Mexican history (3 homeworks)

Chapter Twenty-Four

Militarizing the Border: Death Warrant for Migrant Workers

The advent of borders signified the increasing domination of an“owning class” over the market, resources, and labor of a partic-ular region, and defined the territorial limitations of rival own- ing classes. Over generations, borders have been reified as natural ex-

tensions of “nationality” even though they have existed for perhaps 1

percent of the history of humankind.1 For most of U.S. history, there

was no border with Mexico, either real or imagined. It wasn’t until after

1917 that regulated crossing points were established to monitor Mexi-

can migration, and unobstructed movement across the border was pos-

sible until World War II. Although the main points of entry were grad-

ually militarized after 1954, the idea of the border as a means to

prevent movement has been neither the intention nor the reality. Only

since the 1970s has the idea of a border been transformed from a politi-

cal partition between two countries to that of a “fortress barrier,” the

last line of defense of the “homeland.”

Even today, the border is largely an act of political theater. While

walls have been present in certain regions since 1994, they are really

only there to create an image of control. The border does more to de-

termine the status of immigrants within the United States than it does

to “keep out the invader.” Nevertheless, it has been politically cultivated

as the “last line of defense” for the American people, their culture, and

their economy, designed and redesigned to fit the foreign policy objec-

tives of successive U.S. administrations. Over the course of the twenti-

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eth century, the border has provided a means to exploit the fears of and

garner support from the broader public. The militarization of the bor-

der—which includes increasing personnel, joint patrols with the

armed forces, the infusion of military technology, and the construction

of a border wall (originally a by-product of the Cold War)—began in

earnest in the 1970s under the Ford and Carter administrations.

In 1976, then INS commissioner Leonard Chapman railed against

“a vast and silent invasion of illegal aliens.”2 William Colby, former CIA

director, made similar remarks. “The most obvious threat is the fact

that there are going to be 120 million Mexicans by the turn of the cen-

tury,” Colby said. “[The Border Patrol] will not have enough bullets to

stop them.”3

A surge in migration in the 1970s and the emergence of Central

American revolutionary movements opposed to U.S.-supported and

-funded dictatorships further intensified the focus on the border. Presi-

dents Carter and Reagan both used the issue of an imminent immi-

grant invasion as a justification to increase funds for border militariza-

tion. Under the Carter administration, the budget for the Border Patrol

rose by 24 percent while the number of personnel went up 8.7 percent.4

The force also experienced a significant upgrade in equipment, “rang-

ing from the increased construction of fences to the deployment of

helicopters and improved ground sensors.”5

The alarmism of the Carter administration paved the way for a

further lurch rightward by the Reagan administration. Reagan radically

altered public perceptions of the border by portraying it as a doorway

for the three greatest “threats” to the United States: hordes of poor mi-

grants, Central American subversives, and narco-traffickers. Acting to

prevent a “tidal wave of refugees” and to deter “terrorists and subver-

sives [who] are just two days’ driving time from Harlingen, Texas,” Rea-

gan paved the way for a new era of border policing. Funding skyrock-

eted, the involvement of military personnel in training border agents

to use military hardware was authorized, and all was justified by a new

national security doctrine:

Pressures on our borders from the Caribbean and Central America—

particularly Mexico—make it certain that in the foreseeable future, as

never in the past, the United States is going to have to maintain a for-

eign policy, including preemptive and prophylactic measures, which

has as one of its objectives the protection of our frontiers against ex-

cessive illegal immigration. 6

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During the Reagan years, funding for the Border Patrol increased

130 percent, the majority of the funds going toward enforcement. De-

tention centers were expanded, checkpoints set up, and the number of

agents increased by 82 percent.7 Immigration hysteria culminated with

the passage of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, which

cross-designated Border Patrol members as drug enforcement agents.

