Description
Ever-growing concern with immigration has increasingly become a vehicle for expanding the scope of the Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. As part of this expansion, local law enforcement agencies are encouraged to enter into agreements with the federal government that allow them to act as federal agents for the enforcement of immigration law. This cooperative effort is known as the 287(g) program. The question addressed in this thesis is whether county-level agency participation in this program has demonstrated a statistically significant relationship with crime reduction from 2008 to 2010 when compared with county agencies not participating. After controlling for multiple intervening variables and executing multiple analyses, it was determined that only two of seven dependent variable (Motor Vehicle Theft and Burglary) categories showed such a negative relationship. Furthermore, upon conducting analyses excluding anomalous cases, it was concluded that these two relationships were dependent upon the inclusion of Los Angeles County in the sample. The significance of using a regression analysis to determine relationships between variables is to establish if policies are applying resources and enforcement to real problems. 287(g) claims to reduce crime and increase public safety through cooperation between local and federal agencies by removing criminal immigrant threats. This claim is not supported by the following analysis and opens the door for further research into effective policies for increasing public safety and for real immigration reform.
