Interior Enforcement and the Racial Construction of the Border

Guest post by Annie Lai, Assistant Clinical Professor, University of California, Irvine School of Law and co-counsel for plaintiffs in Ortega Melendres v. Arpaio. This post is the fourth instalment of the Border Criminologies Themed Week on Race and Border Control organised by Prof Yolanda Vázquez.

In recent years, Maricopa County, Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio and his agency have become a cautionary tale for those who support greater involvement by state and local officials in the enforcement of United States immigration laws. Once boasting the most expansive 287(g) agreement with the federal government to cross-certify local officers to make immigration arrests, today the embattled agency is a symbol of what can go wrong.

In May 2013, in a case called Ortega Melendres v. Arpaio, the agency was found by a federal judge to have engaged in unlawful and systematic racial discrimination against Latinos in its immigration sweeps and other traffic patrols. In his zeal to appease voters who didn’t like the ‘dark-skin

Deputies adopted this training in their day-to-day patrol activities and it was Latino residents well into the interior of the country who would bear the brunt of this expansion of border exceptionalism. Predictably, the training had application long after the agency’s 287(g) field authority expired in November 2009. The Sheriff resisted the notion that loss of such authority meant that he could no longer enforce immigration laws. Numerous other jurisdictions with 287(g) agreements would have been affected as well, their officers trained to racially profile.

It’d be easier to say that the 287(g) training was the problem. But while the 287(g) training played a role, from the moment the US-Mexico border was introduced to the American consciousness, race had been part of the story. Beyond its physical existence, the border held significance as a racial boundary. As Mae Ngai describes, during this period the Mexican ‘illegal alien’ was something of a specter, ‘both fulfilling and fueling nativist discourse.’ When border control methods moved into the interior, then, it’s not surprising that calls for racial exclusion would follow. Racial difference becomes a convenient, though harmful, marker for outsider status.

In December 2014, the Department of Justice released new guidelines on the use of race and other characteristics in federal law enforcement activities. There had been hope that the Administration would close the loopholes allowing federal agents to profile at or near the border. But that did not come to pass. So long as the border exception remains, it gives other agencies and even private actors a license to profile. Racial minorities will continue to experience discrimination in communities across the country.

Themed Week on Race and Border Control:

• Monday, 6 April: Race and Border Control: Is There a Relationship? (Y. Vázquez)
• Tuesday, 7 April: US Immigration Laws and the Making of Model Minorities and Illegal Aliens (M. Hsu)
• Wednesday, 8 April: Border Enforcement as Political Theater (D. Massey)
• Thursday, 9 April: Interior Enforcement and the Racial Construction of the Border (A. Lai)
• Monday, 13 April: The Racism and Immorality of the Operation Gatekeeper Death Trap (B.O. Hing)
• Tuesday, 14 April: ‘Race’ to Borders or Why Brown Death Matters (G. Rosas)
• Wednesday, 15 April: When Doesn’t Racial Profiling Count as Racial Profiling? (P. Kretsedemas)

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How to cite this blog post (Harvard style):

Lai, A. (2015) Interior Enforcement and the Racial Construction of the Border. Available at: http://bordercriminologies.law.ox.ac.uk/interior-enforcement/ (Accessed [date]).