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Over the past two decades, the U.S. federal government has sought to increase its capacity to find, apprehend, and deport noncitizens residing in the United States who have violated federal immigration laws. One way the federal government has done this is by partnering with state and local law enforcement agencies on immigration enforcement efforts. The present study analyzes the records of all 1,964,756 interior removals between fiscal years 2003 and 2015 to examine how, if at all, the types of criminal convictions leading to removal from the U.S. interior have changed during this period of heightened coordination between law enforcement agencies and whether there are differences by gender and region of origin in the types of convictions leading to removal. Findings show that as coordination between law enforcement agencies intensified, the proportion of individuals removed from the U.S. interior with either no criminal convictions or with a driving-related conviction as their most serious conviction increased. Findings also show that the proportion of individuals removed with no criminal convictions was greater for women than for men and that the share of individuals removed with a driving-related conviction as their most serious conviction was greater for Latin Americans than for individuals from all other regions. Given renewed investment in these types of law enforcement partnerships under the Trump administration, the patterns presented in this article may foreshadow trends to come.
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To preserve, release, and litigate: Dimensions of executive branch transparency
Abstract Transparency is essential for public awareness of government activity and in holding officials accountable for their behavior and decisions. However, executives understandably have a desire to maintain autonomy over the flow of information outside of the executive branch, which can sometimes lead to a clash between government openness and executive control over information. This article investigates executive branch transparency along two specific dimensions: threats to the preservation of government information, and the judicial monitoring of executive branch transparency. Federal law directs executive branch actors to preserve government information. Statutes and regulations detail governing policies as well as guidelines that apply to every presidential administration. However, we consider each rule and recommendation through the lens of the Trump administration to gain greater clarity and precision. The Trump administration proves a useful focus for our empirical analysis because of its recency as well as multiple reports of its improper handling and preservation of records. We lay out and develop a typology of threats to record preservation. Preservation conflicts have emerged across multiple presidential administrations and have become increasingly common and visible. Judicial monitoring of executive branch transparency has become a crucial tool to address the withholding of records. We show that federal judges can play a vital role in defining the boundaries of government transparency through their decisions in Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) litigation. The U.S. Department of Justice oversees and often leads the government's defense against FOIA actions. We find that federal judges are most likely to require executive branch responsiveness and disclosure when the judges' underlying policy preferences are most distant from that of the administration. Our findings should inform reforms to protect government transparency.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2245369
- PAR ID:
- 10488363
- Editor(s):
- Douglas Kriner
- Publisher / Repository:
- Presidential Studies Quarterly
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Presidential Studies Quarterly
- Volume:
- 53
- Issue:
- 2
- ISSN:
- 0360-4918
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 209 to 233
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1111/psq.12824
