surveillance without protection: policing undocumented migrant workers in an american suburb

© The Author 2015. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies (ISTD). All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: [email protected]

SURVEILLANCE WITHOUT PROTECTION: POLICING UNDOCUMENTED MIGRANT WORKERS IN AN

AMERICAN SUBURB

H. Sung*, S. Delgado, D. Peña and A. Paladino

Policing anonymous and fearful undocumented migrant workers (UMWs) with equity, integrity and accountability is one of the toughest law enforcement challenges in the United States. The importance of the issue notwithstanding, police–UMW interactions remain a ‘black box’ in police research. We examined the political economy of Palisades Park, New Jersey, and interviewed 160 UMWs from the same town. Findings indicate that UMWs suffered from a high level of crime vic-timization but were extremely unlikely to report their victimizations. Yet they were eager to contact the police to seek information and assistance in non-legal contexts. Police closely monitored UMWs through frequent encounters without provoking widespread resentment. Contradictions in both national immigration control and local politics are offered to interpret police–migrant relations.

Key words: policing, undocumented immigrants, day labourers, migrant workers, victimization

Introduction

Policing undocumented immigrants with equity, integrity and accountability is becom-ing one of the toughest law enforcement challenges in the United States (Varsanyi 2008: 29–33; Hoffmaster et al. 2010: viii). Socioeconomically, undocumented immi-grants increase the ethnic heterogeneity, cultural diversity and economic inequality of local communities, which in turn often intensifies the normative pluralism within the citizenry of the host society (Aptekar 2014: 348–54). Powerful processes underlying the politics of immigration often force local law enforcement to choose between conflict-ing sets of ethical values and competing collections of tactical options, with the inevita-ble consequence of pleasing certain segments of the population and upsetting others at the same time (Cave 2014: 11–4).

Police actions and inactions towards the undocumented are always questioned and constantly contested in the larger context of the national debate on immigration reform. Amidst these rancorous arguments, the voices of the undocumented have been absent and their experiences of the police remain largely unknown because of their low visibility and the unwillingness to be exposed of the undocumented population (Lahman et al. 2011). This exploratory study sought to examine the convergence of global economic forces and local politics on the policing of undocumented migrant workers (UMWs) in Palisades Park, New York. Directly derived from the perceptions and experiences of undocumented migrants, findings from this descriptive study can

*H. Sung, Department of Criminal Justice, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, 524 West 59th Street, New York, NY 10019, USA; [email protected]; S. Delgado, Research and Evaluation Center, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, 524 West 59th Street, Suite BMW605, New York, NY 10019, USA; D. Peña, The Spence School, 22 East 91st Street, New York, NY 10128, USA; A. Paladino, The Graduate Center, The City University of New York, 524 West 59th Street, New York, NY 10019, USA.

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contribute to a more rational and evidence-based dialogue on good policing in a soci-ety with contested meanings of citizenship.

The Illegality of Migrant Labour and Its Discontents

The accelerating process of globalization has long outpaced the ability of the US federal government to devise comprehensive, effective and politically palatable responses to the continuous inflows of undocumented immigrants. As the political construction of illegal-ity consigns these immigrants to the peripheries of the post-industrial economy, racial ‘otherness’ and perceived threats to the ‘documented’ are mutually constituted in these precarious and vulnerable non-citizens who continuously struggle against external perse-cution such as economic exploitation, criminal victimization and enforcement of immigra-tion laws as well as internal implosion such as alcohol abuse, homelessness or even death.

The failure of the US government to develop a comprehensive national solution to the problem of undocumented immigrants prompted state and local governments to act uni-laterally in passing legislation to curb immigration by penalizing businesses who employ immigrants (Varsanyi 2008: 33–8; Gomberg-Munoz and Nussbaum-Barberena 2011: 66–75), prohibiting undocumented immigrants’ access to public benefits and services (Kullgren 2003: 1630–3; Nandi et al. 2008: 2014–9) and mobilizing local police resources for the enforcement of federal immigration laws (Varsanyi 2008: 30–3; Khashu 2009: 2–5; Varsanyi 2011: 299–302). These measures generated so much fear and uncertainty that large numbers of undocumented immigrants are forced into an existence outside the protection of the law. They are the forsaken ‘out-laws’ in contemporary America.

There are 11.7 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States rep-resenting about 30 per cent of the foreign-born population and making up 4 per cent of the entire resident population (Passel et al. 2014: 4–9). Among them, we find hun-dreds of thousands of UMWs from Latin America who are low-wage labourers per-forming manual labour in the agriculture, construction and retail sectors without valid employer-sponsored visas (Valenzuela, Jr., et al. 2006: 4–6). Most of the UMWs do not seek permanent residency and plan to stay for only five to ten years in the United States; while their wages allow them to send remittances home to provide enough money to cover the basic necessities of their families, they are not high enough to incentivize families to cross the borders and settle in for a better life (Sung et al. 2013: 257–9).

Extreme vulnerability and isolation render UMWs particularly susceptible to violent victimization (Bucher et al. 2010: 167–8; Immigrants’ Rights/International Human Rights Clinic [IRIHRC] 2011: 8; Cepeda et al. 2012: 207–29), economic exploitation (Norcia and Perez, Jr., 2010: 10–2; IRIHRC 2011: 7; Sung et al. 2013: 259–63) and, prob-ably, police mistreatment (Attanasio 2015). Much has been done in the way of examin-ing relationships to the police within various immigrant communities (e.g. Lewis and Ramakrishnan 2007; Chu and Song 2015; Sun and Wu 2015); however, the patterns of police–UMW interactions remain a ‘black box’ in police research.

Policing undocumented migrant labour in Palisades Park, New Jersey

Palisades Park is a small borough with an area of about one square mile located three miles west of New York City across the Hudson River. Founded as a tranquil blue-collar

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town dominated by Italian, Irish and German Americans in 1899, it remained over-whelmingly white, with inexpensive houses, family retail businesses and small profes-sional offices until the 1980s (Pérez-Peña 2010: 2). Attracted by the town’s safety, good schools, affordable residences and proximity to Manhattan, an uninterrupted influx of Hispanics from neighbouring townships and Asian immigrants from NYC began in the late 1980s. By 2010, it has become a crowded commuter town of 20,000 residents; most working residents commute out to earn their livelihood in the vibrant service indus-tries of Manhattan. Asians have become the majority (59 per cent), while Hispanics accounted for 18 per cent of the population (US Census Bureau 2012).

