ large. For example, while El Protector officers spend their days implementing strategies
to build rapport with the Latino immigrant community, rank and file patrol officers are only vaguely
aware of their efforts. When I asked patrol officers if they utilized El Protector’s volunteer translators
who are on call to help officers communicate with Spanish speaking residents, officers did not know
how to reach the volunteers and preferred to muddle through interactions on their own. The El
Protector Program represents an impressive effort to reach out to Latino immigrants, particularly in a
new destination, but despite officers’ best intentions, El Protector officers have neither the capacity
nor the authority to respond to immigrants’ most pressing interests, which relate to the behavior of
patrol officers.
From Programs to Practices: Everyday Interactions between Immigrants and Police
Community policing is far from the immediate concerns of patrol officers, who primarily encounter
Latinos when answering calls for service and conducting vehicle stops. In both scenarios, one of the
first things an officer does is request photo identification. To the officer, this is an unproblematic request, establishing a person’s identity is integral to police work. “We really have to guard against fake
ID schemes and things of that nature going on,” an officer explained. However, the request for identification is particularly difficult to satisfy for the city’s undocumented residents, who are ineligible for
U.S.-issued identification.
When someone calls the police for help, lack of identification is not a barrier to obtaining service.
Indeed, officers used foreign driver’s licenses, passports, consular identification cards, or just the person’s word as evidence of identity. However, officers are far more particular about identity documents
when they suspect that the person in question has committed a crime. When a person has broken the
law, and the person cannot provide identification, officers consider making a custodial arrest.
This is the dilemma that officers faced when encountering motorists who were driving without a
license, a misdemeanor offense. Without an official department policy to guide their behavior, police
responses to misdemeanor offenses were highly variable—officers could use their discretion to warn,
cite, or arrest the misdemeanant. In the sections that follow, I detail officers’ responses towards driving offenses. Officers weighed multiple considerations—the law, public safety, supervisor preferences,
practicality, and their own sense of morality—when deciding how to respond to Latinos who drove
outside the law. As my findings show, officers were rarely compelled to completely overlook a violation and issue a warning. More often, officers chose between issuing a misdemeanor state citation
and making a custodial arrest.
Warnings
Of the dozens of traffic stops I observed, officers issued warnings to unlicensed Latino motorists
twice. In both instances, officers were confident they knew the driver’s identity and felt that the motorists deserved discretion. For example, after stopping a black sports utility vehicle for a window tint
violation, Officer Lopez (one of three Latino patrol officers in the precinct) approached the driver’s
side window cautiously, with his fingers gently touching the top of the weapon in his holster. Upon
118
Armenta
seeing the driver, his demeanor changed immediately—the officer relaxed his posture, smiled, and
started chatting amiably with the driver. We were 100 yards from her house, and Officer Lopez had
met the woman and her son at a community policing event several weeks before. After asking about
her son, Officer Lopez wagged his finger at the woman, telling her that her that he did not want to
see her driving. However, his tone suggested concern for her well being rather than concern about
the law.
On another occasion, an officer pulled over a white station wagon with expired tags. After speaking briefly to the driver, the officer returned to the patrol car with the motorist’s driver’s license,
which had recently expired. After verifying that the license had been valid in the past, the officer let
the driver go with a warning. After the stop he explained his rationale:
I don’t write those up because people with expired DL’s went through the trouble of getting a license. They went down there and filled out the paperwork when the state would give it to
them, but now Tennessee decided they’re not going to give them licenses? I just think it’s
messed up.
Based on the officer’s statement, it was clear he believed the motorist was undocumented, and his
decision to issue a warning stemmed from his belief that she was not intentionally flouting the law.
The officer also indicated that he could have confiscated the expired driver’s license, but he did not
because the card was useful as identification. As he saw it, the driver’s expired license was proof of
the driver’s identity and her willingness to follow the law.
While numerous officers expressed some level of sympathy or understanding regarding unauthorized immigrants’ ineligibility for driver’s licenses, in most instances officers chose between the more
legalistic options of issuing misdemeanor state citations or making arrests.
Misdemeanor State Citations
A misdemeanor state citation is technically a non-custodial arrest in which the misdemeanant is
given a paper citation and released, rather than taken into custody and booked at the county jail. In
addition to sparing the misdemeanant from being booked into jail, it allows the officer to return to
his or her patrol duties more quickly. Tennessee’s “cite and release” statute dictates that police
should issue misdemeanor state citations rather than make custodial arrests whenever possible.
According to the statute, however, when a person cannot or will not offer “satisfactory” evidence of
his or her identity, the officer may arrest the person in question because he or she does not “qualify” for a state citation.1
The MNPD does not have an official policy regarding what forms of identification officers should
accept as proof of one’s identity. A precinct commander stammered when I pressed him for specific
documents that officers would find acceptable:
The officer can, well, there’s not really a definable list of how an officer . . . of what he uses to determine if that’s the person he has or not. It can be several different things. Each officer has
to be comfortable with whatever they can use (to) prove to supervisors and ultimately the
court . . . that this is who I actually have here.
