This study investigates how agents in contested occupations justify and legitimize their work. It examines Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) attorneys who prosecute immigrant removal cases on behalf of the federal government, delving into the narrative strategies that attorneys use to attain self-legitimacy within the agency. While existing literature suggests that self-legitimacy stems from either public support or an intrinsic belief in one’s deservingness of power, this study introduces a third pathway to self-legitimacy, agency entrenchment, in which government prosecutors draw on a highly internalized sense of patriotism and a duty to their organizational role, in the face of heightened public protest and changing administrative priorities. Analyzing forty in-depth interviews with ICE attorneys, this study identifies two primary approaches to agency entrenchment. The first is a bureaucratic approach, in which attorneys derive an internalized sense of duty from the existing law. The second is an enforcement approach, in which attorneys derive moral authority from what they see as their protector status. By deploying these narratives of self-legitimacy, ICE prosecutors attempt to resolve perceived conflicts between their legally mandated responsibilities and the ethical and reputational criticisms they encounter. The findings contribute to the broader understanding of the occupational dynamics between political polarization and law enforcement prosecution.

Three new books by sociologists—The Policing Machine by Tony Cheng, The Minneapolis Reckoning by Michelle Phelps, and The Danger Imperative by Michael Sierra-Arévalo—offer us a view into the state of US policing leading up to and following the racial reckoning of 2020. I read these books together through the lens of boundary work, examining what they tell us about the various projects that seek to maintain, expand, or change police jurisdiction over the production of public safety. Collectively, these books suggest that the police work to preserve and extend their extant role and power. Meanwhile, boundary work through movement mobilization and political systems has aimed to contain policing through law and policy, shrink policing within municipal service systems, and replace policing through community-led models of safety. These projects point us toward important areas of inquiry in efforts to understand whether and how policing can change.

There has long been debate about the capacity of the US Supreme Court to achieve “progressive” social change. Recent decisions of the court also point to a new worry for American progressives: the court may not only have a limited capacity to drive such change. In some cases, it may actively stand in the way of such change or help reverse it. This invites us to rethink when, or under what conditions, courts are likely to be effective in driving change—whether in a positive, dynamic, or else more obstructionist or regressive direction.