To refine wholesale accounts of transnationalism, scholars have cited the amplification of border enforcement and immigration control. Whilst received analysis emphasizes multiple processes whether border militarization, mass deportation or the cross-deputization of local authorities, other trends remain unexplored. Employing the insights of scholarship on the diffusion and decentralization of policing and crime control, this work interrogates the enlistment of private individuals in official gatekeeping efforts. Drawing on relevant empirical examples – anonymous tip lines, voluntary immigration posses, border vigilantes, local anti-immigrant ordinances and other practices that compel, encourage and include societal participation – it assesses three modalities of citizen involvement: deputization, responsibilization and autonomization. Each displays distinct state–society relations and techniques for mobilizing societal actors and energies. In addition to illuminating the complexities, consequences and contradictions of contemporary immigration control, this article enriches understandings of social exclusion and the redistribution and transposition of government amidst neoliberal restructuring.