Given patrol officers’ authority to decide what constitutes satisfactory proof of identity, the key to
avoiding arrest is meeting the documentation standards of the particular officer that one
encounters.
1 There are eight state citation exceptions. Officers also have authority to make a custodial arrest if they believe the offense is likely
to continue and/or the officer believes the misdemeanant will fail to appear for citations booking.
Between Public Service and Social Control
119
I saw officers use a variety of documents including passports, consular identification cards, and foreign driver’s licenses, to verify one’s identity and issue a misdemeanor state citation. Occasionally, officers also used non-government issued photo identification cards as proof of ID, albeit more
reluctantly. For example, on one stop, an officer pulled over a car after it swerved erratically into another lane. The driver, a Latino male who appeared to be in his early twenties, handed Officer Jones
an International Driver’s Document (IDD) instead of a license. The card looked official, but small
print on the back stated it was “not valid for identification.” Officer Jones explained that the IDD was
not government issued and could be purchased at a local store under any name. He looked pensive
as he twirled the card with his fingers and tapped it on the steering wheel, saying that he did not
think he could accept the card as identification. Before proceeding the officer called his supervisor,
whose response came quickly and decisively. “State citation. Ok,” Officer Jones said. Although the officer had been leaning towards arresting the driver because the IDD was not satisfactory proof of
identity, he followed his sergeant’s instructions and issued a state citation. Ironically, Officer Jones
used information from the IDD to fill out the motorists’ name and address on the citation.
There was also a sense amongst some officers that Latino immigrants were generally law abiding,
and that citations were the appropriate level of punishment for what amounted to a minor violation.
Research suggests that cops use legal sanctions to punish people who are not appropriately respectful
(Van Maanen 1978), and Latinos were exceedingly deferential to police officers. An officer explained
his perception of unlicensed drivers:
These are not bad guys. They’re just on their way home from work. How do you arrest someone for feeding their family? The only way you don’t give them a misdemeanor citation is if
they’ve failed to appear a bunch of times, but they’re going to do it again.
Although misdemeanor state citations are a criminal sanction, they were often perceived as a favorable outcome for drivers, particularly when the alternative was arrest. Latino motorists who responded appreciatively when receiving citations reinforced these perceptions. “He said thank you!”
an officer said to me incredulously, after citing an unlicensed driver. Thus, even as police imposed a
punishment that would result in heavy fines and a lost day of work, some felt positive about acting
compassionately.
Other officers cared about productivity, and chose to cite because they thought it was the most efficient use of their time. While issuing a state citation can be dispensed in 15 minutes, arresting someone takes an officer off patrol for several hours. For example, Officer Hawk indicated a general
willingness to make custodial arrests for driver’s license violations, saying “the law is the law,” but
also indicated that the time it took to make a custodial arrest was a deterrent, particularly when he
could focus his efforts on more pressing community problems. “In the time it takes to make one arrest, I could make three misdemeanor citations,” the Officer said.
Ultimately, dispensing state citations was seen as a compromise between ignoring an offense and
being unnecessarily punitive. For example, while responding to a minor traffic accident between a
middle-aged white man and a 20-something Latino, the officer learned that the Latino driver did not
have a driver’s license or car insurance. The accident was the white motorist’s fault, but the Latino
driver left the accident with a damaged bumper and a state citation. When the officer recounted the
story and expressed his ambivalence about citing the unlicensed driver, another officer interrupted
him, “Be honest, will it keep you up at night?” The officer paused and chuckled. “No,” he replied honestly, shrugging his shoulders.
Decisions by patrol officers and supervisors to be lenient, or more lenient than they could be, is
largely consistent with the literature on bureaucratic incorporation (see Lewis and Ramakrishnan
2007; Marrow 2009). Officers’ moral evaluations of immigrants’ good character parallels other bureaucratic responses where front-line workers describe immigrants as deserving “clients” (see JonesCorrea 2009; Marrow 2009). However, even as patrol officers and supervisors espouse a generally
120
Armenta
positive orientation towards Latino immigrants, their practices are more regulatory than their rhetoric
suggests.
Three weeks after one receives a state citation, one must undergo a lengthy booking process at
the Davidson County Courthouse; procedures include entering the offender’s fingerprints and mug
shot into a county database and imposing steep fines. For those who appear, the process is uncomfortable—the courthouse is downtown, far from Nashville’s Latino immigrant neighborhoods, and
across the street from the county jail where the DCSO screens inmates for immigration violations.
Citations booking is also expensive, requiring individuals to miss a day of work and pay up to $500.
For those who do not go to court on their booking date, consequences are severe. Failing to appear
results in an immediate arrest warrant, to be executed by the police department’s warrant division or
upon the department’s next interaction with the individual in question.