The newcomers have made Palisades Park more prosperous with their labour, capi-tal, children and consumer demands (Tavernise 2012: 21). Yet, for white residents, the place became alien, and properties more inaccessible (National Public Radio 2007; Pérez-Peña 2010: 32). While the municipal government is still under their control, they have lost their grip on the commerce of the town. Palisades Park has not experienced the type of fierce confrontations that often go with ethnic turnovers, but neither have its changes been painless, as class and ethnic clashes have been of different forms and less intensity. For example, some ordinances prohibiting the conversion of older houses into extra apartments were passed to slow down the inflow of working-class Hispanic families in the 1980s and others denied Korean restaurants and bars to stay open around the clock in the 1990s (Malincolico 1985; Pérez-Peña 2010: 32).

Although police officers and community residents co-produce thousands of face-to-face encounters that shape their relations, the reality of social inequalities imposes severe constraints on the direction and possibilities of these interactions (Sung 2002: 133–45; Smith and Holmes 2014: 96–8). The sight of impoverished foreign men had aroused fear and resentment in the population: Store owners complained that migrant labourers blocked their doorways and intimidated customers and residents protested that migrant labourers often littered and relieved themselves on their property (Llorente 1998a: 1). Under growing pressure, local police began enforcing loitering law and issuing traffic tickets to contractors, making it more difficult for workers and contractors to connect. The town also quickly passed an ordinance limiting the number of people who could occupy a room in an apartment or boarding house. Yet none of these tactics was able to reverse the powerful economic demand for unskilled labour in the construction sector. As the role of the police shifted from an emphasis on public safety issues to immigration control, the perception that immigrants had of police presence changed from protec-tion and service to harassment and intimidation (Khashu 2009: 28–9). ‘Sometimes the police go around and stare you down and make you feel bad because you know they’re making you feel little or small,’’ said a 20-year-old Guatemalan who lived in Palisades Park to a reporter from The New York Times (James 2003: 1).

Police tend to behave more proactively, legalistically and coercively toward social or ethnic groups perceived as suspicious and dreadful by the dominant majority (Sung 2002: 69–96; Matsueda and Drakulich 2009: 171–7). Their actions are rarely entirely impartial. Rather, they are determined partly by how the public is defined for the police by community leaders and the city government, and partly by police authorities’ politi-cal views and loyalties (National Research Council 2004: 2–6). Based on the presence of socially constructed ‘danger’ in the community, police officers often develop rules about who should be monitored and controlled and what behaviours need to be identi-fied and deterred.

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Research Questions

This research explored the relationship between local police and UMWs in Palisades Park, New Jersey. Three broad research questions concerning UMWs were addressed: (1) What were the experiences of and responses to crime victimizations among UMWs? (2) How were UMWs treated by the police? and (3) How did UMWs perceive their rela-tionship to the police?

Design and Methods

Mixed methods were implemented following a concise analysis of the political economy of undocumented migrant labour in Palisades Park, New Jersey. The analysis of police–UMW interactions was cast in the larger frameworks of national immigration con-trol and local politics. Data collection was completed between May 2010 and October 2011 as part of a larger study on the victimization experiences undocumented men and women.

Sample

SamplingBoth convenience sampling and snowball sampling techniques were used to build the research sample of 160 UMWs. Self-reported criteria for recruitment were: (1) aged 18 or over, (2) born in a Latin American country, (3) having entered United States through land routes and (4) remaining undocumented at the time of recruitment. Research subjects were directly recruited from different street corners along the two thoroughfares (Broad Avenue and Columbia Avenue) in Palisades Park. Prior to their enrolment in the study, candidates were informed of the purposes and protocols of the study, as well as of the potential harms that might result from participation, and of the rights of research subjects. Each research subject was paid $30 for a completed survey interview and given three uniquely numbered referral coupons with contact informa-tion of the principal investigator. Subjects were encouraged to refer eligible UMWs to the study and paid an extra $10 for every successful referral they made.1

SubjectsThe 160 male UMWs entered the country without a valid visa and remained without proper documentation at the time of their participation in this study. Subjects had a median age of 32 (see Table 1). About half (47.5 per cent) of this group of adults were married or had a common law spouse and three in four (75.0 per cent) had children.

1 We did not record the overall response rate of the study because it was impossible to determine how many of those individuals directed contacted by the research team who declined to participate in the survey actually met the status and age eligibility. We did, however, compute the respondent-driven participation rate by dividing the number of subjects who contacted field interview-ers with a valid referral coupon by the total number of coupons distributed. This respondent-driven component supported by the offer of complete anonymity and monetary rewards for participation and referral achieved a referred response rate of 53 per cent. The strategy ensured an acceptable rate of participation as the research literature indicates that survey response rates in face-to-face interviews oscillate between 40 and 70 per cent among legal immigrants (Perez et al. 2013: 210; Massey 2014: 287) but dip below 15 per cent among non-institutionalized migrants workers (Houle and Shkolnikov 2005; Hogan 2007: 10). All 160 par-ticipants in this study completed the structured interview and provided valid responses on virtually all items.

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Most (84.2 per cent) of the married men had left their spouses in their country of origin; by the same token, two-thirds (66.6 per cent) of the fathers did not have their children in the United States. There were a lot more fathers than husbands among these UMWs, and neither wives nor children were likely to be their companions in the United States.

