Book presentation to highlight policing, deportation.

The timely — and controversial — topic of policing and immigration enforcement will be the focus of El Centro native and University of Pennsylvania assistant sociology professor Amada Armenta’s book presentation next week in El Centro.

In contrast to other sociological works about how unauthorized immigrants’ lives are impacted by increased anti-immigrant rhetoric and immigration enforcement, Armenta’s book highlights the actions and attitudes of local authorities who are tasked with implementing immigration enforcement mandates.

“I’m interested in the power,” Armenta said.

Specifically, “Protect, Serve and Deport: The Rise of Policing as Immigration Enforcement,” focuses on local law enforcement efforts in Nashville, Tenn., following the city’s participation in 2007 in the federal 287(g) program, which allows local law enforcement agencies to engage in immigration enforcement activities.

Currently, about 60 jurisdictions nationwide are participating in the joint program with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a dramatic rise coinciding with the presidency of Donald Trump.

At the time that the city of Nashville implemented the program, it counted itself among a relatively few local participating jurisdictions.

“This was sort of revolutionary at the time,” Armenta said, noting that the program appeared to be “on its way out” prior to the election of Trump.

The book itself was the result of two years Armenta had spent conducting research in Nashville between 2009 and 2010, as a University of California, Los Angeles graduate student. That initial fieldwork included multiple interviews and “ride-alongs” with Metropolitan Nashville Police Department (MNPD) and Davidson County Sheriff’s Office (DCSO) officials.

The Central Union High School and Rice University graduate said her interest in immigration dates back to her childhood in the Valley, where the U.S. Border Patrol was a common site, and having to declare one’s citizenship at checkpoints was a common occurrence, and inconvenience.

“I think that when you live in the shadow of a border fence we tend to think of (immigration) enforcement as normal or natural,” Armenta said. “I always thought it was fundamentally unfair.”

That interest in immigration also included the circumstances facing newly-arrived Latino immigrants in locales far flung from the nation’s Southwest border, places that at times would serve as “ground zero” for anti-immigrant backlash, she said.

Nashville, located in Davidson County, appeared to fit that description. The city’s Latino population reportedly went from “negligible” in 1990, to 5 percent in 2000, and then 10 percent in 2010, Armenta’s book stated.

Davidson County’s implementation of the 287(g) program was prompted largely in part by a June 2006 head-on drunk driving collision involving a Mexican national that killed the driver and passenger of the second vehicle.

Local residents were particularly outraged because the perpetrator had previous drunk-driving arrests and had been deported in the past, Armenta said.

In a Sept. 2006 press release announcing the participation of DCSO and MNPD in the 287(g) program, Sheriff Daron Hall stated that the program would target “only those illegal immigrants who have a blatant disregard for laws in Davidson County.”

During the county’s five-year participation in the 287(g) program, more than 10,000 mostly Mexican and Central American immigrants were targeted for removal, often times arrested for minor offenses like traffic violations, Armenta said.

“They were quite proud of the work that they were doing, even though the majority that were processed for removal were not actual criminals,” Armenta said.

While the MNPD reportedly held the opinion that it solely arrested individuals and was not actively engaging in immigration enforcement, its decision to frequently arrest and jail Latino immigrants ensured that those without lawful immigration status would be identified and targeted for removal, Armenta said.

“They sort of washed their hands of it,” she said.

Armenta’s book also elaborates on how certain laws, policies and practices considered to be “race-neutral” can often have a disproportionate effect on communities of color, including immigrant enclaves.

While residents of states and locales may often come to think of existing laws and policies as the norm, as a sociologist, Armenta is trained to probe the underlying factors that give rise to such policies.

“Nothing about the law is natural,” she said. “We decide who is in the law and outside of the law.”

Armenta’s book presentation will be from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. Sept. 1 at the El Centro Public Library, 1140 N. Imperial Ave.

A free downloadable copy of her book, published by the University of California Press, can be found at https://www.luminosoa. org/site/books/10.1525/ luminos.33/