Arrests
While state citations are the norm for many misdemeanor offenses, officers can also choose to make
physical arrests. The decision to arrest hinges on officers’ interpretation of the state’s citation policy,
which lists a number of circumstances under which officers should not issue state citations. For example, when a misdemeanant does not offer “satisfactory” proof of identity, when the officer believes
the misdemeanor offense is likely to continue, or when the officer believes the misdemeanant will fail
to appear for citations booking, the officer may decide to arrest the misdemeanant because he or she
does not “qualify” for a citation. As this section shows, because the MNPD gives officers tremendous
discretion to invoke these exceptions, officers use wildly different standards to make custodial arrests.
Across the country, numerous state and local agencies accept consular identification cards as a
matter of policy (Varsanyi 2007). In contrast, the MNPD does not require officers to accept them,
and it has no official policy about what constitutes satisfactory proof of identity. According to police
administrators, the department’s laissez faire approach gives officers the “freedom” to exercise discretion, while not being “limited” to a particular list of documents. This freedom also allows officers to
categorically reject all forms of alternate identification and make arrests. This is acceptable to police
administrators, who assume that when their officers make arrests, they do so with good reason.
“Ultimately, at the end of the day, we rely on officers, who are investigators. They’re trained to be investigators. We rely on them to make a value judgment and then explain it. That’s all we ask them to
do,” the Police Chief explained.
The following conversation, recorded in my field notes, reveals officers’ varying preferences with
respect to driving violations—some officers favor citations and others advocate making arrests:
We sit down for lunch, and the four officers immediately begin discussing their “stats.” One
boasts that he has already made three traffic stops and issued a state citation for “no DL” (no
driver’s license). An officer responds, saying that he is tired of issuing state citations, saying, “If
it’s illegal, we should arrest people.” A third officer replies that he can make arrests, “just write
‘NO ID’,” he says, trying to be helpful. While another officer quips, “But if we arrested everyone who was driving without a license, there wouldn’t be people left on the streets to patrol!”
The table explodes in laughter.
In addition to highlighting divergent preferences, this exchange also illustrates the autonomy officers
have to arrest people for misdemeanor violations. After one officer indicates he wants to respond to
violations more punitively, his colleague suggests that he make arrests by specifying that the person
in question does not have identification. Note that the officer does not say that arrests must be restricted to people who lack identification; rather, he says that the officer should write that the person
does not have ID to justify the arrest. Rather than disagree with them, another officer injects humor
into the conversation, joking that an inordinate number of arrests might leave the streets empty of
residents.
Between Public Service and Social Control
121
The nonchalance with which the police discuss arrests suggests that officers see them as an ordinary, and even mundane, feature of policing. For example, during an interview, the police chief defended arrests of unlicensed drivers with the following example:
Now here’s the problem that the officers unfairly get criticized about—if you’re riding in a car
without a valid driver’s license, without valid insurance, without valid registration, what part of
that is the officer going to ignore? None of it. Let’s get you into the system and get you properly identified, and then you can bail yourself out.
According to the chief, when an officer cannot verify a motorist’s identity, booking the motorist into
jail is an acceptable alternative, a way to “document” the undocumented. The chief describes arrests
as a minor inconvenience, assuming that arrestees are eligible for bail and that they can afford to pay
for it. In doing so, he ignores arrests’ punitive consequences for unauthorized immigrants, who are often ineligible for bail and who may face deportation proceedings as a result of their arrests.
Given Davidson County’s participation in the 287(g) program, avoiding arrest is crucial for unauthorized immigrant communities. However, officers have almost unfettered discretion to make arrests
for misdemeanor violations, particularly when the suspected misdemeanant cannot supply stateissued identification. With a mandate from the department to use their best judgment, police do not
limit arrests to motorists who literally lack identification. Officers need only articulate that they are
not “satisfied” with the identification presented to them to make arrests. Similarly, officers make arrests when they believe, or claim to believe, that the suspected misdemeanant will continue to commit the offense or will fail to appear in court.
Given officers’ wide latitude to make arrests for misdemeanor violations, racial profiling is an obvious concern. Although racial profiling is difficult to prove, particularly with ethnographic data, the
MNPD’s laissez-faire approach creates openings for officers to engage in racially biased policing.
Indeed, evidence suggests that some officers began using characteristics related to “foreignness” such
as limited language ability or immigrant status to support their assertion that Latino misdemeanants
might fail to appear in court (Donato and Rodriguez 2014). However, officers need not “go rogue”
to disproportionately punish Latino immigrants. As this article shows, even as the police bureaucracy
works to improve its relationship with the Latino immigrant community, the configuration of laws,
policies, and practices keeps Latino immigrants at persistent risk of citation, arrest, and deportation.