Guatemalans were the predominant national group (81.3 per cent), followed by Mexicans (9.4 per cent) and Ecuadorians (5.0 per cent) (see Table 1). An overwhelm-ing majority (78.1 per cent) were on their first trip to the United States, whereas one-fifth (21.9 per cent) had been to the United States before and were on their second or third trips. Overall, they had been in the United States for a median time of four years (48 months). Over half (57.5 per cent) of the 160 surveyed UMWs were residents of Palisades Park and the remaining 68 (42.5 per cent) were commuters from outer town-ships. English language skills were generally very poor among these men: Only 16.9 per cent of them believed their English fluency was good or very good. Half (50.6 per cent) of the sample attended religious services at least a few times a month; communities of faith were the most important structure of social support for these men, who were much less likely to be members of non-religious social groups (10.6 per cent) and a few (16.3 per cent) had contacted their embassy or consulate for help. Most of these latter

Table 1 Background characteristics (N = 160)

Characteristics N (%) M (SD)

Median age – 32.0 (9.1)Married or had common law spouse 76 (47.5) – Spouse not in the United States (married or w/common law) 64 (84.2) –Had children 120 (75.0) – Children not in the United States (parents) 80 (66.6) –Country of origin Guatemala 130 (81.3) – Mexico 15 (9.4) – Ecuador 8 (5.0) – Other 7 (4.4) –Number of prior trips to the United States 0 prior trip 125 (78.1) – 1 prior trip 16 (10.0) – 2 or more prior trips 19 (11.9) –Median length of current stay (months) 48.0 (42.8) –Current residence Palisades Park, New Jersey 92 (57.5) – Contiguous townships or villages 4 (2.5) – Non-contiguous townships or villages 64 (40.0) –English fluency Poor/fair 133 (83.1) – Good/very good 27 (16.9) –Attended religious services at least a few times a month 81 (50.6) –Membership in any non-religious social group 17 (10.6) –Ever contacted embassy or consulate for assistance 26 (16.3) –Self-identified primary job skills Construction 117 (73.1) – Other 6 (3.8) –Number of hours worked in past week – 34.0 (16.7)Median income in past week (US$) – 350.0 (188.4)Percent income kept for personal use in the United States – 48.5 (25.2)Have a bank account 21 (13.1) –


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contacts were associated with the application for consular identification card which was issued by the Mexican and Guatemalan consulates and accepted by some municipali-ties and financial institutions in the area.

A majority (73.1 per cent) identified construction as their primary job skill (see Table 1). Given that all interviews were completed in late spring and summer when there were plenty of outdoor opportunities around, the employment rate was fairly high. The sample averaged 34 hours of employment in the week prior to the interview, which approximated the standard full-time work week of 36–40 hours. The median past-week income was 350 dollars, rendering the average hourly wages for the sample slightly above the $7.25 minimum wages established by the federal government. About half (48.5 per cent) of their income was kept to cover personal expenses, the other half was sent back home as remittances. Because of their illegal status and their need to constantly transfer the little money they made out of the country, only 13.1 per cent of them had a bank account in the United States.

Data

Survey interviewThe survey questionnaire consisted of 121 master questions and dozens of follow-up questions partly derived from the Spanish version of the National Crime Victim Survey (NCVS) designed by the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS 2001). In addition to these questions probing about the socio-demographic characteristics and victimization expe-riences of survey respondents, this proposed study also incorporated questions revolv-ing around contacts with the police from the Police-Public Contact Survey (PPCS) (BJS 2008). Police contact variables supplied data on the circumstances surrounding the police–UMW encounter, including the locus of initiation (i.e. proactive or reactive), problem behaviours targeted by the police, use of coercive tactics (e.g. commanding language, verbal threats, physical force, etc.), presence of bystanders, application of law and/or sanctions, demeanour of UMWs and officers involved, among others. Trained bilingual interviewers obtained informed consent from research subjects and adminis-tered the survey questionnaire.

Focus groupsFocus groups provided insight into how UMWs thought about their own extreme exclu-sion from the law, the range of experiences and attitudes and the variations of experi-ences among them. Eleven subjects were randomly recruited from the 160 participants of the structured interviews to take part in two separate focus groups. Subjects con-sented to participate and received $30 for their participation. Each group interview lasted about 2 hours in duration. All group sessions were audio-taped and transcribed in Spanish and then translated into English for content analysis.

Key informant interviewsAs the study progressed, researchers came across individuals who had a deep knowl-edge of Palisades Park, its politics and its people. Interviews by email were conducted with four key informants: Margaret, a 77-year-old resident of Bergen County and

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former treasurer of the community organization Community of Friends in Action; Ellie, an 88-year-old community activist who had lived in the county for 47 years; Maria, a 42-year-old former undocumented immigrant and Hispanic writer whose autobiogra-phy was published in 2014 and Elias, a 40-year-old established Guatemalan immigrant who was respected as an elderly figure in the community. Their narratives were used in conjunction with survey and focus group data to clarify the concerns and needs that were identified.

Data limitationsThe sampling methods may have introduced two major limitations to the representa-tiveness of the data. First the use of non-probability recruitment restricted the sample to a relatively few peer networks within the UMW population in Palisades Park. Efforts were made to minimize this potential pitfall by limiting the number of referrals by each seed subject to three and by recruiting subjects from different street corners and at dif-ferent times of the day and/or week so that the final sample could have as many nodes as possible. Second, UMWs who were less successful in securing employment were more likely to be spotted and contacted by researchers, which may have caused a systematic bias in the sample. Any generalizations obtained from this study samples must be fil-tered through extant research literature and will remain descriptive in nature.

Results

The political economy of migrant labour in Palisades Park and surrounding areas

UMWs first appeared in the streets of Palisades Park in the 1980s (Llorente 1998a: 1). The pioneers were Guatemalan men of Mayan origin who had escaped from the bloody civil war raging in their homeland; they left to help support their families. By the early 1990s, between 65 and 80 labourers would line the two main thoroughfares every morn-ing in search of opportunities in the booming construction industry (Nieves 1994: 5). Most of the men rented rooms in town, living in the apartments just above the stores they clustered in front of as they waited for work every morning. Some other workers came from adjacent towns. Contractors from as far away as South Jersey, New York and Connecticut would come to find a large pool of very cheap labour. By the early 2000s, on any given day, about 300 UMWs would gather on street corners hoping a contractor would nod them into the back of a pickup truck for a day’s work (James 2003: 1). Unlike earlier waves of Italian and Korean immigrants, these UMWs had no plan to bring their families to the United States; instead, they sent remittances to their countries of origin and planned to return to reunite with their families.

