Felicia Arriaga's "Behind Crimmigration"

Felicia Arriaga is an Assistant Professor role at Baruch College in the Marxe School of Public and International Affairs. Her research interests are in the areas of race and ethnicity, immigration, and crimmigration (criminalization of immigration policy and procedure) aka La Polimigra.

Arriaga applied the “Page 99 Test” to her new book, Behind Crimmigration: ICE, Law Enforcement, and Resistance in America, and reported the following:

Page 99 is a great introduction to what Behind Crimmigration is all about, but readers may not understand the full complexity of the term collective amnesia that I’ve included without reading the whole chapter. Page 99 is the concluding page of Chapter 4 titled, "Collective Amnesia: White Innocence and Ignorance in the Devolution of Immigration Enforcement."

As previously discussed, at first, community members noted the blatant policing of their communities in the initial years of the program, but once that overt form of policing ended, more covert practices were not interrogated, contributing to the normalization of the program. The lack of transparency regarding the number of deportations and practices within the jail also bolstered this normalization. Many community members (both pro-and anti-immigrant) who may have involved themselves in the adoption process did not remain involved in accountability processes. In communities where a formal community input process was undertaken, pro-immigrant forces became frustrated with the silencing of their voices, and some settled for limited versions of immigration enforcement. By no means did these community members remove themselves entirely from related efforts, but many saw that traditional routes (appeals to city and county governments) to combat the program were exhausted. On the other hand, overtly anti-immigrant segments of these communities, albeit not entirely pleased by the level of immigration enforcement practices, were more aligned with the desires of law enforcement to enter into such agreements.

Collective amnesia of the impetus of the program (both in process and rhetoric) ensured these practices became invisible. Changes in 2015, requiring sheriff departments to host 287(g) steering committee meetings to discuss the mission and results of the program, are making the program more visible. In the initial adoption of the programs, county commissioners signed off on the MOA (Memorandum of Agreement) between the sheriff’s departments and ICE. In subsequent renewal periods, only the sheriff’s department signed off on the agreement, neutralizing the need and responsibility of county commissioners to be involved in the process. In recent 287(g) meetings, sheriff department representatives ignore the initial impetus for the program and deflect any anti-immigrant sentiments that previously existed by suggesting, “that was a different administration,” although they are unwilling to describe any adjustments in the implementation of the program. Financial benefits of the program were one of the most visible aspects of the program, yet also part of this collective amnesia, even when elected officials and law enforcement leadership were certainly aware of this.

While the book is about North Carolina, page 99 also reflects a process that I’ve seen happen in other localities across the country (without mentioning NC in this excerpt), so the summarized process is something I’m interested in exploring further in my research. While readers may be able to draw their own conclusions about the term collective amnesia, earlier in this chapter I describe this term as it was developed by Charles W. Mills in The Racial Contract. While conducting research for this book, I was surprised to hear justifications and rhetorical maneuvers to distance from what I call blatantly racist beginnings of these immigration enforcement partnerships. And I was even more surprised that people were surprised to know that the partnerships still existed—a phenomenon I call the normalization of the programs. In looking for relevant literature to help me process this, I found The Racial Contract to be useful in explaining why this was the case. In that book, Charles W. Mills writes that collective amnesia, as it pertains to race, allows for “conflicting judgements about what is important in the past and what is unimportant” and as the quote shown below states, “so applying this to race, there will obviously be an intimate relationship between white identity, white memory, and white amnesia, especially about nonwhite victims.”

This idea of memory making and understanding the overall narrative of immigration enforcement was not the initial focus of this book but has become central to future projects, especially because the “official” record and narrative often demonizes immigrant communities without including their voices. I wanted to pinpoint this in the book to also encourage white people who might read the book to consider how their non-involvement (either never being involved or some involvement that has stopped) contributes to the continuation and proliferation of immigration enforcement practices.

On a related note, what’s also missing from this page is an introduction (which briefly comes on the next page) to the resistance aspect of the book. The following chapter is called "Melting ICE," which dives into the places across the state where community members pushed back against the normalization of immigration enforcement partnerships.

Visit Felicia Arriaga's website.

--Marshal Zeringue