CONCLUDING DISCUSSION: BETWEEN PUBLIC SERVICE AND
SOCIAL CONTROL
Given the hostile context of reception for unauthorized immigrants, scholars have increasingly turned
their attention to the power of local bureaucracies to “incorporate” immigrants (Gleeson and
Gonzales 2012; Lewis and Ramakrishnan 2007; Marrow 2009; Winders 2012). The bureaucratic incorporation literature highlights bureaucrats’ surprisingly active roles in limiting the effects of restrictive policies on immigrant communities, and suggests that successful bureaucratic incorporation
“hinges on extremely service-oriented individuals working within or at their margins” (Marrow
2009:765). This article echoes several of the findings by Helen Marrow (2009), who argues that competing regulatory and service missions within law enforcement bureaucracies limits their ability to
substantively respond to Latino residents’ interests.
Echoing the police bureaucracy’s dual roles of service and regulation (see Maynard-Moody and
Musheno 2003), and the duality between community policing and enforcement (Herbert 2001;
Willis, Mastrofski, and Kochel 2010), police interactions with Latino immigrants move between immigrant integration and immigrant exclusion. On the one hand, the El Protector Program’s wide
range of programming represents a genuine effort to make inroads with Latino immigrant communities. On the other hand, the department’s ambiguous instructions regarding identification and arrests
creates uncertain outcomes for unlicensed Latino immigrants: some officers used their discretion to
122
Armenta
warn drivers they could cite or cite drivers they could arrest, whereas others were empowered to be
unnecessarily punitive.
During my research I saw many instances where officers acted with considerable restraint, balancing their sense of justice with their responsibilities, to choose less than full enforcement of the law.
However, when evaluating the work of police and other bureaucrats, it is important not to overstate
the benevolence with which people are doing their jobs. That patrol officers have an inordinate
amount of discretion is not novel; selective enforcement is a routine feature of policing (Paoline III
2004; Schafer and Mastrofski 2005) and the work of all street-level bureaucrats (see Lipsky 1980).
Some officers speak with considerable compassion and understanding about the challenges facing
Latino immigrant residents, but stated attitudes often do not explain behavior (see Jerolmack and
Khan 2014). Officers cite unlicensed drivers because citations impose consequences, but are more efficient to execute than physical arrests. In an occupational culture that values productivity, state citations are an effective use of time. Insofar that police occasionally work to integrate Latino
communities, they do so because it is good practice rather than a burning desire to respond to the interests of immigrant communities.
To be sure, the El Protector Program appeals to officers’ commitment to public service, but it endures because it serves the interests of the department. The El Protector Program is an example of a
specialized program, whose goals and practices are not integrated into the department’s overall policing strategies (Herbert 2001; Willis et al. 2010). As such, it does not conform to the model of community policing, which stresses the importance of partnerships between the police and community to
solve community problems. While many MNPD practices are consistent with examples of bureaucratic
incorporation as outlined by previous research (Lewis and Ramakrishnan 2007; Marrow 2009), future
research should consider whether selectively accommodating immigrants truly addresses their interests.
Were the department truly interested in responding to the interests of Latino immigrants in
Nashville (per bureaucratic incorporation), the department could require officers to accept consular
identification cards as proof of identity, reign in officer discretion by creating unambiguous policies
regarding when to invoke state citation exceptions, and speak out publicly against the sheriff’s implementation of the 287(g) program. The department’s unwillingness to do any of these things is a political choice. Indeed, in other cities, police officials have changed policy out of concern that blurred
lines between local criminal justice institutions and immigration enforcement institutions erodes immigrants’ trust of the police (Ridgley 2008).
Officers, regardless of their stated personal preferences and orientation towards public service, inevitably punish Latino communities because these communities frequently find themselves outside
the law. By making unauthorized immigrants ineligible for driver’s licenses, legislators ensure that the
police enforce laws that criminalize Latino residents. By not establishing official policies and practices
regarding identification, police administrators choose to leave immigrants’ fate to the whim of individual officers. By choosing to issue state citations, officers impose monetary sanctions on an already
disadvantaged group, ensuring their future contact with criminal justice institutions (see Harris,
Evans, and Beckett 2010). And, when officers make arrests, they inevitably subject immigrants to possible removal because of the jail’s 287(g) program. Taken together, these policies and practices cultivate uncertainty in the same communities that police administrators have entreated to trust them, all
while allowing police to claim neutral enforcement of the law.
Local police form an integral part of the immigration enforcement apparatus. During the 287(g)
program’s first year of implementation in Davidson County, the overwhelming majority of the 3,000
people identified for removal were Mexican men arrested for driving without a valid license (DCSO
2009). By the program’s end in 2012, deputies identified over 10,000 undocumented immigrants for
removal. Some of those removed were, indeed, the serious offenders that immigration enforcement
programs purportedly target. Most, however, committed low-level misdemeanor driving offenses that
are virtually impossible to obey when one is ineligible for driving privileges in a city with limited public transportation. In a city with an estimated Latino population of between 40,000 to 110,000 people
Between Public Service and Social Control
123
(Winders 2013), the thousands of unauthorized Latino residents deported through 287(g) after misdemeanor arrests represents a devastating loss to families and neighborhoods. However, to the
police, who produce hundreds of thousands of vehicle stops a year, these arrests represented a fraction of officers’ total enforcement efforts.