The economic recession triggered by the financial crisis of 2008 inflicted a devastat-ing blow to the plight of undocumented migrants. As the depletion of bank capital reduced the credit availability to developers, construction projects and other ventures that had usually employed UMWs grounded to a halt. Workers were hurting as weeks passed without a day’s work and rent was due; many of the men were skipping meals. A reverse remittance movement began: some chronically unemployed workers asked for money from home to finance their jobless stay in Palisades Park, or even just to buy a ticket home (Henry 2009). Job prospects for these migrants did not improve until spring 2011.


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UMWs have contributed to the transformation of Palisades Park and its neighbour-ing towns, from working-class neighbourhoods of one-family residences dotted with patches of woodlands into middle-class communities with blocks of duplexes and multi-family townhouses. In Palisades Park, the number of housing units grew by a stagger-ing 21.7 per cent between 1990 and 2010, which led to a 35.0 per cent expansion in its population during the same period of time (US Census Bureau 2012). Developers reaped handsome profits from redevelopment projects, which provided more afforda-ble and spacious housing to professionals pursuing dreams in Manhattan. Even though UMW sites are fixtures in town, and faces of young Mayans are ubiquitous in the bus-tling downtown commercial district, their relationships with the community have never been easy.

UMWs were routinely accused of blocking sidewalks, urinating in public and intimi-dating passers-by. In January 1993, the police began enforcing a 1972 loitering law that a year later was struck down as unconstitutional by the State Supreme Court (Nieves 1994: 5). With that, the police began issuing traffic tickets to contractors for cracked mirrors on their trucks, carrying passengers in open-bed trucks, or not wearing seat belts, to make it more difficult for workers and contractors to meet (James 2003: 1). This push failed to stamp out the transactions but prompted the first efforts to organ-ize undocumented migrants, which culminated in the first labourers’ rally in front of the police station with placards reading ‘We Want to Work in Peace’ and ‘We’re All Humans’ (Nieves 1994: 5). The town had already enacted an ordinance prohibit-ing more than two adults from sharing a room in an apartment or boarding house, a response to the way that most labourers crammed into one- and two-bedroom apart-ments. But none of these measures of resistance could reverse the demographic trend set by the economy of the region.

Between 1994 and 1997, authorities of Bergen County contemplated the possibility of setting up a hiring hall where restrooms would be available and registered workers and licensed contractors could connect without loitering in public or obstructing traf-fic. Civic groups would also be able to use the facility to offer migrants English and computer classes, health services and assistance with housing. Palisades Park and three surrounding towns were considered for this proposal, but in 1997, the task force in charge of resolving the problem could not agree on a site and the proposal was termi-nated (Strunsky 1997: 6). The idea of establishing a hiring hall was refloated again in 2002 after the decomposed body of a day labourer was discovered in a disabled truck in a desolate corner of the town, but again the not-in-my-backyard mentality quickly put the bid to rest (James 2003: 1).

Today, the community is as divided as it was 20 years ago. Undocumented migrants remain perpetual outsiders even in this town of immigrants. Many residents worry that their property values will go down because of what they consider as ‘moving eye-sores’; some are fearful of the disorder and decay that might result from harbouring too many transient men in the community. Yet words and acts of acceptance from other residents have never been absent. A group of Korean-American residents shocked their Guatemalan neighbours when they reached out to workers standing on street corners with hot coffee and fresh bagels in the mid-1990s (Llorente 1998b: 1); the friendship flourished over the years to the point that a small congregation of undocumented migrants now meet twice a week under the care and leadership of a Korean-American pastor with support from other ethnic and mainstream churches in the area. At least

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two churches (the Grace Lutheran Church and the First Presbyterian Church) collabo-rate with different non-governmental organizations to offer poverty-stricken UMWs free lunches in the cold wintertime. Some clothing and jewellery boutiques display signs in Spanish warning migrants not to block their storefront windows, whereas next door coffee shops and minimarkets put up bulletin boards to encourage exchanges of information on housing, employment and other services among UMWs.

The community has become more tolerant of the Latino day workers over the years. In earlier years, there were newspaper articles about the men whistling at the girls, urinating on the sidewalk, being drunk. Now it seems that they are tolerated. The wider community is really dependent upon the workers for landscape work, construction workers, men to shovel snow. During the past 20 years, Palisades Park too has changed and become heavily Korean. Before the 1990s, Pal Park was known for its Italian residents. Perhaps many of the former residents have focused their hostility on the Koreans, rather than the day workers. (Ellie – community activist)

The guest–host relationships are intricate and evolving, driven by economic interests, and always open to changes and surprises. Hurricane Sandy exemplifies one such unex-pected opportunity. When the storm devastated the coast of the Northeastern United States in October 2012, authorities in Bergen County evacuated residents after waters overflowed a river bank and flooded several communities adjacent to Palisades Park (Dopp 2012; The Associated Press 2012). UMWs were quickly identified by government officials as a readily available labour force for the clean-up and reconstruction in the wake of the disaster (Llorente 2012). Mayan men with callous hands and lined faces were seen removing furniture from flooded basements and fallen trees from yards, trans-porting fuel to car owners with empty tanks, restoring damaged fences and replacing destroyed drywalls or blown-away roofs. The Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) unit of the US Department of Homeland Security announced that it would not take immigration enforcement actions related to victims of Sandy in the aftermath of the hurricane (Goodwin 2012). Old tensions and mutual suspicion were suspended temporarily as hundreds, if not thousands, of UMWs were welcomed by suburban resi-dents and businesses as critical helpers during this time of trial (Berger 2012: 30).

The political context of police work in Palisades Park

Regardless of the national origin of immigrant communities they serve, urban police departments are forced to handle very similar problems, including: difficulties in their communication with immigrants who have not yet developed a good command of the English language, the hesitance of newly arrived residents to report crime, distrust or fear of the police by immigrants from countries with a history of authoritarianism, inse-curity among the undocumented for not knowing to what extent local police partici-pate in the enforcement of immigration laws, cultural misunderstandings and hostility and resentment fostered by humiliating encounters with police officers (Lysakowski et al. 2009: 3–6).

