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Bordering on Indifference: Immigration Agents Negotiating Race and Morality
How a largely Latino/a workforce of immigration agents reconciles the moral ambiguities of its work
Immigration agents have a frontline view of the racial, economic, and legal inequalities that undocumented migration reflects—and yet most agents do not think of the role their jobs play in those inequalities. Instead, they consider themselves law enforcers, trained to confine their work strictly to crime control and security. In Bordering on Indifference, Irene Vega offers an original, detailed analysis of the rationales that shape how U.S. immigration agents understand and carry out their professional responsibilities. Drawing on interviews with ninety immigration agents—Border Patrol Agents and ICE Deportation Officers, most of whom are Mexican Americans from the region around the border—Vega examines why they took the job and how their training and socialization shape the ways that they grapple with the racial and moral issues raised by their work.
Vega shows that indifference is the bureaucratic resource that allows agents to look away from the most morally ambiguous aspects of their work and helps them cultivate legitimacy for their employer. She traces the development of the agents’ “moral economy”—the configuration of norms, values, and sensibilities that undergirds how they perform their work. She also shows how the immigration system benefits from minoritized bureaucrats’ labor. With Bordering on Indifference, Vega opens the closed doors of nondescript government buildings and goes into remote areas of the Southwestern borderlands to uncover the hidden normative world that immigration enforcement agents inhabit.
Immigration agents have a frontline view of the racial, economic, and legal inequalities that undocumented migration reflects—and yet most agents do not think of the role their jobs play in those inequalities. Instead, they consider themselves law enforcers, trained to confine their work strictly to crime control and security. In Bordering on Indifference, Irene Vega offers an original, detailed analysis of the rationales that shape how U.S. immigration agents understand and carry out their professional responsibilities. Drawing on interviews with ninety immigration agents—Border Patrol Agents and ICE Deportation Officers, most of whom are Mexican Americans from the region around the border—Vega examines why they took the job and how their training and socialization shape the ways that they grapple with the racial and moral issues raised by their work.
Vega shows that indifference is the bureaucratic resource that allows agents to look away from the most morally ambiguous aspects of their work and helps them cultivate legitimacy for their employer. She traces the development of the agents’ “moral economy”—the configuration of norms, values, and sensibilities that undergirds how they perform their work. She also shows how the immigration system benefits from minoritized bureaucrats’ labor. With Bordering on Indifference, Vega opens the closed doors of nondescript government buildings and goes into remote areas of the Southwestern borderlands to uncover the hidden normative world that immigration enforcement agents inhabit.
221 pages, Kindle Edition
Published May 6, 2025
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January 1, 2026
Despite dealing with very controversial law enforcement agents, Vega does a fantastic job fairly describing the job of immigration agents, while not shying away from the unethical work of Border Patrol and ICE. Given my distrust of immigration enforcement officers, I found myself wanting to read more anger from Vega as she assessed her participant's responses. However, I think she did a fantastic job trying to stay as neutral as possible given the very difficult subject she examines. I wanted to know more about the history of these agencies. Although she briefly discussed it in the intro, there was potential to weave in more context and history into each chapter. The conclusion could have discussed the current political climate as well, given that immigration enforcement has taken a significantly more adversarial approach compared to when she completed her fieldwork. I couldn't put down the book and this is rare when it comes to academic books. Highly recommend!
Displaying 1 of 1 review