Immigrants as Symbolic Assailants

Abstract

Despite little evidence of an immigration-crime nexus, many American jurisdictions have adopted a punitive approach to undocumented immigrants and an increasingly restrictive and exclusive system of immigration control. The extensive deployment of criminal justice measures to address the immigration “problem” led to the growth of a crimmigration apparatus—a mesh of immigration and criminal justice systems. Drawing on extant literature and applying the framework of the penal field, the article examines the social dynamics, processes, and consequences of crimmigration. It is argued that the portrayal of immigrants as “symbolic assailants” has facilitated the creation and operation of crimmigration under the guise of crime prevention rather than for addressing terrorism and national security—the presumed purpose of utilizing crimmigration practices. The current configuration of crimmigration across the United States is the interactive product of minority threat, partisan politics, and federalism of the American government system, which have jointly formed a “multilayered patchwork” of immigration control. The article first outlines the analytical framework; reviews the social construction of immigrant “criminality”; and describes the punitive and exclusive laws, policies, and enforcement practices established as responses to this “threat.” The dilemmas, contradictions, and contestations associated with crimmigration, including collateral impacts on immigrants, their families and communities, and the criminal justice system, are analyzed; and policy implications are drawn and discussed.

El Amigo y El Esé: Stereotyping of the “Criminal Immigrant”

“…Criminological and sociological perspectives on stereotyping and prejudice draw heavily from the symbolic interactionist tradition (Müller, 2019), laying the groundwork for multiple frameworks that identify “criminogenic” groups, including the minority/group threat hypothesis (King & Wheelock, 2007), the symbolic assailant narrative (Jiang & Erez, 2017), and central to our discussion here, the CIN (Warner, 2005). These perspectives link inflammatory discourse to moral panics (Longazel, 2013; Tosh, 2019) and systemic racism within institutions to the racial and ethnic groups associated with undesirable attributes (Feagin, 2013).…”

Crimmigrating Narratives: Examining Third-Party Observations of US Detained Immigration Court

“…Empirical research confirms that IJs are less likely to grant bond to detainees with a criminal history (Ryo 2016), particularly Central Americans with felony and violent crime convictions (Ryo 2019a). Despite little proof that crime is linked to immigration, threat narratives demonstrate how detainees’ criminal histories compound their immigration status (Jiang and Erez 2018). Some non-citizens may have committed immigration violations—such as an unauthorized entry into the United States—that are either civil violations that do not result in criminal sanctions or low-level crimes that result in little to no criminal penalties.…”

The ‘Not so Safe’ Third Country Agreement: An Analysis of the Canada-U.S. Safe Third Country Agreement

“…Crimmigration law systematically leads to criminal convictions having immigration law consequences where violations of immigration law are increasingly being punished through the criminal law system (Saad-Diniz, 2018). There has been an increasing use of criminal justice in immigration control such as the use of border monitoring and increased policing of immigrants, along with denial of rights of new immigrants through detention and deportation (Jiang & Erez, 2018). Crimmigration creates and perpetuates the notions that refugees do not "belong" to certain societies and are often criminalized to further exclude them (Stumpf, 2006).…”

“…The increasing anti-immigration sentiments and the increasing use of boundaries have created the notion of immigrants as "symbolic assailants" . This has led to immigrants, such as asylum seekers, being perceived and constructed as threats to the American societies (Jiang & Erez, 2018).…”