Palisades Park and its police force, like many other law enforcement agencies across America, have been pressured to implement strategies that simultaneously reflect their own aspirations and are consonant with federal immigration policies. The Police Department of Palisades Park, which was staffed by 38 full-time employees, including 28 sworn police officers, when this study began (Vecchio 2012), has consistently refused


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to proactively participate in any federal immigration enforcement initiative such as the 287(g) program, under which the US ICE provides state and local law enforcement officers with the training and authorization to identify, process and—when appro-priate—detain immigration offenders they encounter during their regular, daily law enforcement activity.2 The leadership of the agency is probably aware that a federal immigration enforcement action assisted by local police assets can quickly and seri-ously damage hard-won trust in the immigrant community. Yet an even more powerful reason for their unwillingness to take on the task of immigration law enforcement is the issue of organizational capacity (Llorente 2002: 1). The Department has always notified pertinent federal immigration authorities when they apprehend an undocu-mented immigrant who has committed a serious felony; but the police are not inter-ested in further straining their already overstretched manpower.

If the Justice Department deputizes us and we make an arrest, then what do we do? Send them to the county jail? Now I’d be paying my officers to go to the county courthouse or jail, or worse, farther away to Newark? Who’s going to reimburse us? There are so many people who could get arrested in Palisades Park alone, you’re talking maybe having to deal with county and federal courts. The could take days, or more...the point about doing this to fight terrorism sounds like a decent idea, but when you go deeper, you see the possible effects.’ (Michael Vietri – Former Chief of the Police Department of Palisades Park [Llorente 2002: 1])

The refusal to arrest and transfer undocumented migrants to ICE does not necessarily imply that the Police Department is particularly sympathetic to the plight of UMWs. To the contrary, local law enforcement has historically been accountable to long-term resi-dents of the town and responsive to their concerns. Crackdowns on construction con-tractors and UMWs by ticketing them for traffic hindrance and loitering were recurrent campaigns, yet these actions only achieved the displacement of labour transactions from the main commercial thoroughfares to residential side streets (Sampson 2005: 1). The problem is too big for a local police department to solve, as former Chief Vietri put it, ‘the federal government should step in’ (Sampson 2005: 1). To a large extent, the acceptance of hundreds of UMWs remains a necessary evil in this community that is dependent on the availability of cheap migrant labour. Confronting relentless tension between residents and undocumented migrants, political leaders and police authorities tried hard to appease incensed middle-class families, who worried about the aesthetics and safety of their neighbourhood and the value of their properties, without disrupting the supply of labour to the businesses that formed their tax base.

The tension and frustration over the proper role of the police has stimulated civic vitality of various stripes. Some citizen groups such as the United Patriots of America Association collected petitions to pressure law enforcement authorities across Bergen County to participate in the 287(g) program to remove ‘illegal aliens’ and staged demonstrations against official inaction while UMWs waiting for work watched from across the street (Dawkins 2007: 4; Llorente 2007). On the other side, mobilization on behalf of the UMWs was prompted by the alleged deterioration of the police–migrant

2 Immigration and Nationality Act Section 287(g) was enacted by Section 133 of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996. It authorizes the federal government to enter into agreements with state and local law enforcement agencies, permitting designated officers to perform immigration law enforcement functions, pursuant to a memo-randum of agreement, provided that the local law enforcement officers receive appropriate training and function under the supervision of ICE.

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relationship in the early 1990s. According to a long-time activist, that police–migrant relationship has improved visibly in recent years.

We became involved with the day workers in 1993 when the police were giving the workers a hard time. Around 1996 Susan Spohn was elected mayor of Pal Park. She came to one of the English classes - there were usually 25 men at a class - and told them that if the police gave them any trou-ble, the men should phone her and she would make them stop. She even gave the men her private phone number. She then had the Police Chief speak to the men, telling them not to fear.… Susan Spohn’s position on the undocumented men became an election issue and she lost. Shortly after that the police began threatening the men. Once again several of us stood on the street in support of the men. I witnessed the police car driving along the sidewalk on the SW corner of Broad Ave at Columbus Rd. where many workers used to stand, forcing them to move.… About 5 years ago CoFiA [Community of Friends in Actions] held a public meeting for Pal Park residents where officer Ramos, now Police Chief, spoke about immigration and the day workers. He explained that the community was working to remove them from the street. Officer Ramos also spoke to a large group of day workers at the Monday lunch, but with a more hospitable tone… The police are definitely aware of the problems facing the men. Some are sympathetic with the workers’ need to support their families. There seem few complaints against police by the workers right now. Probably the police are happy that the number of men gathering on the corners has decreased. Perhaps they have moved to another location. (Ellie – community activist)

Prevalence of and responses to crime victimizations

Earlier literature has hinted that foreign-born residents in the United States may be victimized at rates similar or lower to native-born residents, and their rates of reporting victimizations are much lower (Davis and Erez 1998: 2–4; Kercher and Kuo 2008: 13–5). Because of linguistic barriers, different expectations and culturally non-specific treat-ment by authorities, immigrant victims have a more difficult time than other victims dealing with the police and the courts. I set out to investigate whether this observation can be generalized to UMWs in this sample. About three in one (31.3 per cent) of the 160 surveyed UMWs self-reported having being robbed, assaulted or burglarized since their arrival to the country (see Table 2). Most (60.0 per cent) of these crime victims had been exposed to only one of the three modalities of victimization and more than one in three (40 per cent) had suffered multiple types of victimizations. Robbery was the most prevalent form of victimization (22.5 per cent) in this sample, followed by assault (14.4 per cent) and household burglary (8.8 per cent). Fear of crime ran high: More than one-third (38.8 per cent) of the subjects worried about their own personal safety and were afraid of becoming a crime victim in the year prior to the interview.