But the gravest consequences of border militarization have oc-

curred since former president Bill Clinton launched Operation Gate-

keeper in 1994. “We must not tolerate illegal immigration,” he wrote in

1996, boasting that “since 1992, we have increased our Border Patrol by

over 35 percent; deployed underground sensors, infrared night scopes,

and encrypted radios; built miles of new fences; and installed massive

amounts of new lighting.”8

Clinton set a new standard for border militarization, and the cur-

rent Bush administration has pushed the process even further. “Our

goal is clear: to return every single illegal entrant, with no exceptions,”

Bush assured senior congressmen and intelligence officers in the White

House9 in December 2005. This was after he signed a $32 billion

Homeland Security bill for 2006 that contained large increases for bor-

der enforcement, including a thousand additional Border Patrol

agents.10

Current legislative proposals, whether sponsored by Republicans

or Democrats (or both), contain both the language and means to in-

tensify the war on immigrants. Under HR 4437 (the Sensenbrenner-

King Bill), the nation would have to spend more than $2.2 billion to

build five border fences in California and Arizona that would add up to

a length of 698 miles—at the astronomical cost of $3.2 million per

mile. It would not only make undocumented migration a felony, it

would criminalize the very act of associating with undocumented im- migrants. Though massive pro-immigrant protests have rendered HR

4437 a non-starter, other, more “centrist” “compromise” bills also rep-

resent threats to immigrants’ rights and lives. The bipartisan Kennedy-

McCain Bill, also called the “Secure America and Orderly Immigration

Act,” seeks to support Bush’s call for a guest-worker program, while

“cracking down” on unauthorized crossings. As Republican cosponsor

John McCain explains,

Homeland security is our nation’s number one priority, this legislation

includes a number of provisions that together will make our nation

MILITARIZING THE BORDER: DEATH WARRANT FOR MIGRANT WORKERS 203

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more secure. For far too long, our nation’s broken immigration laws

have gone unreformed—leaving Americans vulnerable. We can no

longer afford to delay reform. I am proud to join my colleagues today

as an original Sponsor of this legislation. 11

The proposal requires the nation to “increase border security en-

forcement with new technology, information sharing, and other initia-

tives.” In other words, it would continue and expand the current death- warrant policy of border militarization, and set the stage for a new

round of punitive measures against migrant workers.

In 1999, Alejandro Kassorla, a twenty-three-year-old cane cutter,

decided to try to cross the border into the United States because he was

having trouble supporting his family in Mexico. When he had traveled

to the United States six years before, he had come home with enough

money to build a small home for his wife and two children. He got to-

gether with his friend Samuel and a married couple, Javier and Elvia,

who also wanted to cross. The smugglers they paid to guide them said

it would be a short trip through the rugged mountains near San Diego,

but in fact the trip normally took three days. After temperatures

dropped below freezing on the third day, the smugglers abandoned

Alejandro and his group. When Javier and Samuel began to suffer from

hypothermia, Alejandro and Elvia went for help. After Alejandro col-

lapsed from hypothermia, Elvia went on. When she finally returned

with help, the other three had already frozen to death.12

This story captures the impact of border militarization as embod-

ied in the four-part federal project begun in 1993 to “take control” of

the U.S.-Mexico border. Operation Gatekeeper in California, Opera-

tion Safeguard in Arizona, and Operations Hold the Line and Rio

Grande in Texas employ similar strategies to seal off popular border-

crossing points using a combination of new border fences, increased

border personnel, and the latest military hardware and training, all

with the participation of various military agencies.

Operation Gatekeeper, for instance, began by spanning sixty-six

miles from the Pacific Ocean through San Diego and into the moun-

tains, and has been expanded into Yuma, Arizona. It includes a sev-

enty-three-mile-long, ten-foot-high steel wall. Secondary fences span

fifty-two of those miles, and a triple fence spans fourteen miles, from

the Pacific Ocean to the Otay Mountains. The border wall is comprised

of welded sections of recycled Gulf War landing strips, and incorpo-

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rates the latest cutting-edge military hardware as part of its enforce-