This article provides a qualitative account of police practices in one new destination city, and as
such, it has several limitations. First, my observations and interviews likely reflect officers’ best behavior and most noble motivations, as such, this article considers how officers’ most ostensibly wellmeaning actions produce aggregate mechanisms of social control. Second, while I illuminate a set of
dilemmas for Latino immigrants and the police in Nashville, the unique tensions that these groups experience in relation to one another will vary across time and place. In light of conflicting laws and
policies across various levels of jurisdiction, and the inevitability of police contact, research should
continue to document the variation in police practices towards immigrants and its implications for local immigration enforcement (Coleman 2012; Lewis et al. 2012; Provine et al. 2012). Lastly, because
this work focuses on bureaucratic actors, it cannot adequately address the effects of criminalization,
police contact, and local immigration enforcement on Latino immigrant communities and their families; other work examines the range of consequences in this regard (Golash-Boza and HondagneuSotelo 2013; Menjı́var and Abrego 2012; Nguyen and Gill 2015; Stuesse and Coleman 2014).
Although the DCSO ended its participation in the 287(g) program in 2012, it continued to cooperate with federal immigration authorities through a federal program called Secure Communities. In
2015, the Priority Enforcement Program (PEP) replaced Secure Communities, and will purportedly
target the most serious criminal offenders in custody. Like Secure Communities, PEP will rely on biometric data to identify people for removal after arrest, preserving police involvement in the immigration enforcement apparatus.
Promising local developments suggests that relations between immigrants and the police can improve through a combination of more inclusive state laws and police policies. For example, across the
country, over 200 jurisdictions have stopped honoring immigration detainers after a series of court
rulings raised questions about their constitutionality (Medina 2014). These policy changes are highly
controversial, and the intense debate about the appropriate role of local police in immigration enforcement is far from resolved. As such, local police will continue to face irresolvable dilemmas as
they attempt to integrate the very communities they discipline, by design.
REFERENCES
Armenta, Amada. 2012. “From Sheriff’s Deputies to Immigration Officers: Screening Immigrant Status in a Tennessee
Jail.” Law & Policy 34(2):191–210.
Bosniak, Linda. 2006. The Citizen and the Alien: Dilemmas of Contemporary Membership. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Brown, Michael K. 1988. Working the Street: Police Discretion and the Dilemmas of Reform. New York: Russell Sage
Foundation.
Chauvin, Sébastien and Blanca Garcés-Mascareñas. 2012. “Beyond Informal Citizenship: The New Moral Economy of
Migrant Illegality.” International Political Sociology 6:241–59.
Chavez, Jorge M. and Doris Marie Provine. 2009. “Race and the Response of State Legislatures to Unauthorized
Immigrants.” The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 623(1):78–92.
Coleman, Mathew. 2012. “The ‘Local’ Migration State: The Site-Specific Devolution of Immigration Enforcement in
the U.S. South.” Law & Policy 34(2):159–90.
Coutin, Susan B. 2000. Legalizing Moves: Salvadoran Immigrants’ Struggle for U.S. Residency. Ann Arbor: University of
Michigan Press.
Culver, Leigh. 2004. “The Impact of New Immigration Patterns on the Provision of Police Services in Midwestern
Communities.” Journal of Criminal Justice 32(4):329–44.
Davidson County Sheriff’s Office (DCSO). 2009. “287(g) Two-Year Review.” Retrieved October 20, 2015 (http://
blackburn.house.gov/UploadedFiles/287g_Two_Year_Review.pdf).
Decker, Scott H., Paul G. Lewis, Doris Marie Provine, and Monica W. Varsanyi. 2009. “On the Frontier of Local Law
Enforcement: Local Police and Federal Immigration Law.” Pp. 261–77 in Immigration, Crime, and Justice, edited by
W. F. McDonald. Bingley, UK: Emerald/ JAI Press.
124
Armenta
Decker, Scott H., Paul G. Lewis, Monica W. Varsanyi, and Doris Marie Provine. 2008. “Immigration and Local
Policing: Results from a National Survey of Law Enforcement Executives Nature of the Sample Local Politics, Law
Enforcement, and Immigration.” Law Enforcement Executive Forum 12(2):25–30.
DeGenova, Nicholas P. 2002. “Migrant ‘Illegality’ and Deportability in Everyday Life.” Annual Review of Anthropology 31:419–47.
Donato, Katharine M. and Amada Armenta. 2011. “What We Know About Unauthorized Migration.” Annual Review of
Sociology 37(1):529–43.
Donato, Katharine M. and Leslie Rodriguez. 2014. “Police Arrests in a Time of Uncertainty: The Impact of 287(g) on
Arrests in a New Immigrant Gateway.” American Behavioral Scientist 58(13):1696–22.
Düvell, Franck. 2008. “Clandestine Migration in Europe.” Social Science Information 47(4):479–97.
