CRIMMIGRATION AND POL-I.C.E. REFORM

The U.S. immigrant population has grown quickly over the past 20 years, with sizable numbers coming from Central and Latin America, the Caribbean, and Africa. This has resulted in important demographic changes in many U.S. cities and transformed how the government maintains law and order, adopting “crimmigration” as opposed to a service-based approach. Many of the stratagems used to control growing immigrant populations have involved the police. So much so that the Taskforce on 21st-Century President’s Task Force on 21st-Century Policing (2015) made several recommendations for building trust between the police and immigrant communities. Chief among them was a recommendation that law enforcement agencies build trust with immigrant communities (as it) is central to overall public safety. However, scholars continue to document the rise of a “crimmigration control system” characterized by a symbiotic relationship between I.C.E. and local police that is disparately harmful to Black and Latino immigrants. Still, a meaningful discussion about how police treat Black and Latino immigrants is largely absent from current calls for police reform, although they are also subjected to unequal police encounters.