On the administration of evil: frontline bureaucrats resolving ethical tensions while enforcing oppressive deportation policies

Numerous academic studies and countless investigative reports have condemned in recent years the disproportionate sanctioning of illegalized migrants in countries worldwide, and especially in liberal democratic states. On strictly administrative grounds, illegalized migrants are regularly subjected to police raids, long-term detention, and violent deportation. Rather than evaluating these policies, this chapter attempts to understand the moral dilemmas that state agents face in implementing disproportional policies that devastatingly harm people who committed no crime. The chapter advances that the racialization of illegalized migrants leads to their dehumanization and subjugation to mobility regimes that sacralize the integrity of state borders over human dignity. Alarmingly, through the bureaucratization of deportation, ethical issues concerning disproportional sanctions are recurrently transformed into mere administrative regulations. Consequently, civil servants are often torn between ‘getting the job done’ and justifying the evident suffering inflicted on their ‘clients’ by the ‘racial cruelty’ that is embedded in state policies.