Latinxs in La Migra: Why They Join and Why It Matters

• Date: 01 September 2021
• Published date: 01 September 2021
• DOI: 10.1177/1065912920933674
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/1065912920933674

Political Research Quarterly

2021, Vol. 74(3) 688 –702

© 2020 University of Utah

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DOI: 10.1177/1065912920933674

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Article

Introduction

Today more than any other period in history, the front-

lines of federal immigration law enforcement agencies

reflect the demographics of the populations they police.

Across the agencies charged, Latinxs are over- represented

relative to their proportion of both the overall federal

workforce (8.6%) and general population (18.1%), with

Immigration and Customs Enforcement–Enforcement

and Removal Operations (ICE-ERO) at nearly 30 percent

Latinx, and Border Patrol nearly 50 percent (U.S. Office

of Personnel Management 2018). Once an exclusively

white enterprise—viewed for much of the twentieth cen-

tury as a foreign, occupying force in Latinx communities,

and referred to pejoratively as “La Migra” (Hernández

2010)—the last forty-five years have witnessed the emer-

gence of a much different immigration law enforcement

workforce: a new “La(tinx) Migra.”

Perhaps most surprising about this demographic shift

is that it has taken place in the context it has: amidst a

historically antagonistic relationship between immigra-

tion agencies and Latinx communities—a relationship

marred by violence and intimidation in which such agen-

cies have never solely policed migration, but indiscrimi-

nately blanketed Latinx communities in a shroud of

surveillance, policing, and battlefield technology (Dunn

1996; Sampaio 2015). Since the inception of the Border

Patrol, Latinx immigrants, residents, and citizens alike

have been targets of an organized state response to an

ostensible problem: the territorial presence of non-white

peoples in the United States (Hernández 2010).

Throughout the 1930s and 1950s, millions of Latinxs,

documented and otherwise, were rounded up in neighbor-

hood and worksite raids and expelled from the country

without due process (Calavita 2010; Nevins 2010).

These kinds of stories, however, are not merely relics

of early-twentieth century biases; contemporary exam-

ples of abusive operations by ICE and Border Patrol

abound in the form of continued nationwide-sweeps

(Constable 2016), neighborhood patrols (Minnis 2016),

and wide-reaching racial profiling across the borderlands

(Goldsmith et al. 2009). So aggressive have enforcement

actions within Latinx communities continued to be,

scholars have characterized them as an ongoing racial

project, designed to tie Latinx identity to criminality, and

933674PRQXXX10.1177/1065912920933674Political Research QuarterlyCortez

research-article2020

1University of Notre Dame, IN, USA

Corresponding Author:

David Cortez, Department of Political Science, University of Notre

Dame, 2060 Jenkins Nanovic Halls, Notre Dame, IN 46556, USA.

Email: dcortez@nd.edu

Latinxs in La Migra: Why They Join and

Why It Matters

David Cortez1

Abstract

Once an exclusively white enterprise, the last forty-five years have witnessed the emergence of a disproportionately

Latinx immigration law enforcement workforce. This article addresses the question of why Latinxs elect to work for

agencies that have systematically targeted the ethnic communities to which they belong. Where existing scholarship

has often implied Latinxs may self-select into immigration law enforcement due to a lack of identification with the

immigrant-experience, a dissociation with ethnic identity, and generally restrictionist immigration attitudes, this article

finds little empirical evidence to support such an assumption. Analysis of interviews with sixty-one Latinx Immigration

and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents across Arizona, California, and Texas reveals, instead, Latinxs elect to work

in immigration law enforcement in service of economic self-interest and survival, with “money,” “a good job,” and

“benefits” cited as the primary motivation(s) behind applying for and accepting a job in immigration. This pattern holds

irrespective of individual agents’ levels of identification with the immigrant-experience and particular attitudes toward

immigration, and suggests a diversity in the demographics of immigration law enforcement agencies that extends

beyond mere race and ethnicity, to include a diversity of perspective and potential for empathy.

Keywords

race/ethnicity, Latinx, identity, immigration, inequality