On the Radar: System Embeddedness and Latin American Immigrants' Perceived Risk of Deportation

Abstract

Drawing on in‐depth interviews with 50 Latin American immigrants in Dallas, Texas, this article uncovers systematic distinctions in how immigrants holding different legal statuses perceive the threat of deportation. Undocumented immigrants recognize the precarity of their legal status, but they sometimes feel that their existence off the radar of the US immigration regime promotes their long‐term presence in the country. Meanwhile, documented immigrants perceive stability in their legal status, but they sometimes view their existence on the radar of the US immigration regime as disadvantageous to their long‐term presence in the country. The article offers the concept of system embeddedness—individuals' perceived legibility to institutions that maintain formal records—as a mechanism through which perceived visibility to the US immigration regime entails feelings of risk, and perceived invisibility feelings of safety. In this way, the punitive character of the US immigration regime can overwhelm its integrative functions, chilling immigrants out of opportunities for material and social well‐being through legalization and legal status. More broadly, system embeddedness illuminates how perceived visibility to a record‐keeping body that combines punitive and integrative goals represents a mechanism of legal stratification for subordinated populations—even absent prior punitive experiences with other social control institutions that might otherwise be thought to trigger their system avoidance.

Getting Eyes in the Home: Child Protective Services Investigations and State Surveillance of Family Life

“…The investigator had recommended a grief counselor, suggested strategies for engaging with the child’s school, and referred the family to a program that helped find and pay for summer camp. The mother appreciated these interventions, yet she recognized they came at a cost: a lasting, formal record with CPS and uncertainty about how it might be used against her (see also Asad 2020).…”

“…The constraints, aspirations, and decisions of street-level bureaucrats may vary based on clients’ race and class (Epp, Maynard-Moody, and Haider-Markel 2017; Fagan et al 2016; Soss et al 2011) to make some families more visible to the state than others. Although the dual nature of surveillance may provide some families with needed support, the possibility of coercive intervention as well as the record-keeping involved in surveillance may provoke anxiety and fear (Asad 2020; Goffman 2009). Moreover, with referrals originating from street-level bureaucrats, surveillance maintains an intimacy that may shift relationships in its aftermath.…”

Deportation Decisions: Judicial Decision-Making in an American Immigration Court

“…Deportation emerged as a primary mechanism for regulating "legal" and "illegal" noncitizens alike beginning in the 1980s (Asad, 2018;Joseph, 2018; see García Hernández, 2014, for a comprehensive review). Policy changes imported tools from criminal law and justice into immigration law and enforcement (Stumpf, 2006), limiting judicial discretion and noncitizens' due process rights along the way (Kanstroom, 2007; see also Chacón, 2010).…”

“…On the one hand, a voluntary departure converts into a removal order, preventing noncompliant noncitizens from accessing visas and other immigration benefits for a period of at least 10 years. On the other hand, a record of noncompliance with immigration officials' decisions can compromise evaluations of noncitizens as moral, law-abiding individuals (Asad, 2018)an important quality in a federal immigration regime that valorizes noncitizens' "good moral character." 20 The case of a pro se Mexican national I observed exemplifies the compounding effects of immigration officials' attempts at discretion for noncitizens' future legalization opportunities.…”

“…1 Deportation's recent rise as a tool to regulate noncitizens owes to a series of federal reforms since the late 1980s that have imported practices from criminal law and justice into immigration law and enforcement, a phenomenon known as "crimmigration" (Stumpf, 2006). A growing literature has depicted the far-reaching consequences of removal for noncitizens, their U.S.-citizen family members and communities, and the countries to which they are deported (see, e.g., Asad & Clair, 2018;Dingeman-Cerda, 2017;Hagan, Eschbach, & Rodriguez, 2008;Menjívar, Abrego, & Schmalzbauer, 2016).…”