Formalizing State Violence: From Vigilantism to Border Patrol Brutality
Under the Trump Administration, news reports about border enforcement have exposed the Border Patrol culture of brutality which has included their inability to care for minors under their custody and the aggressive tactics they employ in curtailing civil liberties in urban settings. However, advocates in a panel presentation described how border communities have been subjected to a process of militarization, driven by racial violence that is an outgrowth of white supremacy, which predates Donald Trump’s four-year tenure as president of the United States.
The founding of the Border Patrol in 1924 formalized the brutal culture of vigilantism that had characterized the borderlands since at least 1846, when the United States led an imperialist war of aggression against Mexico. At the end of that war, Mexico ceded nearly half of its territory to the United States. In the years leading to the turn of the 20th century, the violent legacy continued to have deadly consequences to those who called the borderlands their home. Of this, Alma Maquitico, co-director of the National Network of Immigrant and Refugee Rights, stated that the “US-Mexico border was shaped through violence. The enforcement of the US-Mexico border was done by white militias who used raw physical violence against Indigenous bodies, against Mexican people, to disposes them from their territories, and also to prevent Black bodies from escaping slavery towards freedom, and to restrict Asian bodies who entered into these territories[1].”
“Refusing to Forget[2],” a non-profit seeking to create awareness about this violent period in Texas history that has received little attention, details how during the years 1910 to 1920, Texas Rangers, former Texas Rangers, and white settlers regularly executed Mexicans without any repercussions.
Far from being surreptitious, the violence was welcomed, celebrated, and even instigated at the highest levels of society and government. As thousands fled to Mexico and decapitated bodies floated down the Rio Grande, one Texas paper spoke of “a serious surplus population that needs eliminating.” Prominent politicians proposed putting all those of Mexican descent into “concentration camps” – and killing any who refused. For a decade, people would come across skeletons in the south Texas brush, marked with execution-style bullet holes in the backs of their skulls.
One infamous case occurred in January 28, 1918, when Texas Rangers, US military forces, and vigilante rangers killed 15 men and boys in Porvenir, Texas[3]. Descendants of the men and boys killed are now seeking recognition for the violence their families endured.
In her book about the history of the Border Patrol, historian Kelly Lytle Hernandez notes how the Texas Rangers, who operated with impunity, would be pushed into Border Patrol positions and carried forth vigilante style policing tactics against Mexicans in Texas.[4] According to Monica Muñoz Martinez, the author of The Injustice Never Leaves You which looks at the militarization of the communities along the Rio Grande, “[b]etween 1910 and 1920, the decade of an expanded militarization of the border, ethnic Mexicans were harshly policed by an intersecting regime of vigilantes, state police, local police, and army soldiers. Historians estimate that hundreds of ethnic Mexicans died during this period. In death, the victims of racial violence were criminalized.”[5]
Furthermore, criminalizing of Mexican and by extension, all else entering the United States, was formalized under the Undesirable Aliens Act of 1929. Border crossers needed to enter through an official port of entry, and according to Maquitico, the Act “criminalized Mexican migration and gave border agents the discretionary power to decide who could enter or not enter the country legally.” In addition, Maquitico states, “What had been a daily routine of border crossings to visit families and relatives and converted that into a ritual of abuses that we continue to endure today as border communities… especially as Brown bodies that cross the border, we are so used to having to come up with a story every time we cross the border because we know that we are going to be questioned.”