ment strategy. This includes the use of Black Hawk helicopters, heat

sensors, night-vision telescopes, electronic vision detection devices,

and computerized fingerprinting equipment, which have been inte-

grated into routine border operations. Recent years have also seen a

dramatic increase in agents. The Border Patrol is now the largest fed-

eral law enforcement body, with over twelve thousand agents in the

field.13 This amounts to a 51 percent increase since 1999. Furthermore,

the 2004 Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act calls for

adding two thousand agents in each of the next five years, subject to

funding. Even if staffing remains the same, the agency must replace the

5 percent of agents it loses every year to retirement and other jobs.14

The implementation of neoliberal policies in Mexico and Central

America and border militarization in the U.S. have combined in the

last two decades to force displaced migrants to cross the U.S.-Mexico

border in more remote areas, where they are subject to extreme expo-

sure and a host of other geographical dangers. While Immigration and

Customs Enforcement (ICE)—formerly known as the INS—promotes

this program as a policy of “prevention through deterrence,” it is, in re-

ality, a death sentence for many immigrants crossing the border. Since

it is not intended to halt the flow of migration so much as rechannel it

through less visible routes, the results have been horrific. Over four

thousand migrants—men, women, and children—have perished cross-

ing the border since the inception of border militarization in 1994.15

The death toll continues at an increasing rate. Over the last fiscal year,

460 people are known to have died on the border. That far exceeds the

previous record of 383 in fiscal 2000.16 This does not include the un-

known number of missing or those injured while crossing.

Dying at the rate of four people every three days, casualties on the

border have surpassed the number of people who perished in the World

Trade Center attacks, and constitute ten times the number of people

who died attempting to climb over the Berlin Wall during the Cold War.

Border militarization has not stopped migration; it has only imposed

deadly rules upon it. Despite the tragic human loss, it is a success from the point of view of policy-makers. It has strengthened the control of

business over immigrant labor, provided political capital in the “War on

Terror,” and is, in itself, a profitable institution, as defense contractors

compete to corner the emerging market of border enforcement.

MILITARIZING THE BORDER: DEATH WARRANT FOR MIGRANT WORKERS 205

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Border militarization has failed to stem migration because it ig-

nores the structural processes that push people to make desperate so-

journs looking for work. But as Peter Andreas argues, this failure is also

its greatest success.17 While shifting the flow of unauthorized crossings

to barren deserts and mountainous regions, border fortification has

amplified anti-immigrant sentiment and pushed migrants further into

the shadows, setting the stage for further crackdowns. It has helped to

create the sensationalist spectacle of the modern conquest of an illu-

sory “no-man’s land,” while establishing new markets for the defense

industry and convincing low-paid workers across the United States

that “the thin green line” of the Border Patrol is keeping their jobs safe.

In California, militarization has forced migrants to cross the Otay

Mountains, whose peaks reach as high as six thousand feet. Tempera-

tures in the mountains remain below freezing for at least six months

out of the year. In the scorching Arizona deserts, temperatures climb as

high as 120 degrees, with sand dunes that reach three hundred feet. It is

in these dead zones that the most egregious effects of border milita-

rization take their human toll.

According to Doris Meisner, former chief of the INS who oversaw

the initial implementation of border militarization policy, “We did be-

lieve geography would be an ally.”18 Deaths have increased so rapidly in

Arizona that the Pima County coroner’s office, which handles cases

from the Border Patrol’s Tucson sector, was forced to rent a refrigerated

truck to store bodies that could not be accommodated inside its facil-

ity.19 The fear of apprehension has also caused migrants to pay exorbi-

tant fees to be smuggled in the cargo holds of trucks, often with little or

no precautionary measures taken by their traffickers. In May of 2003,

nineteen people perished in the furnace-like heat of a truck trailer

crossing through a Texas point of entry.20

According to a human rights investigation conducted by the

American Civil Liberties Union, most of the deaths can be attributed

to exposure to freezing temperatures in the mountains during the win-

ter or to the heat of the desert in the summer.21 In May 2000, fourteen

migrants were found dead after attempting to cross miles of desert in

115-degree heat at a place Border Patrol agents call “The Devil’s Path”

near Yuma, Arizona. “Nobody should be surprised by these deaths,”

said Claudia Smith, a lawyer for the California Rural Legal Assistance

Foundation. “They are an entirely foreseeable consequence of moving

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the migrant traffic out of the urban areas and into the most remote and

dangerous areas.” 22

Another significant portion of the deaths can be attributed to

drowning, as migrants attempt to escape the heat and la migra by crossing through the All-American Canal and other border canals and

rivers. The New River, one such crossing point, is one of the most pol-

luted rivers in the border region. It is a favored crossing point because

the Border Patrol agents avoid its toxic shores.

