Author: Mary Romero

In this article published in Sociology Compass, Mary Romero and Gabriella Sanchez assess the impact and potential of critical race theory as a framework for understanding immigration in the United States. They argue that mainstream immigration scholarship has been limited by frameworks that treat race as peripheral rather than central to the organization of immigration law, enforcement, and public discourse.

The authors demonstrate how CRT’s core concepts — including the social construction of race, interest convergence, and counter-storytelling — can illuminate aspects of the immigration experience that conventional sociological approaches overlook: the racial logic embedded in immigration categories, the differential enforcement that targets some communities while leaving others untouched, and the ways immigrants of color navigate a system structured by racial hierarchy.

Romero and Sanchez review the emerging body of scholarship that applies CRT to immigration studies and identify areas where further research is needed, including the intersections of race with gender, class, and citizenship status in shaping immigrant experiences.

How did Mexican immigrant women come to be framed as a threat to the American family? In this article, Mary Romero traces the political and media discourse that transformed ordinary women — mothers, workers, community members — into symbols of cultural danger and demographic invasion in the American imagination.

Romero analyzes the rhetoric deployed by anti-immigration activists, politicians, and media commentators who portrayed Mexican immigrant women’s fertility as a weapon, their families as burdens on public services, and their cultural practices as incompatible with American values. This discourse, Romero argues, draws on deep historical patterns of racial scapegoating while adapting them to contemporary anxieties about borders, demographics, and national identity.

The article examines how the construction of immigrant women as threats has real policy consequences — justifying raids, family separations, and the denial of basic services to some of the most vulnerable members of American communities. Published in the International Journal of Sociology of the Family, this research reveals the gendered dimensions of anti-immigration politics.

nadvism sendment demanding more draconian measures against non-cidzens residing illegally in the United States, particularly towards immigrants of color.' The use of military language in describing immigradon raids conducted by homeland security,^ along with a growing number of nativist extremist groups,' set the backdrop for some and-immigrant groups to claim the existence of a Mexican invasion in the United States," Numerous immigration scholars have commented on the significance of costumes and props used by the Minutemen that reinforce the existence of an invasion—military fadgues, binoculars, bulletproof vests, walkie-talkies, and guns,^ Likewise, the use of federal agents armed with rifles and wearing bulletproof vests to raid homes, work sites, and shopping malls also suggests that immigradon is a threat to national security, Eurthermore, creadng the visible barrier of a wall between Mexico and the United States is an extremely significant political symbol. The large number of deportations conducted in recent years creates an economic, pohtical, and social environment that legitimizes

* Professor and Faculty Head of Justice and Social Inquiry, School of Social Transformation, Arizona State University. Mary Romero holds a Ph.D. from the University of Colorado in Sociology. ' See 2010 Ariz. Sess. Laws 113. ^ See generally U.S. IMMIGR. & CUSTOMS ENFORCEMENT (Jan. 21, 2011), http://www.ice.

gov/index.htm (describing ICE National Fugitive Operations Campaign, Operation Return to Sender, and Operation Endgame). ' See, e.g.. W E HATE GRINGOS, http://www.WeHateGringos.com (last visited August 27, 2007) (on file with author) (a popular website which argued that the United States was being invaded by Mexico); see also Heidi Beirich et al., S. Poverty L. Ctr., The Nativists: Profiles of 20 Anti-Immigrant Leaders, 129 INTELLIGENCE REP. (2008), available at http://www.splcenter. org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2008/spring/the-nativists?page=0,4 (quoting Michelle Dallacroce's discussion of a Mexican invasion). '' See Mary Romero, "Go After the Women": Mothers Against Illegal Aliens' Campaign Against Mexican Immigrant Women and Their Children, 83 IND. L.J. 1355, 1387-88 (2008). ' See generally, Leo R. Chavez, Spectacle in the Desert: The Minuteman Project on the US-Mexico Border, in GLOBAL VIGILANTES 25 (David Pratten & Atreyee Sen eds., 2008); ROXANNE LYNN DOTY, THE LAW INTO THEIR OWN HANDS: IMMIGRATION AND THE POLITICS OF EXCEPTIONALISM ( 2 0 0 9 ) .

DAVID A. HARRIS, PROFILES OF INJUSTICE: WHY POLICE PROFILING CANNOT WORK 13 (2002). DR. JOHN C. LAMBERTH, DATA COLLECTION AND BENCHMARKING OF THE BIAS POLICING PROJECT: FINAL REPORT FOR THE METROPOLITAN POLICE DEPARTMENT IN THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA 7 (Sept. 2006), available at http://www.lamberthconsulting.com/downloads. 7. See supra note 5, at 51 (citing the President‘s Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice). 8. DR. JOHN C. LAMBERTH, SAN ANTONIO REPORT: RACIAL PROFILING DATA ANALYSIS (Dec. 2003), available at http://www.lamberthconsulting.com/about-racial-profiling/documents/SanAntonioReport10804FinalVersion.pdf. 9. Id. at 9. 10. See U.S. DEPT. JUSTICE, FACT SHEET: RACIAL PROFILING (June 17, 2003), available at http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2003/June/racial_profiling_fact_sheet.pdf. 11. Funding for the conference was obtained from the SOROS Foundation. The conference was co-hosted by the Institute on Race and Justice at Northeastern University the American Civil Liberties Union, the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement, and Lamberth Consulting. There were 52 papers presented at the conference. Racial Profiling in the 21st Century: Implications for Racial Justice Search Results, United States Department of Justice, http://searchjustice.usdoj.gov/search?q=Racial+Profiling+in+the+21st+Century%3A+Implications+for+Racial+Justice &btnG.x=16&btnG.y=11&btnG=Search&sort=date%3AD%3AL%3Ad1&output=xml_no_dtd&ie=iso-88591&oe=UTF-8&client=default_frontend&proxystylesheet=default_frontend&site=default_collection (last visited April 14, 2011). 12. See AMESTY INTERNATIONAL U.S. DOMESTIC HUMAN RIGHTS PROGRAM, THREAT AND HUMILIATION: RACIAL PROFILING, NATIONAL SECURITY, AND HUMAN RIGHTS IN THE UNITED STATES (Sept. 2004) available at http://www.amnestyusa.org/racial_profiling/report/rp_report.pdf.

