Policing an Internal Border

Within the context of global trade and migration to cities in the 1980s, the department remobilized to expand its discretionary authority to combat the growing number of undocumented migrants. Hoping to maintain the trust of new immigrant populations, officials limited police authority to make arrests based on immigration status. Yet, the LAPD constructed an “alien criminal” category to justify cooperation with the Immigration and Naturalization Service and to arrest undocumented immigrants and refugees fleeing South and central America. In the process, the LAPD employed racialized constructions of illegality that criminalized the city’s Latino/a population in the name of protecting the image of Los Angeles as a world city.