The Post–Civil Rights Borderland

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrisia Macías-Rojas
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Homeland Security ◽  
Mass Incarceration ◽  
Immigration Enforcement ◽  
Law And Order ◽  
Department Of Homeland Security ◽  
Immigrant Rights ◽  
Economic Context ◽  
Immigration Politics ◽  
Post Civil Rights

Arizona has played a historic role in national “law and order” policymaking and immigration politics. Today it has some of the highest levels of criminal arrest, prosecution, and sentencing for immigration offenses. Yet it is also home to one of the most dynamic border- and immigrant-rights movements in the country. This chapter explores linkages among civil rights, mass incarceration, and immigration enforcement to better explain the local political and economic context in which the Department of Homeland Security has diffused federal criminal enforcement priorities and institutionalized “prosecutorial” approaches to migration that aggressively punish while safeguarding “victims’ rights.”

Secondary ensnarement: Surveillance systems in the service of punitive immigration enforcement

2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 461-482
Author(s):  
Ana Muñiz
Keyword(s):  
Homeland Security ◽  
Information Collection ◽  
Surveillance Systems ◽  
Immigration Enforcement ◽  
Scholarly Work ◽  
Department Of Homeland Security ◽  
The Us ◽  
Us Government ◽  
Secondary Information ◽  
Mass Surveillance

Relatively little scholarly work explores US interior immigration enforcement through a surveillance lens. This article asks how US immigration authorities have designed and deployed surveillance systems to facilitate enforcement practices, specifically regarding the construction of immigrant subjects and interior apprehension and deportation. Drawing upon a qualitative analysis of 291 Department of Homeland Security documents authored between 1995 and 2017, this paper examines the evolution of a primary immigration enforcement information system currently called the Enforcement Integrated Database. The analysis reveals that over the course of 33 years, the US Government has transformed Enforcement Integrated Database from a case management system into a mass surveillance system. Specifically, I argue that immigration authorities have deployed secondary information collection in the Enforcement Integrated Database to expand (1) the volume of people under surveillance, called ensnarement targets and (2) the opportunities to categorize people as criminal or dangerous, called ensnarement opportunities. As a result, Department of Homeland Security amplifies punitive enforcement against broader populations of noncitizens and potentially, citizens as well.

Beds and Biometrics

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrisia Macías-Rojas
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Prison Population ◽  
The United States ◽  
Law And Order ◽  
United States Today ◽  
Prison Overcrowding ◽  
Immigrant Detention ◽  
Post Civil Rights ◽  
The U.S

Prominent Arizona conservatives and, some would argue, liberal reformers helped spearhead law and order policies that exploded the U.S. prison population and created a crisis of prison overcrowding. This chapter argues that the scramble for prison beds was a major force behind the Criminal Alien Program (CAP), which Congress pushed as a way to purge noncitizens from jails and prisons in order to free up prison beds. CAP gave primacy to criminal enforcement targets and unleashed an onslaught of measures that restructured immigrant detention and deportation, spawned similar programs like “absconder” initiatives, “fugitive” operations, Security Communities, and immigrant prosecution programs like Operation Streamline—in other words, many of the punitive policies we associate with the criminalization of migration in the United States today. However, punitive policies are not necessarily a “backlash” against rights and protections that reformers fought for for over a century. Rather, they operate within post–civil rights “antidiscrimination” constitutional frameworks in ways that recognize rights for certain “victims,” while aggressively punishing and banishing those branded as criminal.

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