This study, carried out in a barrio neighborhood near the U.S.-Mexican border, uses a structural violence perspective to understand the extent of and individual

RESEARCH ARTICLE Crossing the immigration and race border: A critical race theory approach to immigration studies Mary Romero* School of Justice and Social Inquiry, Arizona State University, Tempe, USA In this essay I discuss the conceptual and practical benefits of employing critical race theory to the field of immigration studies. It is widely acknowledged, and regrettable, that sociological research on immigration has not departed much from its original conceptual beginnings established by the Chicago School of Sociology during the 1920s and 1930s. The Chicago sociologists distinguished between newly arrived ‘immigrants’ and their children, who were identified as ‘ethnic groups.’ Research questions are still being developed that rely on the Chicagoans’ theoretical categories of race, ethnicity, and immigration – categories that are treated as being mutually exclusive. While researchers focusing on the globalization of immigration have now formulated new analyses of race, social exclusion, and social inequality, research on immigration to the United States remains confined to questions concerning assimilation, acculturation, generational conflict, and social mobility. It is unfortunate that mainstream sociological research has completely ignored the groundbreaking work of critical race theory (CRT), which addresses more relevant issues, such as racial profiling, antiimmigration sentiment, the increased militarization of the US–Mexico border, and the high number of immigrant deaths on the border. As such, CRT has much to offer sociologists in their work on immigration.

Contemporary 10.1080/10282580701850371 GCJR_A_285185.sgm 1028-2580 Original Taylor 102008 11 Mary.Romero@asu.edu MaryRomero 00000March and & Article Francis (print)/1477-2248 Francis 2008 Justice Ltd LtdReview(online)

Introduction Largely in response to the civil rights movement of the 1960s and 1970s, scholarship in the sociology of race abandoned the conceptual framework of Robert E. Park, Ernest W. Burgess, and others who, during the 1920 and 1930s, had developed urban sociology at the University of Chicago. Using the city of Chicago as a ‘natural laboratory’ for conducting urban social research, members of the Chicago School (Park, 1922; Park, Burgess, McKenzie, & Wirth, 1925; Thomas & Znaniecki, 1958; Wirth, 1956) focused their work on immigrants who settled in locales that recruited their labor. Adopting Simmel’s social type of ‘the stranger’ as a heuristic in their detached role as researchers, they studied immigrant populations moving into Chicago’s ‘natural areas.’ Building on theories of social organization and conflict, Park and Burgess described immigrants’ social experiences as being those of competition, conflict, or accommodation. Indeed, they saw these experiences as steps toward the inevitable process of assimilation. One of the first major critiques of the Chicago School’s theoretical framework on immigration was made by Blauner (1972), who criticized: (1) its failure to recognize that race and ethnic groups persist as central entities in modern society; (2) its reduction of racism and racial oppression to economic, psychological, and other determining factors; (3) its focus on White prejudice while ignoring structural and institutional racism; and (4) its blanket application of the analogy *Email: mary.romero@asu.edu ISSN 1028-2580 print/ISSN 1477-2248 online © 2008 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/10282580701850371 http://www.informaworld.com

"Go After the Women": Mothers Against Illegal Aliens' Campaign Against Mexican Immigrant Women and Their Children Mary Romero Arizona State University

Follow this and additional works at: http://www.repository.law.indiana.edu/ilj Part of the Immigration Law Commons, and the International Law Commons Recommended Citation Romero, Mary (2008) ""Go After the Women": Mothers Against Illegal Aliens' Campaign Against Mexican Immigrant Women and Their Children," Indiana Law Journal: Vol. 83: Iss. 4, Article 8. Available at: http://www.repository.law.indiana.edu/ilj/vol83/iss4/8

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In the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, immigration enforcement in the United States underwent a dramatic escalation that disproportionately impacted Latino communities. This article by Mary Romero examines how racial profiling became embedded in routine immigration enforcement practices, transforming everyday encounters with law enforcement into sites of racial surveillance and control.

Romero documents how the “rounding up of usual suspects” — a pattern of targeting individuals based on racial appearance, language, and surname rather than evidence of immigration violations — created a climate of fear that extended far beyond undocumented immigrants to affect U.S. citizens and legal residents of Latin American descent.

The analysis draws on legal cases, community testimony, and policy analysis to demonstrate how the conflation of Latinidad with illegality has produced a system of de facto racial policing that violates constitutional protections and undermines the civil rights of millions of Americans. Published in Critical Sociology, this article has become an important reference for scholars studying the intersection of immigration enforcement and racial justice.