Policing Belonging: The Politics of Immigration Enforcement

The Legal Studies Program presents: Policing Belonging: The Politics of Immigration Enforcement. This year, we will be hosting Professor Amada Armenta, UCLA Director of Latino Policy and Politics Institute. In this talk, Amada Armenta traces the policy and practice of immigration enforcement in the United States. Drawing on years of qualitative research with police officers, bureaucrats, and undocumented immigrants, she examines how the politics of enforcement are enacted in everyday life—through discretionary decisions, local collaborations, and moral reasoning. Armenta shows how immigration enforcement generates moral tensions for those who carry it out and existential dilemmas for those forced to live within its reach, revealing a system that exposes the uneven burdens of power and belonging.

2026 Distinguished Lecture (1)