Law enforcement and the INS

by George Weissinger

"This study utilizes the perceptions of criminal investigators of the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) to describe the normative structure of an organization in its social context. The legacy INS attempted to provide both a service and control function. This dual mandate made it difficult for INS investigators to fulfill their mission of interior enforcement of the immigration laws. Other problems included organizational relations, as well as notions about professionalism, which affected recruitment, retention, training, and worker expectations. On March 1, 2003, the INS separated its dual mandate and moved to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) with the intent of solving some of these problems. As a result, one might assume that the fundamental contradiction imposed by the dual-mandate structure would be resolved. The updated material in this edition discusses that prospect and includes statistical analyses of a sample of apprehended aliens, as well as the Survey of