Book Review: Law enforcement and the INS: A participant observation study of control agents

• Date: 01 December 2020
• Author: Ben Brown
• Published date: 01 December 2020
• DOI: 10.1177/1057567717749281
• Subject Matter: Book Reviews

in a way that does not deny one’s participation in the field. Armenta’s data are rich and used quite

masterfully throughout the book. As the reader, you get a balance between direct quotes and

analysis. The different levels of data Armenta utilize set this book apart by ensuring that the reader

can understand how policies work across time and space, as well as institutions. Overall, the book’s

purpose was achieved as Armenta showed how the convergence of local politics, state laws, and

institutional politics through the 287(g) program criminalizes Latino immigrants in Nashville. This

book is a great contribution to the increasingly rich literature on immigration and crime, as well as

sociology, criminal justice, political science, and race and ethnic studies.

ORCID iD

Yalidy Matos https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3926-7015

Weissinger, G. (2017).

Law enforcement and the INS: A participant observation study of control agents (3rd ed.). Lanham, MD:

Hamilton Books. X, 218 pp. $32.99 (paperback)/$30.99 (eBook), ISBN 978-0-7618-6901-6 (pbk.: alk. paper);

ISBN 978-0-7618-6902-3 (electronic).

Reviewed by: Ben Brown, The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, Brownsville, TX, USA

DOI: 10.1177/1057567717749281

George Weissinger is a former criminal investigator for the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization

Service (INS) and now teaches criminal justice at Queensborough Community College, City Uni-

versity of New York. His book, Law Enforcement and the INS: A Participant Observation Study of

Control Agents (Third Edition), is based, in large part, on the years he spent working with the INS.

The title of his book is somewhat misleading as the book is not a “participant observation” study, at

least not by any conventional definition of the term. In fact, Weissinger’s book defies simple

description. It consists of a hodgepodge collection of quantitative and qualitative information

pertinent to an array of issues such as immigration trends in the United States, efforts to manage

immigration to the United States, the dissolution of the INS and formation of new immigration

control agencies (U.S. Customs and Border Protection, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement,

and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services), law enforcement organization and management,

and discontent among officials who investigate violations of federal immigration law.

In the first few chapters, Weissinger describes the challenges associated with immigration control

and formulates a rudimentary sociological perspective on the matter, drawing on classic symbolic

interactionists such as Howard Becker, Erving Goffman, and Edwin Lemert. According to

Weissinger, his “book attempts to describe the normative structure surrounding the immigration

problem, and the processes that create it” (p. 3). He addresses immigration law, the politics sur-

rounding immigration control, and some basic organizational issues such as discretion, role strain,

and morale. After he outlines his theoretical preferences, Weissinger briefly describes his metho-

dology and then delves into the plight of investigative agents tasked with the enforcement of

immigration law.

Contrary to the most fundamental goal of a participant observation study—namely, unbiased

description and analysis of a culture, group, organization, neighborhood, and so on—it is pretty clear

Weissinger believes that federal immigration agencies have become little more than ineffective and

disorganized bureaucracies, which have no substantive goal other than the production of dubious

statistics on deportations. The fifth, sixth, and seventh chapters contain a litany of complaints based

Book Reviews 463