The role of digital surveillance, immigration control and street gang enforcement that are playing a role in immigration enforcement will be the topic of the next Conversations on Race and Policing, set for noon on Wednesday, March 16, on Zoom.

Ana Muñiz, assistant professor of criminology, law, and society at University of California, Irvine, will discuss her forthcoming book, “Borderland Circuitry: Immigration Surveillance in the United States and Beyond.” The presentation is free and open to the public, and can be accessed from a PC, Mac, Linux, iOS or Android at https://csusb.zoom.us/j/97960458784.

According to the webpage for the book, “Muñiz illuminates three phenomena that are becoming increasingly intertwined: digital surveillance, immigration control, and gang enforcement. Using ethnography, interviews, and analysis of documents never before seen, Muñiz uncovers how information-sharing partnerships between local police, state and federal law enforcement, and foreign partners collide to create multiple digital borderlands. Diving deep into a select group of information systems, ‘Borderland Circuitry’ reveals how those with legal and political power deploy the specter of violent cross-border criminals to justify intensive surveillance, detention, brutality, deportation, and the destruction of land for border militarization.”

Muñiz is also the author of “Police, Power, and the Production of Racial Boundaries (Rutgers University Press, 2015),” which examined how the Los Angeles Police Department, city prosecutors, and business owners struggled to control who should be considered “dangerous” and how they should be policed in Los Angeles.

Conversations on Race and Policing, also known as CoRP, began in the aftermath of the May 25, 2020, death of George Floyd while in the custody of four Minneapolis, Minn., police officers. A video of the incident posted on social media led to widespread protests, the firing of four police officers, the arrest and conviction of one officer on a second-degree murder and related charges, the other three on charges of aiding and abetting second-degree murder – and a spotlight worldwide on race and policing.

The series has featured scholars, journalists, law enforcement officers, lawyers, activists, artists, educators, administrators and others from throughout the nation who shared their experience and expertise on issues related to race and policing.

More than 50 forums have taken place, and video recordings of the sessions are posted online on the Conversations on Race and Policing Lecture Series Archive. 

The next scheduled Conversations on Race and Policing, each at noon on Wednesdays, include:

  • April 13: “Dr. Zachary Powell on Consent Decrees,” presented by Zachary Powell, CSUSB assistant professor of criminal justice; and  
  • April 27: “Presumed Guilty: How the Supreme Court Empowered the Police and Subverted Civil Rights,” presented by Erwin Chemerinsky, Dean of Berkeley Law, and Jesse H. Choper Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley. 

The series is organized by CSUSB students Marlo Brooks, Zoralynn Oglesby, Evelyn Jimenez, Jade McDonald, Jaime Castro and Connie Cornejo; Mary Texeira, CSUSB professor of sociology; Jeremy Murray, CSUSB associate professor of history; Robie Madrigal, public affairs/communication specialist for the CSUSB John M. Pfau Library; and community member Stan Futch, president of the Westside Action Group.

For more information, contact Robie Madrigal at rmadriga@csusb.edu or Jeremy Murray at jmurray@csusb.edu.

Also visit the Conversations on Race and Policing webpage.

Conversations on Race and Policing flyer, March 19 event