Federal Enforcement as Urban Spectacle

When federal immigration enforcement operations are executed in dense, protest‑prone urban neighborhoods they become media spectacles that both escalate local tensions and rewire political narratives; the operations function less as targeted law enforcement and more as a performative public‑order policy with high downstream risk. — This matters because spectacle‑driven enforcement shapes national debates on the rule of law, use of force, local‑federal relations, and the politics of immigration far beyond the immediate arrests.