Month: February 2025

Intergovernmental Implementation in a Time of Uncooperative Federalism: Immigration Enforcement and Federal Secure Communities Program, 2011–14

by William D. Schreckhise & Daniel E. Chand

On the first day of his second term, Present Trump signed an executive order taking aim at “so-called sanctuary jurisdictions,” marking his latest attempt to step up immigration enforcement in progressive, pro-immigrant communities. While there’s no universal definition as to what constitutes “sanctuary” jurisdictions, the most accepted definition are communities that limit state and local law enforcement participation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), enforcement program known as Secure Communities (S-Comm).

S-Comm is, essentially, a nationwide immigration screening program. It has long been commonplace for jails to share an individual’s name and biometric information (e.g., photo, fingerprints, etc.) with federal authorities to see if the person has a criminal record or any outstanding warrants when an individual is arrested and booked. S-Comm further shares this information with ICE, which screens the individual for immigration violations.

If ICE suspects an individual of being in the country without proper authorization, it can issue an ICE detainer, which requests the jail to hold the individual for up to 48 hours so that ICE can take custody of the person and begin deportation proceedings. ICE can, and frequently does, detain individuals under S-Comm regardless of whether the charges for the original arrest are dropped. From the time S-Comm became nationwide operational in 2013 through 2020, roughly 700,00 individuals were removed from the country.

S-Comm was (and still is) controversial. Numerous local governments, mostly counties, have passed various measures in opposition to the program. Other governments went further, explicitly prohibiting their officers from contacting ICE and prohibiting their agencies from spending money in ways that otherwise could help ICE. However, other governments essentially did the opposite with some states requiring their counties to honor ICE detainer requests.

In our PSJ article, we examined the extent to which state and local governments play a role in implementing federal policy, focusing on the patterns of interaction between federal actors and nonfederal actors implementing S-Comm. Specifically, we examine the extent to which localities and states could hinder or help with the program’s implementation.

To determine what role these subnational policies could play, we collected county-level ICE removal data and information about which states and localities adopted policies aimed at either helping ICE by mandating their agencies honor detainer requests or hindering ICE’s efforts prohibiting that they cooperate with ICE’s detainer requests.

We found that states and counties can indeed play a prominent role. Taking these various other factors into account, counties that passed so-called “sanctuary” ordinances saw roughly 30% fewer deportations. Counties in states that had passed their own state-level “sanctuary” laws saw a similar decline. States that passed legislation requiring their localities to cooperate with ICE saw 44% more deportations.

We also wanted to determine to what extent the presence of the cooperative and noncooperative policies was reflected in what ICE itself was doing. It is one thing for counties and states to simply refuse to cooperate; it is entirely another for ICE to modify its own behavior because of these policies. To do this, we redirected the variables to determine whether they could help explain the extent to which ICE was making detainer requests in the first place. Again, we found that ICE was making fewer detainer requests in states and counties where cooperation with ICE was prohibited and making more in states where the counties were directed to cooperate.

Considering the ongoing debate over immigration enforcement policies, our findings underscore the significant impact of state and local policies on the implementation of federal initiatives, like S-Comm. The presence of subnational policies not only shape the outcome of the policy, but also how the federal agencies, like ICE, behave when implementing federal programs.

You can read the original article in Policy Studies Journal at

Schreckhise, W.D. and Chand, D.E. (2021), Intergovernmental Implementation in a Time of Uncooperative Federalism: Immigration Enforcement and Federal Secure Communities Program, 2011–14. Policy Stud J, 49: 1160-1188. https://doi.org/10.1111/psj.12426

About the Authors

William D. Schreckhise is professor in the University of Arkansas’ Department of Political Science. He earned his Ph.D. from Washington State University’s Department of Political Science. His research interests include policy implementation and bureaucratic discretion. His the author of Evaluating American Democracy and Public Policy.


Daniel E. Chand (“Danny”) received his Ph.D. in Public Policy in the Policy Management specialization at the University of Arkansas. His research focuses on the implementation of immigration policy, examining the roles of actors such as immigrant-serving nonprofits, immigration judges, and ICE officers. In addition to PSJ, his work has appeared in journals like Policy Sciences and Voluntas.

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Mixed Messages and Bounded Rationality: The Perverse Consequences of REAL ID for Immigration Policy

by Maureen Stobb, Banks Miller, & Joshua Kennedy

The President and Congress have renewed efforts in the past year to reshape immigration policy. Yet, if history can teach us anything, it is that outcomes in this area tend not to match intent. Our research looks at a clear example of this mismatch, the REAL ID Act, a law aimed at tightening refugee admissions by taking control away from liberal judges on the U.S. Courts of Appeals. Despite its intent, it resulted in more people getting asylum. In our research we ask, what explains this policy gap?

We contend that part of the answer lies in the REAL ID Act’s ambivalent language, a common characteristic of policy concerning undocumented immigrants. The law gave the street-level bureaucrats who decide asylum cases —immigration judges (IJs)— more discretion to deny bogus asylum claims. They no longer had to point to an inconsistency undermining a key aspect of the persecution claim to find the applicant not credible. They could deny based on inconsistencies such as birthdays and wedding dates that have no connection to the asylum claim. At the same time, the law required IJs to consider all the circumstances, potentially reincorporating some of the former rule.