Micro-managing State Violence at the Ports of Entry
Resonating with Maquitico, panelist Estefanía Castañeda Pérez, a UCLA Political Science Department Ph.D. candidate and self-described transborder student, has written about how state violence is reproduced even in border crossing experiences by many border crossers. “Throughout the studies I’ve done, even before the shutdowns, students often complain that there’s trauma associated with crossing the border,” she explained to Vice in 2018. “Although the vast majority of transborder students are US citizens, they’re often made to feel as if they’re not legitimate enough.”[6] Castañeda Pérez makes the observation that for transborder commuters, their principal relationship with the state is “through CBP officials at the POEs, who act as ‘street-level bureaucrats’ and afforded ample discretion to deny entry, question, and profile border entrants.”[7]
Castañeda Pérez also observes how the trauma experienced by border crossers is exacerbated with the CBP’s display of “heightened paramilitary enforcement” meant to generate a narrative that migrants seeking asylum are a threat and that a militaristic response by the state is a necessary and natural response to them. In September 2019, the ACLU Border Rights Center in Houston, Texas, sent a letter[8] to U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s (CBP) Office of Field Operations demanding an investigation into two closures at El Paso ports of entry. Cynthia Pompa, advocacy manager for the ACLU Border Rights Center, made the following statement:
“Closing ports of entry, without justification, significantly disrupts the lives of people living in Texas’ border communities. CBP’s callous actions are sending a message of fear and xenophobia to the rest of the country — and it will not go unnoticed. Shutting down any port of entry is disruptive, cruel, and unnecessary, particularly when they are closed with aggressive displays of militarism absent any legitimate security threat. CBP officials continue to ignore the humanitarian consequences of rejecting asylum seekers, opting to close ports instead of following the law and process arriving families.”[9]
Similar border closures have occurred at other land ports between the United States and Mexico so that CBP can conduct theatrical exercises using hundreds of agents, clad in military gear. In January 2019, in San Diego CBP conducted a readiness exercise that lasted approximately 25 minutes. Purportedly, the drill was to prepare for any large-scale incursion of migrants attempting to rush the border crossing. Rows of 100s of CBP agents detonated flashbang and smoke grenades meant to startle, confuse, and disable any incoming “threat.” These exercises are an aggressive expression of institutionalized white power, as they represent the Trump administration’s ideological framing on who merits being treated with dignity and respect. They are meant to make criminality synonymous with migrants seeking refuge. They also have the dual objective of fomenting a false narrative of a border communities being out of control, in crisis, while instituting collective punishment to all in the region. In January 2019, CBP released an ominous video from El Centro port of entry of a “civil unrest readiness exercise” showcasing hundreds of agents dressed as though they are preparing for war.[10]
In addition to federal border agents, in March 2020 the Trump administration also deployed active-duty personnel, 80 to San Diego and 80 to El Paso, to prepare for the possibility of migrants attempting to cross into the United States following a court order that prevented the United States from forcing migrants to wait in Mexico.[11] Compounded by an unprecedented and historic pandemic, militarizing border crossings and border shutdowns represent collective punishment, a war crime under the Geneva Conventions.
In her closing remarks, Castañeda Pérez offered this incisive thought: “The purpose of the border was never to simply be a physical structure, like the border wall. It was meant to expand and permeate into society, through internal checkpoints, become externalized through third safe country agreements, and government collaboration, and embodied by individuals and institutions, through constant policing and interrogation of marginalized communities.”
Exporting the Border Militarization into the Interior
In 1953 the US Department of Justice established regulations that arbitrarily designated the border zone as 100 air miles “from any external boundary into the US, including coastal boundaries,” creating a swath of land surrounding the United States which includes “two-thirds of the US population, or approximately 200 million people.”[12]
Ricardo Favela is an organizer of Alianza Comunitaria, which is a grassroots coalition of human rights groups situated nearly 100 miles from the US-Mexico border, that formed to protect communities from the increased presence of local and federal law enforcement and that are contained by two permanent Border Patrol checkpoints along major freeways, various temporary checkpoints along minor streets, and roving patrols by Border Patrol officials. He attributes the presence Border Patrol checkpoints as part of a larger attrition-through-enforcement strategy, which has the logic of making life in the United States so difficult, that an undocumented migrant would make the decision to leave (or self-deport) rather than contend with the on-going threat of enforcement. The attrition-through-enforcement strategy[13] is promoted by the Center for Immigration Studies, a right-wing think tank labeled as a white supremacist group by the Southern Poverty Law Center,[14] but often cited by mainstream media for policy analysis.
