Abstract

The crimmigration literature has primarily focused on the way that the enforcement of civil immigration law by criminal justice agencies has adversely affected immigrants. This literature has highlighted harmful policing practices and punitive policies that restrict immigrant access to resources. The current study adds to the crimmigration literature by expanding on Menjívar and Abrego’s (2012) framework of legal violence and investigating how this type of symbolic violence emerges at the structural level. First, I organize a legal review of the 50 U.S. states and include all active legislation between 2016 to 2019 that outlines how states address the enforcement of federal immigration law. Second, I develop a variable that categorizes each state based on the type of immigration legislation enacted and I use this variable along with immigrant destination type to investigate federal sentencing patterns between citizens, undocumented immigrants, and documented immigrants and the differences evidenced across states. My analyses show that undocumented immigrants are subject to legal violence through restrictive state immigration legislation and criminal justice mechanisms that expose them to greater punishment (Menjívar and Abrego 2012). First, the legal review shows that states with anti-immigrant policies prioritize the enforcement of immigration law but vary in their level of restrictiveness. Some statutes decrease criminal justice penalties to allow for a seamless transfer to federal custody and some explicitly restrict bail and bonding options for immigrants due to their flight risk status. Second, the results from the quantitative analyses show that both undocumented and documented immigrants have higher odds of serving presentence detention and higher odds of being sentenced to prison compared to citizens. Furthermore, these disparities vary across states with the gap between citizens and undocumented immigrants appearing greater in new destinations compared to traditional destinations and anti-immigrant states compared to immigrant protective states, which is consistent with the immigrant threat hypothesis. This study’s findings have significant implications for the discussion on immigration federalism and specifically understanding the role of states in federal immigration enforcement. Policymakers should address the disparities apparent across federal courts by prioritizing legislative efforts toward a functioning federal immigration system.