How Partisan Is Local Law Enforcement? Evidence from Sheriff Cooperation with Immigration Authorities

Abstract

Is local law enforcement conducted differently based on the party in power? I offer an answer to this question by focusing on a case in which law enforcement is elected and has meaningful independent discretion: sheriff compliance with federal requests to detain unauthorized immigrants. Using a regression discontinuity design in a new dataset of over 3,200 partisan sheriff elections and administrative data on sheriff behavior, I find that Democrats and Republicans comply at nearly the same rate. These results contribute to ongoing research into the role that partisanship plays in local policy making, indicating that law enforcement officers make similar choices across party lines even when they have broad authority. I also present evidence that sheriffs hold more similar immigration enforcement views across party than the general public, highlighting the role of candidate entry and selection in determining the level of partisan polarization.

Party and Ideology in American Local Government: An Appraisal

“…Ferreira & Gyourko (2009) find no effect of mayoral partisanship on fiscal outcomes, and Gerber & Hopkins (2011) find that the election of Republican mayors leads to a greater share of local spending on police and fire protection but no other significant effects. In a more recent study, Thompson (2020) finds that Democratic and Republican elected sheriffs (county officials) comply with federal government immigration requests at similar rates. But other studies find clearer effects of elite partisanship.…”

Regression discontinuity designs: a hands-on guide for practice

“…Another set of studies has used this design to look at the effect of electoral victory on the behavior of political elites. For example, Thompson (2020) looks at whether local-level law enforcement differs based on the party in power. Looking into the effect of compliance with federal requests to detain unauthorized migrants under the Trump administration, the author finds no evidence that Democratic sheriffs are less likely to comply than are Republican ones.…”

The Rise (and Fall) of Elected Sheriffs

“…Progressive candidates for sheriff in 2018 experienced a bump when the incumbent in the race was associated with federal immigration enforcement (Zoorob 2019b). On the other hand, despite polarization over law enforcement issues at the national level, recent research shows that Republican and Democratic sheriffs chosen in close elections are nearly indistinguishable when it comes to their enforcement behavior (Thompson 2020a).…”

“…Sheriffs operate law enforcement departments in the vast majority of counties, employ 25% of full-time sworn officers, and oversee 85% of local jails (Brooks 2019, Reaves andHickman 1998). State constitutions and local laws grant sheriffs wide-ranging discretion to set law enforcement priorities, and sheriffs today are important actors in a number of policy arenas, including gun control, immigration, and public health (Brown 1978, Falcone and Wells 1995, Farris and Holman 2015, Farris and Holman 2017, Thompson 2020a. At the same time, there is an ongoing debate about monitoring the behavior of sheriffs and other police.…”

“…Sheriffs in Massachusetts and New Jersey oversee local jails as well, but do not focus on criminal investigations. detention requests (Thompson 2020a, Chand 2019, civil asset forfeitures (Nelson 2017), gun permits and gun control (Salonga 2019, Goldstein 2019, Mascia 2020), and sending aid to suppress anti-pipeline protests (Monet 2016).…”