Checkpoints in San Diego’s North County have existed for decades, where law enforcement officials commonly used racial profiling to harass and question people of color about their immigration status in the country. An example Favela noted as to how checkpoints are problematic and part of a racist structure, in that they make it difficult for people to get to the nearest hospital because checkpoints create a chokehold. For agricultural workers in the area, and especially during a pandemic, reaching a hospital is critical for emergency care.
Favela noted that “during the stay-at-home orders that began on March 13, 2020, a week later, we saw the major checkpoint activated on a daily basis. The week following, we saw the smaller checkpoints also activated on a daily basis.” He continued, “this had an effect on local families… who were depending on coming into Fallbrook to their school to pick up food, lunch, to pick up homework, we had reports of people who did not leave and stayed at the ranch where they worked. I should add that that’s the typical life, folks that don’t need to go anywhere, they don’t, they stay in the ranch, they stay in the groves, for as much as possible they don’t leave where they stay, where they live, and where they live is where they work. So it’s almost plantation containment here.”
Favela, who regularly drives through checkpoints to observe their operations, commented that Border Patrol agents at checkpoints often remove their masks to speak with people they have stopped. In Arizona, according to Border Patrol Tucson Sector Chief Roy Villareal, “As of yet, the CDC has not mandated the wearing of PPE during public encounters, nor has this practice been adopted wholly by our law enforcement community. I believe officers possess the capability to exercise caution when warranted and will utilize PPE when necessary.”[15] Villareal was responding to critiques that Border Patrol agents based out of Tucson, Arizona, do not wear face masks during encounters with the public.
In light of the COVID-19 pandemic, the ACLU in April 2020 requested that CBP “Temporarily Suspend Civil Immigration Enforcement in the 100-Mile Border Zone.”[16] Checkpoints are not only a problem along border communities along the US-Mexico border. ACLU affiliates in New Hampshire, Maine, and Vermont filed a lawsuit challenging Border Patrol checkpoints in August 2020. According to the press release, “Border Patrol detains hundreds – if not thousands – of individuals lawfully travelling in northern New England during the summer and fall tourist seasons without any suspicion that they have committed a crime.”[17] Furthermore, Emma Bond, legal director of the ACLU of Maine stated,
“In the past several months alone, we have seen the federal government deploy CBP agents to monitor protesters in Minneapolis and Washington D.C. after the police murder of George Floyd. Then we saw CBP act as paramilitary forces in Portland, Oregon to crack down on protesters in the area. These checkpoints in northern New England are no different. CBP is using its forces nearly 100 miles from the border for general crime control, which is beyond the scope of CBP’s statutory and constitutional authority.”[18]
Returning to Castañeda Pérez’ earlier perception, it would appear that checkpoints are an extension of border enforcement policies that expand Border Patrol’s reach into interior communities. As the ACLU has pointed out, “Border Patrol routinely ignores or misunderstands the limits of their legal authority, violating the constitutional rights of innocent people. Although the 100-mile border zone is not literally ‘Constitution-free,’ CBP frequently acts like it is.”[19]
Interior Enforcement in the Borderland Communities
While one might regard Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) as a non-border enforcement agency of the Department of Homeland Security, in borderland communities they augment Border Patrol’s role by supporting them during different operations, and by being charged with detaining migrants at detention centers and during field operations. Vanessa Ceceña, Human Rights Program Associate with the American Friends Service Committee’s US-Mexico Border Program, explained that ICE often has a presence at ports of entry and their agents receive migrants detained by CBP.
