Broken Windows (Immigration) Policing
By Mark Krikorian on February 22, 2018
My colleague Jessica Vaughan has published a look at the resurgence of the hyper-violent MS-13 gang over the past five years or so. It's striking how conventional immigration enforcement is an important tool in battling this kind of threat. Vaughan writes that the Bush administration's Operation Community Shield used immigration law as a key means of disrupting the gang's activities; as she notes,
Documented gang members often were arrested on administrative immigration violations, which had the effect of disrupting the gang's activities and ridding communities of troublemakers. In addition, these lower-level arrests often led to more significant criminal investigations of gang leaders and the dismantling of local MS-13 cliques.
https://cis.org/Krikorian/Broken-Windows-Immigration-Policing
