Engaging Police in Immigrant Communities: Promising Practices from the Field

Today, approximately 40 million foreign-born people live in the United States, seven million of whom arrived within the past eight years. Because very little is known about how most police agencies nationwide work with immigrant communities, in 2010, Vera’s Center on Immigration and Justice partnered with the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Community Oriented Policing Services to identify and disseminate information on law enforcement practices that cultivate trust and collaboration with immigrant communities and merit replication. Staff from Vera’s Center on Immigration and Justice solicited information from more than 1,000 agencies in jurisdictions with large immigrant populations and evaluated nearly 200 agencies’ practices. The resulting multimedia resource—report, toolkit, podcasts— features the efforts of 10 law enforcement agencies of different sizes, capacities, and circumstances. Engaging Police in Immigrant Communities is a practical, field-informed guide for community policing professionals seeking to begin or build upon their work with immigrant communities and immigrant community leaders looking to collaborate effectively with law enforcement.

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