Legitimacy and Cooperation: Will Immigrants Cooperate with Local Police Who Enforce Federal Immigration Law?

Abstract

Solving crimes often requires community cooperation. Cooperation is thought by many scholars to depend critically on whether community members believe that law enforcement institutions are legitimate and trustworthy. Yet establishing an empirical link between legitimacy and cooperation has proven elusive, with most studies relying on surveys or lab experiments of people's beliefs and attitudes, rather than on their behavior in the real world. This Article aims to overcome these shortcomings, capitalizing on a unique natural policy experiment to directly address a fundamental question about legitimacy, cooperation, and law enforcement success: do de-legitimating policy interventions actually undermine community cooperation with the police? The policy experiment is a massive federal immigration enforcement program called Secure Communities. Secure Communities was widely criticized for undermining the legitimacy of local police in the eyes of immigrants, and it was rolled out nationwide over a four-year period in a way that approximates a natural experiment. Using the rate at which police solve crimes as a proxy for community cooperation, we find no evidence that the program reduced community cooperation-despite its massive size and broad scope. The results call into question optimistic claims that discrete policy interventions can, in the short run, meaningfully affect community perceptions of law enforcement legitimacy in ways that shape community cooperation with police.

Immigration enforcement awareness and community engagement with police: Evidence from domestic violence calls in Los Angeles

“…In sum, we find evidence that recent escalations in rhetoric and federal enforcement actions have had a "chilling effect" on calls for service among Latino noncitizens in Los Angeles, most strikingly for domestic violence. These results counter the finding from Cox and Miles (2015) that heightened immigration enforcement has little to no impact on community cooperation with law enforcement. Our findings highlight a major challenge to law enforcement agencies seeking to ensure public safety of Latino immigrant communities as immigration enforcement escalates.…”

“…Only one study has estimated the causal effect of immigration enforcement on community engagement with police. Cox and Miles (2015) examined how the local-federal partnership program, Secure Communities, influenced the rate at which law enforcement agencies solved index crimes, finding little to no impact of the program. 8 Clearance rates served as a proxy for community cooperation with police in that crimes tend to clear when residents participate in criminal investigations.…”

“…The department attributed this decline to heightened mistrust of the criminal justice system amid federal pressure for police agencies to assist immigration authorities. Law enforcement officials have expressed similar concerns (Khashu, 2009), as well as scholarly work on the topic (Cox & Miles, 2015;Vidales et al, 2009;Vishnuvajjala, 2012).…”

“…Prior research has pointed out correlations between immigration enforcement and individual willingness to report crime, showing that crime reporting is inhibited in areas with sizeable immigrant populations. Yet, to date, only one study has examined the influence of immigration enforcement on community cooperation (Cox & Miles, 2015), finding little to no impact of the Secure Communities program on the rate at which crimes are solved.…”

Enforcement, Integration, and the Future of Immigration Federalism

“…The sanctuary designation harkens back to a movement of the 1980s of churches providing safe haven to unauthorized immigrants cum refugees fleeing the civil wars of Central America. 29 One comprehensive academic study finds that Secure Communities, which entails the detainers some localities resist for public safety reasons, has not reduced police ability to resolve crimes(Cox and Miles 2017), though the effects detainers might have on trust and the psychic burdens they impose on immigrants may be hard to measure. 30 Enhancing Public Safety in the Interior of the UnitedStates, Exec.…”