According to Ceceña, in FY 2019, here were an average of 48,850 migrants detained per month across the US, with the average length of stay being 36.2 days in over 200 migrant prisons in the US. At San Diego’s Otay Mesa Detention Center (OMDC), the average stay was 87 days. Ceceña led a research project about how ICE has compounded egregious conditions during the COVID-19 pandemic at the OMDC, and this is one testimony she captured:
“It’s very downgrading as a human being [being locked in prison]. It breaks my heart to go through this situation especially being taken away from my home and separated from my family. What hurts the most is my 11-year-old son who is now depressed and needs to see a psychologist due to our separation. I cannot wait for this nightmare to end, I don’t know if my life will ever be the same.” – Migrant detained at OMDC, Testimony obtained by AFSC.”[20]
Ceceña also presented the case involving a worksite immigration raid at a Korean market in San Diego, and described how along with the federal agents arriving at the market, ICE arrested at least three of the workers near their home. In interviewing the workers, Ceceña reported that ICE drew their guns at the workers, either running in with guns or pointing their guns at the workers they detained near their homes. “We heard that as they were apprehending the workers, they pulled out their guns… some of the workers were thrown down on the ground. We heard that as ICE agents handcuffed everyone with zip ties, and as they were getting everyone together, ICE agents were putting their hands in their pockets to take out their wallets and to find any… identifying information, like their Matricula Consular.” According to Ceceña, the most shocking aspect of the raid was how workers arrested near their homes were treated. “He was on his way to take his daughter to school, and officers in civilian clothes approached their car with their guns drawn out,” Ceceña stated, “and they shared that it was extremely traumatizing for all of them, but especially to their teenage daughter that was physically in the car with her father. She thought, in the moment that the ICE officers came to the car… that they were being abducted.” It is common for ICE agents to not identify themselves in enforcement operations, and to not wear uniforms that clearly state what agency they belong to. Consequently, the young girl had to seek counseling support services as a result of this interaction with the ICE and the aggressive enforcement tactics they employed.
ICE is an agency that was created in 2003 as part of the interior immigration enforcement arm of the Department of Homeland Security. But it’s been only recently where calls for its abolishment have driven many grassroot campaigns. With over 20,000 employees and a budget that nears six billion dollars,[21] more people are finding out that ICE continues to systematically abuse civil and human rights of those it detains. Cases implicating ICE agents in sexual abuse[22], invasive gynecology procedures[23], and pervasive abuse of pregnant immigrants and asylum seekers[24] are just some of the complaints that have been recorded in recent years. In this latter case, CBP is also accused of abusive practices.
In a report produced by the Center for Reproductive Rights and various other organizations concerned with protecting migrants’ human rights, it notes how “The U.S. government has exploited the COVID-19 pandemic to further eviscerate humanitarian and human rights protections for immigrants and people seeking asylum along the U.S.-Mexico border.”[25] Here is an example of one of the testimonies highlighted:
“A Guatemalan asylum seeker was forced to give birth in a Border Patrol Station. Despite repeated requests for medical attention from the woman who was eight months pregnant when she arrived at the southern border in February 2020, coughing and in severe pain, Border Patrol agents instead took her to the Chula Vista Border Patrol Station. Within 30 minutes, the woman’s pain became excruciating, and she soon gave birth into her pants while standing up and
bracing herself against the edge of a garbage can. She was then finally hospitalized. Two days later, she and her newborn were returned to the Border Patrol station, where Border Patrol agents repeatedly harassed her. She was not provided with a blanket for the baby or access to a shower for days after giving birth.”[26]
Ceceña concluded her presentation by reading a testimony provided to the binational grassroots organization, Pueblo Sin Fronteras, that underscores the urgency that migrants experience while detained by ICE and CBP:
“They really don’t care here, at this facility, about people. They really don’t see us as human beings, I believe. I believe they just see us as a way that this facility, since it’s privately owned, makes money off of us being detained. What has to happen? How many people have to die after him? Like when will they start doing something to correct the situation here. How many more people have to get sick? How many more people have to end up dying before they actually do something and correct the mistake?”[27]
Funding the Militarization of Border Communities
Militarizing border communities requires a lot of coordination between the executive and the legislative branches of government, oftentimes with strategic jockeying about what elements of the government’s budget are palpable enough to get it funded. There are multiple committees and subcommittees that make up the appropriations process, each of which will have their own interests in mind. Oftentimes, when a budget proposal seems to be making its way through one of the committees, another committee could undermine it by changing any provisions that would be considered favorable for border communities.
