Governing Latino Homicide Survivors: Crimmigration, Institutional Response, and Conditional Victimhood

Background and Purpose: Latino communities experience disproportionate exposure to homicide, yet little is known about how Latino families navigate the aftermath of loss and institutional response. Existing victimization research has largely overlooked how immigration enforcement and racialized governance shape families’ experiences following homicide. This study addresses this gap by examining how Latino families experience and interpret law enforcement and victim service engagement in the aftermath of homicide.

Methods: Guided by crimmigration theory, this study asks: (1) how do Latino families experience institutional responses following homicide, and (2) how do immigration-related conditions shape their engagement with these systems? Data were drawn from a qualitative, community-engaged study of 36 participants across 20 Latino families in a single urban immigrant community. Semi-structured interviews were conducted in English and Spanish using a trauma-informed approach. Data were analyzed using a modified grounded theory method, combining inductive thematic analysis with theory-informed coding to examine processes of institutional interaction, meaning-making, and survivorship.

Results: Findings identify three interrelated processes shaping Latino homicide survivorship. First, families described constrained engagement with law enforcement driven by fear of immigration consequences, particularly within mixed-status households and social networks. Second, participants experienced acute and cumulative grief within contexts where victims and neighborhoods were implicitly criminalized, shaping early expectations that cases would not be prioritized. Third, families reported prolonged procedural opacity characterized by limited communication, inconsistent follow-up, and perceived institutional withdrawal, often requiring families to assume responsibility for information-seeking and investigative coordination. Across these stages, participants described a pattern of surveillance without protection and conditional recognition of their victimhood.

Conclusions and Implications: These findings extend social work research by demonstrating that structural conditions linked to immigration governance shape not only exposure to violence, but also institutional responses to victims. By centering Latino families’ experiences, this study challenges dominant approaches that treat violence as an individual or community-level problem while overlooking how systems of response reproduce inequality. Implications include the need for trauma-informed and culturally responsive institutional practices that improve transparency, reduce barriers to engagement, and strengthen trust. Advancing equitable responses to violence is critical to ensuring that all families are recognized, supported, and able to participate fully in processes of justice and community safety.