Alvarez: What’s an example of the effect that federal immigration policies have on state and local law enforcement?
Su: The collapse of Secure Communities would be a good way of looking at it. And this wasn’t dramatic involvement [of non-federal and federal law enforcement]; these weren’t like the Bush administration raids [some of which, controversially, took place at people’s workplaces]. These were supposed to be behind-the-scenes, in the booking process and the detention process. …
At first, I think, it was considered to be very innocuous, very in-the-background. I think what ended up happening is, as you had more and more accounts that during any encounter with police departments—whether as a victim, as a witness, or maybe as a perpetrator or a suspect—they would screen you automatically for immigration status, you started having a lot of local police departments, local police chiefs express concerns that that was making it more difficult for them to reach out to the communities that they want to help and protect.
Just as federal immigration enforcement now is reliant on local police departments, local police departments have also realized that they are also incredibly reliant on the communities themselves that help them with policing efforts. If you don’t have the cooperation of the community, that itself becomes a problem. You can’t entirely do it from a top-down enforcement perspective. I think that’s when you started seeing a lot of people—and a lot of communities—rebel against the development of Secure Communities. And eventually President Obama scrapped it, even though it was originally imagined as something that was much less visible, and much less intrusive than what previous administrations had done. But as a result, it made local communities much more attuned to the kind of relationships they have with the federal government.
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