Vicki Gaubeca, director of the Southern Border Communities Coalition (SBCC), which is a coalition of organizations and networks working against militarizing border communities, noted how in 1929, prosecutions that criminalize migrants (1325/1326 prosecutions) were adopted the same year that the Undesirable Aliens Act was passed. Democratic Senator Coleman Livingston Blease of South Carolina and renowned white supremacist who favored lynchings and segregation, pushed for these statutes that have become the foundation for current statutes that prosecute individuals apprehended between ports of entry. Gaubeca pressed, “We want these statutes to be defunded because of the implications of the origins of these statutes along with the fact these cause undue hardship on families and it’s the reason why the zero tolerance policy under Sessions was implemented and families were torn apart and we really want these statutes to be eliminated from the books.”
According to historian Kelly Lytle Hernandez, “The idea was to force Mexican immigrants into an authorized and monitored stream that could be turned on and turned off at will at ports of entry.”[28] The policy changes seemed to particularly target the Mexican labor force that for decades would become a source for cheap labor.
Gaubeca outlined some of the recent priorities the coalition has focused on, which have included calls to defund border wall funding, stopping the transfer of funds into CBP and ICE budgets, ending the deployment of military personnel to border communities, in addition to the aforementioned elimination of 1325/1326 prosecutions. Looking forward, SBCC has outlined wide-ranging policy asks that not only seek to mitigate the militarization of border communities, but also offer ideas for improved policy recommendations. These include:
- Defunding DHS/CBP/ICE, agents, checkpoints
- Defund Department of Justice prosecutions (1325 and 1326)
- Defunding Department of Defense 1033 program
- No money for border wall projects; fund taking it down, as well as other dangers infrastructure such as the concertina wire
- Reparations for harms related to border wall construction
- Dismantle/abolish DHS (2003 Homeland Security Act)
- Invest in welcoming centers
- Invest in health care, education, mental health, port infrastructures
Conclusion
The militarization of border communities has far-reaching implications for people who live in the borderlands, but also for those crossing through them. It is clear from these presentations, as both Alma Maquitico and Estefanía Castañeda Pérez explained, that the state uses violence as a control measure and to pacify social upheaval concerning those policies. Maquitico also described how policies that militarize border communities are tied to white supremacist precepts, and Vanessa Ceceña provided examples of how private industry contracting with the federal government will prioritize profit-making and are less likely to be held accountable for their abusive practices. Ricardo Favela provided specific regional examples of how militarization expands into interior communities, still within the 100-mile threshold, but that creates greater threats for residents seeking emergency health care, for instance. Finally, Vicki Gaubeca detailed how policies undergo a complicated committee process in Congress, and different interests have a role in dictating what might go into a budget to fund the government. She also listed a set of priorities that would include defunding measures that seek to further criminalize and militarize border communities, as well as presented ideas on what would be acceptable ideas for improving policies affecting migrants and border communities.
[1]NOTES
http://theconversation.com/trumps-immigration-order-is-bad-foreign-policy-72053
[2] http://refusingtoforget.org/the-history/
[3] NOTES
http://time.com/5682139/porvenir-massacre-descendants/
[4] Hernandez, Kelly Lytle. Migra!: a History of the U.S. Border Patrol. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010.