How bad is the criminal victimization of UMWs as compared to that of the general population? Data collected in this study do not allow a direct comparison with vic-timization estimates from the NCVS sponsored by the BJS because very different meas-ures were constructed.3 Whereas I calculated the cumulative prevalence rate of victims since the arrival to the United States, NCVS estimated the annual prevalence rate of

3 The NCVS is the primary source of data on the characteristics of criminal victimization and on the number and types of crimes not reported to the police. Data are gathered every year from a nationally representative sample of nearly 50,000 house-holds comprising about 100,000 persons on the frequency, characteristics and consequences of criminal victimization in the United States.


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victimizations. These barriers notwithstanding, the fact that the median length of stay in the country for the sample is 4 years and that victimizations always outnumber victims during any period of time (i.e. an individual can be victimized multiple times) suggests massive differences in victimization between the two populations. The risk of being robbed and assaulted appears to be enormously higher among UMWs than among the rest of the US population. While 22 and 14 in 100 UMWs in this sample had been robbed and assaulted, respectively, since their arrival to the United States, the annual rates of robbery and assault victimizations in the general population were 2.2 incidents and 19.4 incidents per 1,000 persons, respectively, in 2011 (Truman and Planty 2012). The rate of robbery victimizations was particularly high among UMWs, which corrobo-rated earlier findings in the undocumented migration literature (Bucher et al. 2010: 167–8). The prevalence of burglary victimizations among these UMWs seemed similar, if not lower, than that within the general population. All in all, UMWs in this sample were more vulnerable to violent crime victimizations than the rest of the population, and this unusual vulnerability also separated them from other immigrant populations whose experiences were comparable or even better than those of native-born residents (Davis and Erez 1998: 2–4; Kercher and Kuo 2008: 13–5; Bucher et al. 2010: 167–8).

Underreporting of crime by UMW victims was rampant. Only 13 (24.6 per cent) of the 51 subjects who believed they had been a victim of crime during the year prior to the interview reported their victimizations to the police (see Table 3). The under-reporting rate of 74.5 per cent compared very unfavourably with the already high rate of 58 per cent observed in the national population between 2006 and 2010 (Langton 2012: 1). Fear of reprisal from or concern for the offender was identified as the main reason for underreporting by 12 (31.6 per cent) of the UMW victims who did not report their victimizations.

Police–migrant encounters

All police–citizen encounters are transactions in which police officers act and react in a crisis situation in which they have to be in control, invoke the law if necessary and

Table 2 Prevalence of and responses to crime victimizations (N = 160)

Victimizations and fear of being victimized UMWs NCVS 2011a

N (%) Rate per 1,000

Ever been robbed, assaulted or burglarized in the United States 50 (31.3) –Specialization of victimization (victims only, N = 50) 1 type of victimization 30 (60.0) – 2 types of victimization 17 (34.0) – 3 types of victimization 3 (6.0) –Ever been a victim of robbery in the United States 36 (22.5) 2.2Ever been a victim of assault in the United States 23 (14.4) 19.4Ever been a victim of household burglary in the United States 14 (8.8) 29.4Worried about personal safety and was afraid of becoming a crime victim in the past year

62 (38.8) –

aRates of robbery and assault are given as victimizations per 1,000 persons and rate of household burglary is per 1,000 households (Truman and Planty 2012). Given the important methodological difference that exists between data collected in this study and estimates from NCVS, extreme caution must be used in the interpretation of numbers in this table.

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ultimately administer justice, whatever ‘ justice’ means at that precise moment. Not all police–UMWs contacts reported in the next paragraphs happened in Palisades Park; but the political environment of the town was reasonably representative of what was going on in nearby jurisdictions and provided an adequate framework to interpret the experiences of our subjects.

Fifty-two (32.5 per cent) of the sample had face-to-face contacts with the police in the year prior to the interview (see Table 4), a rate 1.9 times as high as the 16.9 per cent found in the general population, reported in the most recent PPCS (Eith and Durose 2011). Clearly, these UMWs were more aggressively policed in relation to the national average. The prevalence of proactive contacts initiated by the police was slightly higher than that of reactive contacts initiated by UMWs (69.2 vs. 57.7 per cent). Although a higher rate of police stops was expected, the comparatively high volume of reactive encounters initiated by UMWs was quite surprising.

Request for assistance, service or information (23.1 per cent) and crime or prob-lem reporting (19.2 per cent) were the most common reasons for police–migrant con-tacts. Nearly one in five (19.2 per cent) of the UMWs who had had police contacts were requested personal information, including data on immigration status, by the police for no obvious reason. It is important to note that while UMWs were unwilling to con-tact police as a crime victim (see Table 3), which could trigger the legal processes of investigation and adjudication, they felt free to approach police to request help in an informal encounter. One in ten (9.6 per cent) of the migrants who had had police con-tacts in the previous year believed the officer had thought of him as a crime suspect; and another 7.7 per cent reported they met the police during crime investigation.

Monitoring ‘the risky’ and ‘the suspicious’ is essential in everyday patrol work (Sanders and Hannem 2012: 389–90); contacts initiated by the police involving stops, questioning and frisks are often interpreted in the literature as tactics of surveillance (Boyle 2015: 93–132). Our research subjects described being singled out, watched or trailed by police officers and recounted some of the involuntary encounters during the focus group interviews:

About three months ago I was coming from work. I was to wait for the bus and saw a patrol car passed and stopped, and then a second police car approached and called me. He [the police officer from

Table 3 Reporting of victimizations to the police (N = 27 past-year victims only)

UMWs NCVSa

N (%) %

Had been a victim of crime in the past year but did NOT report to the police (crime victims only)

21 (77.8) 58

Major reasons victimizations went unreported (past- year crime victims who did not report to police only): Dealt with in another way/personal matter 2 (9.5) 20 Not important enough to report 3 (14.3) 27 Police could not or would not help 2 (9.5) 31 Fear of reprisal or getting offender in trouble 8 (38.1) 5 Language barriers 3 (14.3) – Other reason or not the most important reason 3 (14.3) 17

aNCVS estimates are extracted from the BJS report Victimizations Not Reported to the Police, 2006–2010 (Langton 2012).