Eagly, Ingrid V. 2013. “Criminal Justice for Noncitizens: An Analysis of Variation in Local Enforcement.” New York
University Law Review 88(4):1126–1223.
Echegaray, Chris. 2010. “Immigrants Jailed after Fishing Without a License.” The Tennessean, August 23, p. A1.
Ericsson, K. Anders and Herbert Simon. 1985. Protocol Analysis: Verbal Reports as Data. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Fielding, Nigel G. 2005. “Concepts and Theory in Community Policing.” The Howard Journal of Criminal Justice
44(5):460–72.
Gilboy, Janet A. 1991. “Deciding Who Gets In: Decisionmaking by Immigration Inspectors.” Law & Society Review1
25(3):571–600.
Glaser, Barney G. and Anselm L. Strauss. 1999. The Discovery of Grounded Theory: Strategies for Qualitative Research.
New York: Aldine Transaction.
Gleeson, Shannon and Roberto G. Gonzales. 2012. “When Do Papers Matter? An Institutional Analysis of
Undocumented Life in the United States.” International Migration 50(4):1–19.
Golash-Boza, Tanya and Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo. 2013. “Latino Immigrant Men and the Deportation Crisis: A
Gendered Racial Removal Program.” Latino Studies 11(3):271–92.
Goldring, Luin, Carolina Berinstein, and Judith K. Bernhard. 2009. “Institutionalizing Precarious Migratory Status in
Canada.” Citizenship Studies 13(3):239–65.
Gonzales, Roberto G. 2011. “Learning to Be Illegal: Undocumented Youth and Shifting Legal Contexts in the
Transition to Adulthood.” American Sociological Review 76(4):602–19.
Haas, Brian and Chris Echegaray. 2011. “Hispanics Now Account for 1 in 10 Residents in Metro Nashville.” The
Tennessean, March 17, p. A1.
Harmon, Dave. 2002. “Undocumented Immigrants in Jail: Who Gets Deported?” The Austin American-Statesman,
March 18. Retrieved October 20, 2015 (www.statesman.com/news/news/special-reports/undocumented-immi
grants-in-jail-who-gets-deporte-1/nRmHz/).
Harris, Alexes, Heather Evans, and Katherine Beckett. 2010. “Drawing Blood from Stones: Legal Debt and Social
Inequality in the Contemporary United States1.” American Journal of Sociology 115(6):1753–99.
Harrison, Jill L. and Sarah E. Lloyd. 2012. “Illegality at Work: Deportability and the Productive New Era of
Immigration Enforcement.” Antipode 44(2):365–85.
Herbert, Steve. 1998. “Police Subculture Reconsidered.” Criminology 36(2):343–70.
——. 2001. “Policing the Contemporary City: Fixing Broken Windows or Shoring Up Neo-Liberalism?” Theoretical
Criminology 5(4):445–66.
——. 2010. “From Spy to Okay Guy: Trust and Validity in Fieldwork with the Police.” Geographical Review 91(12):304–10.
Hollifeld, James F., Philip L. Martin, and Pia M. Orrenius. 2014. Controlling Immigration: A Global Perspective. Stanford,
CA: Stanford University Press.
Jerolmack, C. and S. Khan. 2014. “Talk Is Cheap Ethnography and the Attitudinal Fallacy.” Sociological Methods &
Research 42(2):178–209.
Jones-Correa, Michael. 2005. “The Bureaucratic Incorporation of Immigrants in Suburbia.” Presented at the
Immigration to the United States: New Sources and Destinations Conference, New York City, February 3–4.
——. 2008. “Immigrant Incorporation in Suburbia: The Role of Bureaucratic Norms in Education.” Pp. 308–40 in New
Faces in New Places, edited by Lisa M. Hanley, Blair A. Ruble, and Allison Garland. New York: Russell Sage
Foundation.
——. 2009. “Latinos in the Washington Metropolitan Area: Findings from the 2006 Latino National Survey.” Pp. 19–
32 in The Local Goes National: Challenges and Opportunities for Latino Immigrants in the Nation’s Capital, edited by
Kate Brick. Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.
Khashu, Anita, Robin Busch, and Zainab Latif. 2005. “Building Strong Police-Immigrant Community Relations:
Lessons from a New York City Project.” Retrieved October 20, 2015 (www.vera.org/sites/default/files/resources/
downloads/300_564.pdf).
Between Public Service and Social Control
125
Kubal, Agnieszka. 2013. “Conceptualizing Semi-Legality in Migration Research.” Law & Society Review 47(3):555–87.
Kusenbach, Margarethe. 2003. “Street Phenomenology: The Go-Along as Ethnographic Research Tool.” Ethnography
4(3):455–85.
Lakhani, Sarah M. and Stefan Timmermans. 2014. “Biopolitical Citizenship in the Immigration Adjudication Process.”
Social Problems 61(3):360–79.
Lakhani, Sarah Morando. 2014. “From Problems of Living to Problems of Law: The Legal Translation and
Documentation of Immigrant Abuse and Helpfulness.” Law & Social Inquiry 39(3):643–65.