[5] http://www.laphamsquarterly.org/roundtable/border-fears
[6] http://www.vice.com/en/article/3k9v73/the-crisis-at-the-san-ysidro-border-is-wreaking-havoc-on-the-lives-of-students
[7] Quoted from Castañeda Pérez’ PowerPoint presentation for this panel.
[8] http://www.aclutx.org/sites/default/files/field_documents/aclu_border_rights_center_-_cbp_port_closure_letter_9-4-19.pdf
[9] http://www.aclutx.org/en/press-releases/aclu-border-rights-center-sends-letter-demand-investigation-recent-port-entry
[10] http://www.sacbee.com/news/california/article224709115.html
[11] http://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/adolfoflores/the-trump-administration-is-sending-160-troops-to-the-border
[12] http://www.aclu.org/other/aclu-factsheet-customs-and-border-protections-100-mile-zone?redirect=immigrants-rights/aclu-fact-sheet-customs-and-border-protections-100-mile-zone
[13] http://cis.org/Report/Attrition-Through-Enforcement
[14] http://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/group/center-immigration-studies
[15] http://www.azpm.org/p/home-articles-news/2020/5/7/171945-border-residents-border-patrol-agents-not-wearing-protective-gear-at-checkpoints/
[16] http://www.aclu.org/letter/aclu-letter-cbp-civil-interior-enforcement-detention-and-border-wall-construction-during
[17] http://www.acluvt.org/en/press-releases/aclu-affiliates-new-hampshire-maine-and-vermont-file-lawsuit-challenging-border
[18] http://www.acluvt.org/en/press-releases/aclu-affiliates-new-hampshire-maine-and-vermont-file-lawsuit-challenging-border
[19] http://www.aclu.org/other/aclu-factsheet-customs-and-border-protections-100-mile-zone?redirect=immigrants-rights/aclu-fact-sheet-customs-and-border-protections-100-mile-zone
[20] http://www.afsc.org/story/compounding-suffering-during-pandemic
[21] http://www.ice.gov/about#wcm-survey-target-id
[22] http://theintercept.com/2018/04/11/immigration-detention-sexual-abuse-ice-dhs/
[23] http://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/29/us/ice-hysterectomies-surgeries-georgia.html
[24] http://www.afsc.org/newsroom/report-shows-pervasive-abuse-pregnant-immigrants-and-asylum-seekers
[25] http://reproductiverights.org/sites/default/files/documents/Pregnant%20Immigrants%20and%20Asylum%20Seekers%20During%20COVID-19.pdf?fbclid=IwAR11W7IUfAYjCTrfLzdZtuj6tGQKIdnJgziLT6tpRWkXVGDzYRtYW_kgvVA
[26] Ibid., page 4.
[27] http://www.afsc.org/sites/default/files/documents/ICECOVID_101220pdf.pdf
[28] As quoted in, http://www.statesman.com/news/20190712/fact-check-when-did-it-become-crime-to-cross-us-border-between-ports-of-entry
d El Tribuno del Pueblo.
Panelists in this video are Alma Maquitico, co-director of the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights; Ricardo Favela, an organizer with the Alianza Comunitaria, a coalition of human rights groups based in San Diego’s North County that formed to protect communities from the increased presence of local and federal immigration enforcement; Estefania Castañeda Pérez, a doctoral candidate at the UCLA Department of Political Science whose research primarily focuses on the conceptualization and consequences of violence and border politics; Vanessa Ceceña, Human Rights Program Associate for the American Friends Service Committee’s U.S./Mexico Border Program, where she focuses on documenting human and civil rights violations in the border region; and Vicki B. Gaubeca, Director for the Southern Border Communities Coalition. The moderator is Pedro Rios, Director of the AFSC’s U.S./Mexico Border Program.
Other notes:
What is to be done?
Defunding police
Abolition of DHS / ICE / CBP
Organizing ourselves
Visible kYR signs
Declaration of HR
Names of supervisors
Orgs where can file complaints
Defund 1325 / 1326
