In the last decade, Western liberal democracies have displayed an appetite for openly draconian immigration enforcement. Supporters of such policies maintain that they are keen to welcome legal migrants, regardless or their background or origin, but that strict enforcement measures are necessary to deter lawbreaking and maintain justice. And yet, it is also plausible that such policies are implicitly tolerated because racial minorities - rather than White or wealthy migrants -- bear the brunt of the costs. There is an extensive body of research on the role of prejudice in anti-immigrant attitudes, and there is empirical evidence that individuals place a great deal of emphasis of a migrant's legal status. Yet, empirical literature has never tested whether or not the legal justification for enforcement holds water against the backdrop of prejudice. We test the extent to which deference to authority and racism drive enforcement preferences in the United Kingdom. We examine preferences on the targets of enforcement through an original conjoint experiment and then analyze how racism and deference to authority shape the ethical concessions individuals are willing to make in the name of enforcement. We find that, in the absence of prejudice, the values of obedience and deference to authority will not drive individuals to support excessive or unfair enforcement tactics. Rather, such harshness -- while often justified in terms of justice and legality -- is fundamentally driven by prejudice.