Book Review: Protect, serve, and deport: The rise of policing as immigration enforcement

• Published date: 01 December 2020
• Date: 01 December 2020
• Author: Yalidy Matos
• DOI: 10.1177/1057567718821412
• Subject Matter: Book Reviews

the immigrants work). As the authors suggest, however, immigrants may be welcomed as workers

and consumers, but they are not accepted as full members of the community.

The authors conclude the book with a number of general observations: (1) local immigration

enforcement is a recent phenomenon; (2) the varied responses to immigration enforcement

result from the fact that federal, state, and local governments all answer to different constitu-

encies whose political views may be at odds; and (3) the patchwork has been increasing and

will not likely end soon.

Overall, Policing Immigrants explores a topic that has been understudied—immigration enforce-

ment at the local level. Although faulty programs such as the 287(g) program and Operation Secure

Communities were terminated by 2014, a new initiative—the Priority Enforcement Program (which

aims to target convicted criminals)—has replaced them. As evidenced in this study, when there is a

lack of clear directives across local, state, and federal agencies, police officers rely on their discre-

tion to enforce laws which may lead to racial profiling and lack of trust among immigrants.

Future research should continue to study the key factors related to local immigration enforcement

highlighted in this study. Future research should also address one of the biggest limitations of this

book which is that most of the data analyzed are the perceptions of key community members such as

police chiefs’ perceptions of how their officers would handle certain situations involving immi-

grants. Future research should also expand on the case-study component by including cities with

immigrant populations that are not predominately Latino.

Armenta, A. (2017).

Protect, serve, and deport: The rise of policing as immigration enforcement. Oakland: University of California Press.

197 pp. $34.95, ISBN 978-0-5202-9630-5.

Reviewed by: Yalidy Matos , Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, USA

DOI: 10.1177/1057567718821412

This book focuses on the implementation of the 287(g) program in Nashville, TN. It explains how

the “convergence of local politics, state laws, institutional politics, and law enforcement practices”

criminalizes unauthorized immigrants and deposits them “into an expanding federal deportation

system” (p. 4). The book asks: What are the law enforcement politics and practices concerning

suspected unauthorized immigrants? How do bureaucratic priorities and local politics influence law

enforcement agencies? How do officers understand and respond to (suspected) unauthorized immi-

grants’ mundane legal infractions? The author examines these questions by using grounded

ethnographic observations at various community events in Nashville, as well as 120 hours of police

ride-alongs in Nashville’s South Precinct, field interviews with police officers, and 47 in-depth

interviews with different members of the community. Ultimately, Armenta argues that in order to

understand contemporary immigration enforcement, an examination of the laws that affect police

practices on the ground is crucial.

Chapter 1, “Who Polices Immigration?,” briefly contextuali zes immigration federalism. She

shows that immigration control efforts span over the nation’s history and reflect deliberate choices

by the federal government to use state and local agencies to their advantage. The argument of the

chapter is twofold. First, the chapter argues through an historical context that federal–state–local

partnerships span a longer period of time. Second, it argues that immigration control efforts “convey

powerful messages about race and national belonging” (p. 16).

Book Reviews 461