"Local" Migration State: The Site-Specific Devolution of Immigration Enforcement in the U.S. South

• NCJ Number: 238241
• Journal: Law & Policy Volume: 34 Issue: 2 Dated: April 2012 Pages: 159-190
• Author(s): Mathew Coleman
• Date Published: April 2012
• Length: 32 pages
• Publication Format: Article
• Publication Type: Legislation/Policy Analysis
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

This article examines the implementation of 287(g) authority and Secure Communities.

Abstract

This article examines the implementation of 287(g) authority and Secure Communities by several law enforcement agencies in Wake County and Durham County, NC. The author argues that despite being federally supervised programs, 287(g) and Secure Communities take shape within specific political, legal, policing, and biographic contexts, and, as such, take on a site-specific form. The author concludes that although site specificity is a characteristic of devolved immigration enforcement in the U.S. context, devolution also predictably relocates interior immigration enforcement to immigrant populations' spaces of social reproduction. Accordingly, programs like 287(g) and Secure Communities work at a suprasite level to amplify immigrant populations' everyday insecurities. (Published Abstract)