Lewis, Paul G., Doris Marie Provine, Monica W. Varsanyi, and Scott H. Decker. 2012. “Why Do (Some) City Police
Departments Enforce Federal Immigration Law? Political, Demographic, and Organizational Influences on Local
Choices.” Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory 23(1):1–25.
Lewis, Peter G. and S. Karthick Ramakrishnan. 2007. “Police Practices in Immigrant-Destination Cities: Political
Control or Bureaucratic Professionalism?” Urban Affairs Review 42(6):874–900.
Lipsky, Michael. 1980. Street Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of the Individual in Public Services. New York City: Russell
Sage Foundation.
Lucio, Joanna D. 2013. “Public Administrators and Noncitizens.” Administration & Society. Retrieved March 6, 2014
(doi:10.1177/0095399713).
Manning, Peter K. 1989. “The Police Occupational Culture in Anglo-American Societies.” Pp. 472–75 in Encyclopedia
of Police Science, edited by William G. Bailey. Dallas, TX: Garland.
——. 2014. “Ethnographies of Policing.” Pp. 518–50 in The Oxford Handbook of Police and Policing, edited by Michael
D. Reisig and Robert J. Kane. New York: Oxford University Press.
Marrow, Helen B. 2009. “Immigrant Bureaucratic Incorporation: The Dual Roles of Professional Missions and
Government Policies.” American Sociological Review 74(5):756–76.
——. 2010. “Deserving to a Point: Undocumented Immigrants in San Francisco’s Universal Access Healthcare Model.”
Social Science & Medicine 74(6):846–54.
Maynard-Moody, Steven and Michael Musheno. 2003. Cops, Teachers, Counselors: Stories from the Front Lines of Public
Service. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Medina, Jennifer. 2014. “Fearing Lawsuits, Sheriffs Balk at U.S. Request to Hold Noncitizens for Extra Time.” New
York Times, July 5. Retrieved June 10, 2015 (www.nytimes.com/2014/07/06/us/politics/fearing-lawsuits-sheriffsbalk-at-us-request-to-detain-noncitizens-for-extra-time.html).
Menjı́var, Cecilia. 2006. “Liminal Legality: Salvadoran and Guatemalan Immigrants’ Lives in the United States.”
American Journal of Sociology 111(4):999–1037.
——. 2010. “Immigrant Art as Liminal Expression: The Case of Central Americans.” Pp. 176–96 in Art in the Lives of
Immigrant Communities in the United States, edited by Paul DiMaggio and Patricia Fernández-Kelly. New Brunswick,
NJ: Rutgers University Press.
Menjı́var, Cecilia and Cynthia Bejarano. 2004. “Latino Immigrants’ Perceptions of Crime and of Police Authorities:
A Case Study from the Phoenix Metropolitan Area.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 27(1):120–48.
Menjı́var, Cecilia and Leisy J. Abrego. 2012. “Legal Violence: Immigration Law and the Lives of Central American
Immigrants.” American Journal of Sociology 117(5):1380–1421.
Moskos, Peter. 2009. Cop in the Hood: My Year Policing Baltimore’s Eastern District. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press.
Newton, Lina and Brian E. Adams. 2009. “State Immigration Policies: Innovation, Cooperation or Conflict?” Publius:
The Journal of Federalism 39(3):408–31.
Nguyen, Mai Thi and Hannah Gill. 2015. “Interior Immigration Enforcement: The Impacts of Expanding Local Law
Enforcement Authority.” Urban Studies. Retrieved February 8, 2015 (doi: 10.1177/004209801).
O’Brien, Matt. 2011. “An Immigrant’s Path from Bicycle to Deportation.” Contra Costa Times, December 3. Retrieved
October 20, 2015 (www.contracostatimes.com/ci_19464451).
Paoline III, A Eugene. 2004. “Shedding Light on Police Culture: An Examination of Officers’ Occupational Attitudes.”
Police Quarterly 7(2):205–36.
Pedroza, Juan M. 2013. “Removal Roulette: Secure Communities and Immigration Enforcement in the United States
(2008–2012).” Pp. 45–68 in Outside Justice, edited by David C. Brotherton, Daniel L. Stageman, and Shirley P.
Leyro. New York: Springer.
Provine, Doris Marie, Monica W. Varsanyi, Paul G. Lewis, and Scott H. Decker. 2012. “Growing Tensions between
Civic Membership and Enforcement.” Pp. 42–60 in Punishing Immigrants: Policy, Politics, and Injustice, edited by
Charis Kubrin, Marjorie Zatz, and Ramiro Martinez. New York: New York University Press.
Ramakrishnan, S. Karthick and Tom Wong. 2010. “Partisanship, Not Spanish: Explaining Municipal Ordinances
Affecting Undocumented Immigrants.” Pp. 73–95 in Taking Local Control: Immigration Policy Activism in U.S. Cities
and States, edited by Monica W. Varsanyi. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
126
Armenta
Ridgley, Jennifer. 2008. “Cities of Refuge: Immigration Enforcement, Police, and the Insurgent Genealogies of
Citizenship in U.S. Sanctuary Cities.” Urban Geography 29(1):53–77.