The political smokescreen that is “border control” and the funda-

mental disregard for human lives that it represents is made shockingly

clear once the text of the policy is scrutinized. Operation Gatekeeper’s

architects assumed that “most of the ‘influx’ would not be deterred by

the ‘mortal dangers’ which came with the new routes.”23 As one INS su-

pervisor explained in the San Diego Union-Tribune in 1996, “Eventu- ally, we’d like to see them all out in the desert.”24 It was understood and

expected that migrant workers would continue to trek north and that

some would perish in the process. Ironically, stricter border enforce-

ment is encouraging more migrants to take up permanent residence in

the United States. A study conducted in 1997 showed that half of all

Mexican immigrants returned to Mexico within two years. Now, an in-

creasing number prefer to avoid the uncertainty of multiple crossings.25

While the death toll rises, other forms of terror and abuse can also

be attributed to the Border Patrol and other U.S. agencies. According to a

report by Amnesty International that condemns Operation Gatekeeper:

The allegations of ill-treatment Amnesty International collected include

people struck with batons, fists and feet, often as punishment for at-

tempting to run away from Border Patrol agents; denial of food, water

and blankets for many hours while detained in Border Patrol stations

and at Ports of Entry for INS processing; sexual abuse of men and

women; denial of medical attention, and abusive, racially derogatory and

unprofessional conduct toward the public sometimes resulting in the

wrongful deportation of U.S. citizens to Mexico. People who reported

that they had been ill-treated included men, women and children, al-

most exclusively of Latin American descent. They included citizens and

legal permanent residents of the USA, and members of Native American

First Nations whose tribal lands span the U.S.-Mexico border. 26

The behavior displayed by the Border Patrol and the social and po-

litical isolation of those stigmatized as “illegal” creates an environment

that gives racists and vigilantes the confidence to carry out acts of ter-

MILITARIZING THE BORDER: DEATH WARRANT FOR MIGRANT WORKERS 207

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rorism and brutality against real or perceived undocumented immi-

grants. Ranchers in Arizona and Texas have gone so far as to “hunt” for

immigrants. One south Texas landowner was offended when a migrant

asked him for water after walking through the brush for days to avoid

the Border Patrol. According to subsequent charges, the landowner

fired on the man and calmly watched him die. Elsewhere in Texas, nu-

merous other shootings by ranchers have occurred.

In another situation, a rancher from Arizona set up hunting expe-

ditions for migrants with his brother, as punishment for drinking the

rancher’s water and leaving trash on his land. When asked about this,

and the fact that the brothers were inviting tourists to join in the hunts,

a Border Patrol officer remarked to the press that they “appreciated the

help.”27 Along with violent ranchers, other vigilante groups have set up

patrols along the border, including right-wing “citizen” groups, the Ku

Klux Klan, and the skinhead group White Aryan Resistance.28 Just

north of San Diego, migrant workers were attacked in a rural camp

they inhabited by several teenagers with pellet guns who had spray-

painted “go home” and racist slogans around the area.

Joint operations with military personnel have also proven deadly

for many people in the border region. For example, Joint Task Force 6

(JTF-6) grew out of George Bush Sr.’s National Drug Control Strategy

and is used under the Texas militarization policy, Operation Alliance. In

one operation, the marines cooperated with the Border Patrol in anti-

drug missions on the Texas border. In 1997, an eighteen-year-old U.S.

citizen, Ezekiel Hernandez, was shot and killed by marines under suspi-

cious circumstances. Hernandez was riding his horse with his hunting

rifle—something he did routinely—when he was shot. No charges were

brought against the marines, who claimed they fired in self-defense.

