An Agency Perspective on Immigration Federalism

Original

An Agency Perspective on Immigration Federalism

Asya Magazinnik

Abstract

American local law enforcement agencies now engage in an unprecedented degree of cooperation with the federal government to police immigration in the nation’s interior. I argue that this regime of “cooperative federalism” in immigration enforcement is an intentional and strategic use of the federal executive’s authority. Drawing insight from the bureaucratic agency literature, I develop a formal model that analyzes the president’s decision to invite subnational participation in policymaking. An empirical analysis of the 287(g) program highlights the model’s central trade-off. By deputizing local officers with the powers of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, 287(g) allowed willing local participants to share the costs of enforcement with federal authorities. But the localities that selected into the program were preference outliers who wielded their newfound agency differently from their federal counterparts: Rather than using the immigration system to help police felonies, they deployed the criminal justice system to police immigration.