Romero, Mary. 2006. “Racial Profiling and Immigration Law Enforcement: Rounding Up of Usual Suspects in the
Latino Community.” Critical Sociology 32(2):447–73.
Rosales, Rocio. 2013. “Survival, Economic Mobility and Community among Los Angeles Fruit Vendors.” Journal of
Ethnic and Migration Studies 39(5):697–717.
Rytter, Mikkel. 2012. “Semi-Legal Family Life: Pakistani Couples in the Borderlands of Denmark and Sweden.” Global
Networks 12(1):91–108.
Schafer, Joseph A. and Stephen D. Mastrofski. 2005. “Police Leniency in Traffic Enforcement Encounters: Exploratory
Findings from Observations and Interviews.”Journal of Criminal Justice33(3):225–38.
Scott, James C. 1998. Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. New
Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Seif, Hinda. 2010. “Tired of Illegals: Immigrant Driver’s Licenses, Constituent Letters, and Shifting Restrictionist
Discourse in California.” Pp. 1–35 in Taking Local Control: Immigration Policy Activisism in U.S. Cities and States,
edited by M Varsanyi. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press.
Skogan, Wesley G. 2004. Community Policing: Can It Work? Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.
——. 2006. “The Promise of Community Policing.” Pp. 27–43 in Police Innovation: Contrasting Perspectives, edited by
D. Weisburd and A. Braga. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Skolnick, Jerome H. and David H. Bayley. 1986. The New Blue Line: Police Innovation in Six American Cities. New York:
Free Press.
Stuesse, Angela and Mathew Coleman. 2014. “Automobility, Immobility, Altermobility: Surviving and Resisting the
Intensification of Immigrant Policing.” City & Society 26(1):51–72.
Stumpf, Juliet P. 2006. “The Crimmigration Crisis: Immigrants, Crime, & Sovereign Power.” American University Law
Review 56(2):367–419.
Taylor, Melanie A., Scott H. Decker, Doris Marie Provine, Paul G. Lewis, and Monica W. Varsanyi. 2014. “Illegal
Immigration and Local Policing.” Pp. 409–29 in The Oxford Handbook of Police and Policing, edited by Michael D.
Reisig and Robert J. Kane. New York: Oxford University Press.
Terrill, William, Eugene A. Paoline III, and Peter K. Manning. 2003. “Police Culture and Coercion.” Criminology
41(4):1003–34.
Torpey, John. 2000. The Invention of the Passport, Surveillance, Citizenship and the State. New York: Cambridge
University Press.
Van Maanen, John. 1978. “The Asshole.” Pp. 307–28 in Policing: A View from the Street, edited by Peter K. Manning
and John Van Maanen. Santa Monica, CA: Goodyear.
Varsanyi, Monica W. 2006. “Interrogating ‘Urban Citizenship’ vis-à-vis Undocumented Migration.” Citizenship Studies
10(2):224–44.
——. 2007. “Documenting Undocumented Migrants: The Matrı́culas Consulares as Neoliberal Local Membership.”
Geopolitics 12:299–319.
——. 2008. “Immigration Policing Through the Backdoor: City Ordinances, the ‘Right to the City,’ and the Exclusion
of Undocumented Day Laborers.” Urban Geography 29:29–52.
——. ed. 2010. Taking Local Control: Immigration Policy Activism in U.S. Cities and States. Stanford, CA: Stanford
University Press.
Varsanyi, Monica W., Paul G. Lewis, Doris Marie Provine, and Scott Decker. 2012. “Immigration Federalism: What
Policy Prevails?” Law & Policy 34(2):138–58.
Weitzer, Ronald and Steven A. Tuch. 2004. “Race and Perceptions of Police Misconduct.” Social Problems 51(3):305–
25.
Willis, James J., Stephen D. Mastrofski, and Tammy Rinehart Kochel. 2010. “The Co-Implementation of Compstat and
Community Policing.” Journal of Criminal Justice 38(5):969–80.
Wilson, James Q. 1968. Varieties of Police Behavior. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Winders, Jamie. 2012. “Seeing Immigrants: Institutional Visibility and Immigrant Incorporation in New Immigrant
Destinations.” The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 641(1):58–78.
——. 2013. Nashville in the New Millennium: Immigrant Settlement, Urban Transformation, and Social Belonging. New
York: Russell Sage Foundation.
Wishnie, Michael. 2004. “State and Local Police Enforcement of Immigration Laws.” University of Pennsylvania Journal
of Constitutional Law 4:1084–115.
Worden, Robert E. 1989. “Situational and Attitudinal Explanations of Police Behavior: A Theoretical Reappraisal and
Empirical Assessment.” Law & Society Review 23(4):667–711.