In July 2004, the San Diego Union-Tribune heralded the “success” of Operation Gatekeeper in a spread celebrating the program’s ten-year

anniversary. Conjuring up the racist imagery of the “invading hordes,”

the paper praises the way the absence of Mexican immigrants will

make a coastal suburb more attractive for investors and real estate

speculators. Since the introduction of Gatekeeper, the Union-Tribune notes, “The city that was often crowded with desperate illegal immi-

grants running from armed Border Patrol agents and thumping heli-

copters is now a quiet, cleaned-up beach town with increasing property

values and plans for more than $20 million in redevelopment.”29 The

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paper then trumpets the dramatic drop in arrests in the San Diego

metropolitan area as a success for the program, while completely ignor-

ing the consequences of pushing migration into the deserts and moun-

tains to the east: a 500 percent increase in border-crossing deaths since

the inception of the program.30

According to Wayne Cornelius, director of the Center for Compar-

ative Immigration Studies at the University of California, San Diego,

Operation Gatekeeper, despite the $10 to $15 billion spent for the op-

eration over the last decade, is “a failed policy.”31 While proponents of

the policy point to the decline in arrests as a result of “deterrence,” they

fail to mention that detentions have increased many-fold east of San

Diego, which is also where most of the deaths occur.

Roberto Martinez, of the American Friends Service Committee,

agrees that tightening controls at certain parts of the border simply

means that people try to cross in different places:

Operation Gatekeeper is not only causing one of the worst human

rights tragedies in border history, but it’s totally ineffective in stopping

the flow of people in crossing the border. All they are doing is moving

them from San Ysidro and Otay to East County and Imperial Valley

and into Arizona where the number of apprehensions has quadrupled.

The same number of people are crossing—just in another area. They

are touting the success of Operation Gatekeeper because they’ve re-

duced the number of apprehensions in this area, but it’s very deceptive.

It’s a bubble effect, you squeeze here and they pop up over there. 32

Plus border crossers are often able to stay one step ahead of the

high-priced technology and manpower that have been poured into

border enforcement. Chicano journalist Ruben Martinez highlights the

creative abilities of common people in outwitting refined military

hardware in a discussion he reports on with a coyote named Marcos:

But for every high-tech weapon the migra employ, Marcos says, there’s a guerrilla-like response from the [migrants] and the coyotes. Take the

laser traps, for example, grids of beams that, when breached, immedi-

ately alert the migra to movement. One [migrant] crew Marcos crossed with was equipped with spray cans. You sprayed ahead of you in an

area already known to be a problem from previous busts. The beams

glittered in the mist, and you make your way around the grid. The coy-

otes claim that the Border Patrol constantly relocates its tracking

equipment. But each group of migrants that gets caught actually helps

new migrants cross. Each bust is valuable intelligence gathered. 33

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While it is impossible to know exactly how many migrant workers

cross the border in a given year, many statistics indicate that militariza-

tion of the border has not cut down on border crossings. INS officials

claim a 30 percent apprehension rate of migrants along the border, with

a record 1,643,679 apprehensions in the year 2000.34 While apprehen-

sions in San Diego have declined from 450,152 in 1994 to 151,681 in

2000, the number of apprehensions east of San Diego has increased 761

percent in El Centro, 351 percent in Arizona, and 55 percent in Texas.35

In 2004, the Border Patrol apprehended 1.1 million migrant crossers

and, in 2005, 1.2 million.36 In other words, migration has remained fairly

steady. Rather than curtailing the number of immigrants who enter the

country, border militarization has only increased the hazards of crossing,

and is really aimed more at creating the illusion of government “control-

ling an invasion.” Immigration expert Douglas Massey argues:

Unlike the old crossing sites, these new locations were sparsely settled, so

the sudden appearance of thousands of Mexicans attracted considerable

attention and understandably generated much agitation locally. Percep-

tions of a breakdown at the border were heightened by news reports of

rising deaths among migrants; by redirecting flows into harsh, remote

terrain the United States tripled the death rate during border crossing.

