They Watch for Color: Mixed-status Couples Experience With the Police

This research qualitatively examines experiences with the police for 42 interracial mixed-status couples, living or originating mainly from the Southern United States. Race-based policing operates within a structure of racist nativism where white skin is a marker of U.S. citizenship, and brown skin is an indication of being foreign-born. Law enforcement at all levels, including the local level, situated their attention toward Latino immigrant men, especially those perceived as working-class, when compared to white U.S. citizen wives. The penalties for racial profiling included family strain through detention and deportation of Latin-American born men. In addition to human rights violations for undocumented Latino immigrants, U.S. citizens are serving as collateral damage in an already broken immigration system that racially profiles Latino immigrant men. Couples’ precariousness situations contest the rhetoric that police are only protecting citizens’ national security. Framed by racist nativism, the findings have implications for anti-oppressive, evidence-based immigration policy.