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the second car] said nothing but took a camera from the other car, put the light on my face, and took my picture. I moved and he told me not to move. Then he asked me, ‘Where are you coming from? Why have you come to this country?’ When he spoke for the third time, I told him that I was leaving my job. And I asked, ‘What is the problem?’ And he said, ‘There is no problem.’ Then he took the car and left. He took a picture of me and left… without asking for my ID or asking any other question. (‘L’ – from one of the focus group interviews of UMWs)

Police officers scrutinized UMWs and their behaviours and may use verbal warnings and commands to dramatize migrants’ physical and social dislocation. UMWs were sometimes ordered around without legitimate reason and then let go without further action being taken.

There was this officer who threw me into a bus once… I was standing on the other side where they are building the diner now. Well I was tired, I was somewhat leaning against the wall; and he grabbed me and said, ‘I’m going to put you on the bus to send you home. Where are you staying?’... He called on me and I had to follow. Then he ordered: ‘Get on the bus and leave!’ I had to climb on the bus because I did not know what would happen if I ignored him. The officer waited until the bus came, after I got on the bus, he got into the police car and left. That happened to me two years ago. (‘D’ – from one of the focus group interviews of UMWs)

Based on the comparison of the most recent contact by respondents who had at least one police contact in the past year between UMWs in this study sample and national

Table 4 Police–UMW encounters

Contacts and actions during contacts UMWs PPCS 2008a

N (%) %

Had face-to-face contact with police in past 12 months (N = 160)b 52 (32.5) 16.9 Proactive contacts initiated by police (N = 52) 36 (69.2) – Reactive contacts initiated by respondent (N = 52) 30 (57.7) –Reasons for contact (N = 52)c

Traffic-related contacts 3 (5.8) 59.2 Respondent reported crime/problem to police 10 (19.2) 20.9 Police provided assistance, service or information 12 (23.1) 6.3 Police investigating crime 4 (7.7) 5.6 Police suspected respondent of wrong doing 5 (9.6) 2.5 Police requested personal info, including

immigration status, for no obvious reasons10 (19.2) –

Other 8 (15.4) 5.5Police used or threatened force (i.e. pushed/grabbed, kicked/ hit or threatened to do so) (contacts only, N = 52)

8 (15.4) 1.4

Police actions during contacts in which force was used or threatened (contacts in with use or threat of force only, N = 8)d

Searched respondent 6 (75.0) 57.1 Arrested respondent 6 (75.0) 39.9

Not all police–migrant contacts occurred in Palisades Park. In fact, it is not clear how many of the reported contacts took place in Palisades Park.aAnnual rates as per the 2008 Police-Public Contact Survey (Eith and Durose 2011).bPercentages do not sum to 100% because migrants could have both contacted and been contacted by the police in the past year.cBased on the respondents’ most recent contact with police.dBased on the respondents’ most recent contact with police. Percentages do not sum to 100% because police could have performed more than one action. Interpret data with caution; analysis based on nine sample cases only.

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estimates from the 2008 PPCS, police were 7.9 times as likely to use or threaten force (e.g. pushing, grabbing, kicking or hitting) against encountered migrants as they were against members of the general population (see Table 4). Force was used or threat-ened against undocumented migrants in 15.4 per cent of the encounters, when only 1.4 per cent of the encounters in the general population witness such a display of force. It appeared that UMWs were not only over-policed in terms of their unsolicited con-tacts with the police but also much more coercively treated by the police during con-tacts. There are indications that undocumented migrants were also more likely to be searched and arrested (75.0 and 75.0 per cent, respectively) than members of the gen-eral population (57.1 vs. 39.9 per cent, respectively) in encounters where police force was used or threatened. However, given that only eight cases were involved in this last sub-analysis, this finding is only suggestive.

The apparent inequality in police treatment notwithstanding, UMWs reiterated in different occasions their high regard for the way American police officers conducted themselves. After follow-up inquiries from astonished field interviewers, it became clear that undocumented migrants compared their experiences with American law enforce-ment agents not with the treatment others in the community received from the police but with what they themselves had experienced from their own police in their countries of origin. These first-hand observations had led them to the conclusion that despite the racism demonstrated in the demeanour of some police officers, local law enforcement agents they had encountered had impressed them with professionalism. Even UMWs who had never dealt with a police officer in person agreed with these remarks and felt well protected by the police.

I made complaints [to the police] three times, in different towns, here in Palisades Park, in the town of Fairview, and have even gone to the city of Fort Lee. And everywhere I go, they treated me well, that is, they treat me normally. ... If you do not speak English, you can request a translator and they will give you a Spanish-speaking translator. (‘T’ – from one of the focus group interviews of UMWs)

The police behave well because they do their work. What happens is that ... they do their work will-ingly; no one is forcing them to do it... I have not had any problems with the police, thank God. So far I have not talked to them because I have not had any need. But I trust them a lot because they are always patrolling around.… I always go to church at night and walk alone at about 8 or 9 at night. I see a patrol car pass by and I feel safe. I feel good about the police, I have never bothered them and they have not spoken to me neither… You have to behave well and not do anything wrong ... because one has to respect whoever the person is, and be careful too. Sometimes some are drunk there and need help. Sometimes instead of helping, the police misunderstand them ... I know they are authority, that they are to take care and not to abuse anyone. (‘M’ – from one of the focus group interviews of UMWs)

Whoever has had enough time here knows how things work and is not afraid. Although they [police officers] will talk to you, you do not have to talk to them ... The difference [between American police and Guatemalan police] is that the police there are corrupt. What they do there in my country is that they will stop you when you drive. And what they do is to tell you ‘Give me 100 or 200 quetzals’ and then leave. That’s the difference ... Well, there is no racism there. (‘K’ – from one of the focus group interviews of UMWs)

When disaggregated, these discrete police–migrant encounters are charged with unique emotions and connotations for both the police and the policed; but once aggre-gated, these contacts acquire structural implications and cultural meaning beyond the


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intentions and perceptions of their individual participants (see Sung 2002: 19–42). At the personal level, almost all UMWs praised the services they received from the police and demonstrated no particular alienation from the law enforcement establishment; with the exception of a few incidents in which two specific officers were unanimously identified as chronic harassers of migrants, no grievances over unjust or unfair police practices were raised. However, when examined at a higher level of abstraction and aggregation, it was clear that UMWs as a group attracted constant and intrusive surveil-lance: migrants were stopped, questioned and handled with force or threats of force by the police at a rate higher than the general population. Neither their disproportionate share of criminal victimizations convince UMWs that they lived an unsafe lifestyle in this foreign land, nor the unusual amount of proactive and coercive police interven-tions directed at them created any sense of oppression. When compared to the poverty and violence of El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico, the levels of prosperity and security offered by the United States were not considered as a problem at all. But should this status quo be a problem or concern for local community authorities? Should US policymakers care about the situation and try to change it? These are questions awaiting answers.