Less well known is that American policies also reduced the rate of

apprehension, because those remote sectors of the border had fewer

Border Patrol officers. My research found that during the 1980’s, the

probability that an undocumented migrant would be apprehended

while crossing stood at around 33 percent; by 2000 it was at 10 percent,

despite increases in federal spending on border enforcement.

Naturally, public perceptions of chaos on the border prompted more

calls for enforcement and the hardening strategy was extended to other

sectors. The number of Border Patrol officers increased from around

2,500 in the early 1980’s to around 12,000 today, and the agency’s annual

budget rose to $1.6 billion from $200 million. The boundary between

Mexico and the United States has become perhaps the most militarized

frontier between two nations at peace anywhere in the world.

Although border militarization had little effect on the probability

of Mexicans migrating illegally, it did reduce the likelihood that they

would return to their homeland. America’s tougher line roughly

tripled the average cost of getting across the border illegally; thus Mex-

icans who had run the gantlet at the border were more likely to hunker

down and stay in the United States. My study has shown that in the

early 1980’s, about half of all undocumented Mexicans returned home

within 12 months of entry, but by 2000 the rate of return migration

stood at just 25 percent. 37

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Debbie Nathan argued in a 2000 North America Congress on Latin

America report that there are comparisons to be drawn between U.S.

paramilitaries on the border and the U.S.-supported right-wing para-

militaries in Colombia. Both are fighting a war against civilian popula-

tions. And both are designed to fail. In Colombia, the war will do noth-

ing to curtail the drug trade, nor is it designed to; instead, it sows terror

to prevent support for a popular guerrilla movement and to keep profits

flowing for oil and weapons manufacturers.38 On the border, Operation

Gatekeeper will do nothing to stop immigration, but it will sow terror

in the hearts of immigrant workers by keeping them divided from other

workers, without rights or recourse against their abuse and exploitation.

“Illegalization” is profitable, and business interests have success-

fully shifted the burden of enforcement to taxpayers and to the mi-

g rants themselves. Sanctions against employers of the undocu-

mented—while on the books—are largely ignored. From 1993 to 2003,

the number of arrests at worksites nationwide went from 7,630 to 445.

The number of fines dropped from 944 in 1993 to 124 in 2003.39 By

2 0 0 4 , i m m i g r a t i on a ut h or i t i e s i s s u e d on l y t h re e c i t a t i on s to

companies.40 Agents routinely arrest workers, not employers. Little con-

cern for punishment allows companies to “self-police” their workers. It

is not uncommon for employers to call ICE agents on their own work-

ers if they try to organize unions. As journalist Eduardo Porter ex-

plained in the New York Times,

That may explain why fines for hiring illegal immigrants can be as low

as $275 a worker, and immigration officials acknowledge that busi-

nesses often negotiate fines downward. And why, after the I.N.S. raided

onion fields in Georgia during the 1998 harvest, a senator and four

members of the House of Representatives from the state sharply criti-

cized the agency for hurting Georgia farmers. 41

As economist Gordon H. Hanson concluded, “Employers feel very

strongly about maintaining access to immigrant workers, and exert po-

litical pressure to prevent enforcement from being effective.”42

Since September 11, border militarization has meshed with Bush’s

so-called “War on Terrorism.” The concept of “permanent war” against

an invisible and internal enemy has dovetailed with the interests of the

well-funded anti-immigrant movement that has been striving to keep

immigrant workers disenfranchised. The minimal rights of undocu-

mented immigrants are now refracted through the lens of terrorism.

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For example, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger (himself an

immigrant) balked at a bill to allow undocumented workers the right

to have a driver’s license, saying “It would make it too easy for terrorists

to use the documents to create new identities.”43

In the lead-up to the 2006 congressional elections, Republican

hopeful Alan Uke ran his campaign on the platform of “closing the

border.” Claiming that “drug-traffickers and terrorists can now walk

across the border,” Uke promised to “protect Americans” by building a

new border wall. Such promises create the image of a fantastic fortified

boundary in the mind of the public and are used by politicians to stoke

fear and generate support. It is this “image” of the border that has been

deemed successful, more than any attempt to stem immigration.