What did IJs do in this situation? They are supposed to follow the precedent in the circuit with jurisdiction over where they sit, but the President controls their hiring and firing, and Congress writes the law and determines their budget. We argue that IJs, behaving in a bounded rationality framework, relied on their professional training as lawyers as a shortcut and were considerably more deferential to the circuit courts who read every opinion they write.

We find just that. As the figure below shows, the adoption of the REAL ID Act’s credibility standard enabled significantly closer ideological control by the courts. Before REAL ID, there was very little relationship between the presumed aggregate preferences of the appellate courts on asylum cases and IJ decision making in that circuit. But after the REAL ID Act is implemented by the circuit through the adoption of its standard in precedent, as the percentage of the circuit that is Democratic increases so too does the likelihood of an IJ granting asylum. The impact went from 3 to 52 percentage points.

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Figure 1: REAL ID & the Circuit Courts

We saw an increase in influence for Congress and the President, but it was not nearly as large. We also show this is not just a result of the uniqueness of the first Trump administration.

The findings suggest that any attempts to restrict asylum access through immigration courts during Trump’s second term would require precisely written policies. If the administration and a Republican-controlled Congress pursue such restrictions, vague or ambiguous language could backfire. In cases of unclear policy, IJs will turn to federal courts for guidance—potentially leading to interpretations that run counter to the administration’s goals.

You can read the original article in Policy Studies Journal at

Stobb, Maureen, Banks Miller, and Joshua Kennedy. 2023. Mixed messages & bounded rationality: The perverse consequences of real ID for immigration policy. Policy Studies Journal 51: 667–684. https://doi-org.echo.louisville.edu/10.1111/psj.12486

About the Authors

Maureen Stobb is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Georgia Southern University. Her research focuses on the expansion of judicial power relative to the legislature and the executive, particularly in the policy areas of immigration and citizenship. Her research has been published in various outlets including The Journal of Law & Courts, and Justice System Journal.

Banks Miller is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Texas at Dallas. His research focuses on judicial decision making, intellectual property policy, and immigration policy. Recent work has been published in the Journal of Law & Courts and American Politics Research.


Joshua B. Kennedy is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Georgia Southern University. His research of late focuses on political control of the administrative state, and he has also published in the area of unilateral presidential power. His research has appeared in American Politics Research, Research & Politics, and Presidential Studies Quarterly, among other outlets.

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Partisan Collaboration in Policy Adoption: An Experimental Study With Local Government Officials

by Yixin Liu

Collaboration among local governments is crucial for tackling shared challenges like environmental management and economic development. Partisanship significantly shapes these collaborative efforts. In my recent paper, I investigate how partisanship affects local policymakers’ decisions to collaborate and whether political identity moderates the importance of key collaborative attributes like resource allocation, reciprocal trust, and policy outcomes. This work bridges gaps in the existing collaborative strategies literature by focusing on individual-level preferences rather than aggregated patterns.

This study sought to address two primary research questions:  

(1) Does partisanship influence local policymakers’ willingness to adopt collaborative sustainable development programs?  

(2) Does partisanship alter how policymakers weigh other collaborative attributes, such as trust or resource sharing, in their decision-making?  

To test these questions, I designed a conjoint experiment targeting municipal officials across the United States. Participants were asked to evaluate hypothetical sustainable development programs proposed by cities with varying partisanship and collaborative attributes—such as the balance of resource contributions (resource allocation), the expected number of jobs created by the program (policy outcome), and past collaborations with the partner city (reciprocal trust). By randomizing these attributes, I was able to isolate the effect of partisanship while controlling for other factors.  

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The sample included 772 local government officials, representing a broad cross-section of U.S. municipalities. These officials represented 535 municipalities and covered offices from 49 states and the District of Columbia. I used my data to test two hypotheses:

Co-­partisanship Hypothesis (H1): The collaborative program proposed by co-partisans will increase the interest of municipal officials in adopting it, compared to the same program proposed by out-­partisans.

Conditional hypothesis (H2): The importance of resource allocation, reciprocal trust, and policy outcomes will weaken if the collaborative program is not proposed by co-­partisans.

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The co-partisanship effect was clear: Programs proposed by co-partisans were 12.75 percentage points more likely to be adopted than those proposed by out-partisans, supporting H1 (see Figure 2). Moreover, my analysis yielded support for H2. My results showed that the influence of collaborative attributes was indeed conditional on whether it was proposed by a co-partisan. For example, respondents favored programs that required lower resource contributions or had higher job creation potential, but these attributes were weighed less heavily when the proposal was made by a partner city in the out-party (see Figure 3). It is also important to note that the influence of partisanship was consistent across subgroups, suggesting its deep roots in political identity rather than professional roles or ideologies.

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This study highlights the importance of understanding the role of partisanship in collaborative governance. Future research could explore the long-term impacts of partisanship on collaborative governance or expand the scope to other policy areas. Additionally, combining experimental methods with observational data could enhance our understanding of how partisan dynamics evolve over time in real-world settings.

You can read the original article in Policy Studies Journal at

Liu, Yixin. 2024. “ Partisan Collaboration in Policy Adoption: An Experimental Study With Local Government Officials.” Policy Studies Journal 52(4): 955–967. https://doi-org.echo.louisville.edu/10.1111/psj.12551.

About the Author

Yixin Liu is an assistant professor in the Department of Politics & International Affairs at Northern Arizona University. His research investigates cross-sectoral collaborative governance in environmental management. Prior to joining NAU, he was a postdoctoral fellow at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University. He completed his PhD at Florida State University.

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