Discussion

In a way, the experience of UMWs surveyed in this study resembled that of African Americans in the general population (Eith and Durose 2011: 7; Langton 2012: 7; Truman and Planty 2012: 5; Boyle 2015: 93–132): UMWs were more likely to suffer violent crime victimization, less likely to report their victimizations to the police and more likely to be stopped and questioned by the police. Yet unlike African Americans who also experience police proactive contacts at a higher frequency than other ethnic groups but are more likely to see these encounters as harassment motivated by preju-dices (Boyle 2015: 105), UMWs in our study did not leave those encounters with particu-larly negative impressions of the police. They tended to affirm the legitimacy of police actions and displayed a high level of submissiveness toward law enforcement agents.

The illegal status of UMWs had created conditions and incentives for thieves and rob-bers to prey on these vulnerable workers. Most UMWs did not have bank accounts, and therefore they were always paid in cash and often carried large amounts of it on their persons before sending remittances home—making them ‘walking ATMs for thugs’. The unwillingness to contact the police among undocumented victims of crime led to the impossibility of bringing the perpetrators of crime to account; these perpetrators were, in effect, free from detection and interrogation that may result in their pros-ecution, conviction and punishment. The high prevalence rate of robbery can be eas-ily understood in this broader context of isolation from financial and criminal justice institutions.

It is not the mandate of local police to invent a new socioeconomic order. On the contrary, their everyday actions are directed at reproducing the existing ‘normal or effi-cient state’ of affairs (Ericson 1982: 7). The frequent encounters between police officers and undocumented migrants did not translate into lower rates of crime victimization among UMWs in and around Palisades Park. Satnam Choongh (1998) argued that a fundamental purpose of policing is to enforce social discipline through the punish-ment, humiliation and extraction of submissiveness from the groups who consistently

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come within their purview. The aggressive policing of UMWs may be one such an instance of social discipline.

The high level of exposure to police surveillance failed to create a safer environment for the most disenfranchised. Instead, the result was the reinforcement of the stratifi-cation of respectability and power in the community through mechanisms of inquiry, monitoring and subjugation. Police forces in and around Palisades Park were fairly suc-cessful in over-policing the undocumented members of the community without provok-ing their resentment and pressing them for cooperation without damaging their trust. Even as recipients of a disproportionate amount of police disruption and coercion, UMWs still saw the police as a dependable source of information and a deserving recipi-ent of respect and confidence. What was achieved in these migrant–police exchanges is not so much the promotion of public safety but rather the maintenance of the moral-economic order.

Conclusion

The complexity of police–UMW relationships in local communities has its roots in the contradictions inherent in the federal immigration policies. As globalization intensifies economic integration, and trade liberalization deepens economic, cultural and politi-cal cooperation among countries in the western hemisphere, it is expected that social and political conditions will emerge to permit the freer movement of persons and that labour migration will increase. However, immigration policies and border controls in the United States that regulate autonomous movement of peoples have not relaxed. Foreign migrant workers are desperately needed but not welcome. The apparent de-bordering of the US economy under the impulse of trade liberalization and financial glo-balization has been accompanied by a parallel process of re-bordering its labour market. Migrant labour from Latin American is targeted by hostile immigration policies that have contributed to the creation of a transnational underclass of disposable migrants and to the adoption of intimidation, detention and deportation to counter the influx of migrant labour attracted by powerful domestic labour demands.

The policing of UMWs constitutes a particular case of one-way control. Critical con-tributors to the economic vitality of the community notwithstanding, migrants have virtually no access to resources that can be mobilized to influence law enactment and enforcement (Varsanyi 2008: 31–8). However, the police are neither autonomous nor self-directed in their dealings with UMWs. On the one hand, the legal status and moral worth of UMWs are dictated by the legal and political processes that are decided in Washington, DC. Local police forces and individual law enforcement officers look for and employ status ‘cues’ to decide what actions are appropriate in face-to-face police–migrant encounters. These tactical behaviours are as much determined by who an undocumented migrant is as by what he or she does. UMWs who are continuously exposing their faces and demeanours in public undergo the most intense form of scru-tiny. One the other hand, the police are given the responsibility of preventing local resi-dents, including the UMWs, from becoming offenders or victims of crime, even though the root causes of crime are obviously beyond their reach. At most, they react, with certain degree of creativity, to the unintended consequences of the invisible forces that operate at the macro-level of the political reality. Rather than passively responding to federal immigration policies, local police authorities proactively draw on a professional


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ethos and develop their own strategies to strike a delicate, and rarely achieved, balance among the maintenance of law and order, the protection of civil rights and the manage-ment of their limited resources (Lewis and Ramakrishnan 2007).

Without a rational realignment between US immigration control practices and the thirst of its economy for efficient unskilled labour, the current contradictions will exact heavy costs to the rule of law. After all, anonymity and fear of the policed will unavoid-ably erode the accountability, equity and integrity of police work in the long-run.

Funding

This work was supported by the National Institute of Justice (grant number: 2010-IJ-CX-0005); Professional Staff Congress of the City University of New York (grant num-ber: PSCREG-41-283) and John Jay College of Criminal Justice (grant number: CUNY RF 90659-00 05).

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surveillance without protection: policing undocumented migrant workers in an american suburb

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