Through the manipulation of this image, drug traffickers and workers

become one and the same, attempting to cross through the “unguarded

wastelands” failed by fortress America. In fact, according to a Drug En-

forcement Agency (DEA) report in the aftermath of NAFTA and the

further opening of the borders to cargo traffic, it is estimated that the

majority of cocaine smuggled into the United States enters through of-

ficial ports of entry, occasionally with the collusion of corrupt customs

agents.44 According to Jose Luis Santiago Vasconcelos, head of Mexico’s

Deputy Attorney General’s Office for Special Investigation into Organ-

ized Crime (SIEDO), the Mexican government is currently investigat-

ing possible links between state police in Baja California and U.S. Bor-

der Patrol agents in drug trafficking.45 Image and reality conflict in the

drug war, and migrants are the victims.

It is estimated that 90 percent of the 1–2 million annual unautho-

rized border crossings now rely on the use of smugglers. Estimated to

be an $8-billion-a-year industry, human smuggling relies on a vast net-

work that operates on both sides of the border to circumvent the im-

migration authorities.46 The smuggling industry, while the only means

for most immigrants to cross the border, also sets up a secondary level

of exploitation, as many border crossers are forced to pay exorbitant

fees and are robbed, abandoned, beaten, or raped by unscrupulous

coyotes. But the coyote that collects the biggest payoff is big business, by not paying a dime to acquire a cheap, exploitable workforce that

pays for its own passage.

Furthermore, Border Patrol agents often participate in the lucra-

tive human and drug smuggling racket. According to Roberto Martinez

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of the American Friends Service Committee, “Over the last twenty

years, hundreds of customs and border patrol agents have been in-

dicted for taking bribes to allow smugglers to bring over not only peo-

ple but also drugs, cocaine.”47 One immigration inspector, Jose Olvera,

was caught accepting bribes of between two thousand and four thou-

sand dollars to allow the passage of drugs and undocumented mi-

grants.48 From April 2004 to March 2005 alone, over twenty border

agents were arrested, indicted, or convicted of crimes.49

Whether an undocumented workforce remains in the shadows, or

a steady stream of temporary, non-citizen labor flows across the border

under the auspices of guest-worker programs, business is provided ac-

cess to disenfranchised labor. That is because the costs of producing

and reproducing a growing percentage of Mexican labor in the U.S. is pushed onto the Mexican government and the Mexican workers them-

selves, since the Mexican worker will derive most of his or her social

benefits and sustenance south of the border.

Meanwhile, the Far Right has been given legitimacy and a platform

by the mainstream media to howl for further restrictions. The moral

and ethical contradictions of deporting and importing workers simul-

taneously—along with the daily human rights violations against un-

documented immigrants—are ignored by the media, who dutifully

avoid even the most glaring failures of current border policies, while

laying the ideological groundwork for the next stage of border milita-

rization. Tragically, in May 2006, President Bush took the unprece-

dented step of announcing the deployment of National Guard troops

to the border to assist in keeping undocumented crossers out of the

United States. This will likely increase the death toll, as people seek

even more remote and deadly crossing points. At a time when borders

and walls are becoming increasingly obsolete for workers—and even

for the functioning of capitalism—big business, politicians from both

parties, and restrictionist organizations are working in feverish concert

to construct a new Berlin Wall on the backs of the very people who feed

them, clothe them, and provide the roof over their heads. Like all impe-

rial walls—forged in violence, racism, blinding arrogance, and a sense

of superiority—it is built on an unsustainable foundation. The push

that will cause the fall of the “American Wall” will come from the same

calloused, brown hands that provided the wealth to build it.

MILITARIZING THE BORDER: DEATH WARRANT FOR MIGRANT WORKERS 213

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