Tradeoffs and Spillovers in U.S. Criminal Immigration Enforcement

This study examines the unintended consequences of federal criminal prosecution of immigration offenses on incarceration for other crimes. Drawing on bureaucratic politics theory, we argue that routinized procedures and resource constraints may lead to tradeoffs and spillover effects as immigration enforcement increases. Using federal sentencing data from 2001 to 2019, we find evidence of spillover but not tradeoff; increased immigration enforcement is associated with more incarcerations for firearms and narcotics offenses among Latino lawful permanent residents and unauthorized foreign nationals, with stronger effects for the latter group. These “diagonal” and “within group” spillover effects are not sensitive to local U.S. Attorney ideology, suggesting they stem from more mechanistic processes rather than individual preferences. The cumulative impact of these spillover effects is substantial, yielding thousands of additional incarcerations. Our findings have implications for understanding policy implementation and bureaucratic behavior and identify unintended consequences that exacerbate existing racial disparities in the criminal justice system, even absent explicit discriminatory intent.