[News] A History of Institutional Violence at the U.S. Border

[Anti-Imperialist News]

https://scalar.usc.edu/works/cec-journal-issue-7/tbd2?fbclid=IwAR2lL6R1k6FzjPmB456Nmw--Nxf-3OCeaz_vTv1DuiquYaN1gaIGEeGyMG0A
History of Institutional Violence at the U.S. Border
by Dévora González (School of the Americas Watch) and Azadeh Shahshahani
(Project South)

When it comes to the U.S. government, no one should confuse agency size for
the likelihood of accountability. For example, U.S. Border Patrol is the
Department of Homeland Security’s largest federal law enforcement agency,
yet has operated with little oversight and almost complete impunity
<https://theintercept.com/2019/01/12/border-patrol-history/>. Nearly a
century old, Border Patrol was created under the Department of Labor in
1924 to enforce xenophobic laws. Rooted in systemic oppression, the agency
has fostered a culture of brutality
<https://theintercept.com/2019/01/12/border-patrol-history/> amongst its
agents since its inception. It needs to be abolished.
History of Border Patrol
Border Patrol was created as a way to calm white supremacist fears and
essentially became an agency that functioned as a “frontline instrument of
race vigilantism.”
<https://theintercept.com/2019/01/12/border-patrol-history/>  Early agents
were members of the Ku Klux Klan, Texas Rangers, or from border town police
departments. It was also created in response to migration to the United
States, which was controlled through a quota system that privileged Western
European countries, while explicitly barring others, such as people from
Asia <https://www.jstor.org/stable/2567407?seq=1>. Where exceptions were
made for non-white migrants, they were done in service of capitalist
interests. This includes Mexican migrants, who were excluded from the quota
system so that Southwest businesses could continue to profit from their
cheap labor
<https://theconversation.com/how-crossing-the-us-mexico-border-became-a-crime-74604>.
With the creation of the agency, and in order to control migration from the
South, ports of entry became required for entrance into the United States.
To legitimize ports of entry, crossing from anywhere beside one was
criminalized, thus creating the concept of “illegal” immigration to the
United States
<https://theconversation.com/how-crossing-the-us-mexico-border-became-a-crime-74604>.
This primarily impacted Mexican people, who were the source of cheap labor.

Violence in the name of “border protection” has been *modus operandi* for
Border Patrol. People crossing over for work from Mexico were subjected to
literacy tests, entrance fees, and degrading hygienic inspections to
“prevent” the spread of disease. Furthermore, Border Patrol Agents were
known to “beat, [shoot], and [hang] migrants with regularity.”
<https://theintercept.com/2019/01/12/border-patrol-history/> From
1974-1989, in the California/Baja California border alone, 44 people were
injured or killed by Border Patrol or by the Border Patrol/San Diego Police
Department collaboration called Border Crime Prevention Unit
<https://digitalcommons.law.ggu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://www.google.com/&httpsredir=1&article=1086&context=caldocs_joint_committees>
.

By the 1980’s, migration from the South was not for obtaining employment,
but instead because of the urgency of fleeing from conditions created by
U.S. foreign policy and intervention. Central Americans were significantly
impacted by ongoing violence and economic hardships in their countries — the
majority of which was exacerbated by U.S. intervention in the form of
military training and financial backing
<https://www.jacobinmag.com/2019/11/shut-down-school-of-the-americas-whinsec-ice-border-patrol>
for
repressive regimes. In fact, human rights violations and genocide were
perpetrated by U.S.-trained dictators. High profile priests, entire
communities, and anyone challenging the state were brutally murdered and
disappeared by U.S.-trained militias. Those who survived were displaced,
only to become refugees in the United States. As numerous countries were
engaged in protracted conflict, migration to the U.S., rather than being
temporary, became more permanent. Unfortunately, non-white immigrants —
such as Central Americans — entered and continue to exist in a political
climate that remained highly unwelcoming to migrants
<https://www.dukeupress.edu/space-of-detention>.

...the true number of those who have disappeared crossing the U.S.-Mexico
border will never truly be known.

Intentionally ignoring the consequences of U.S. intervention, Border Patrol
continued and continues to operate in a political vacuum that deems ongoing
presence in the borderlands and the development of for-profit detention
centers justifiable and —most problematically— necessary. CoreCivic
(formally known as Corrections Corporation of America - CCA) was founded in
1983
<https://grassrootsleadership.org/sites/default/files/uploads/GRL_Dirty_Thirty_formatted_for_web.pdf>
and entered its first contract with Immigration and Naturalization Services
(INS) in Houston to run the first private detention center that same year.
The culture of cruelty
<https://nomoredeaths.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/CultureOfCruelty-full.compressed.pdf>
in which Border Patrol has existed has expanded to for-profit detention
centers, migration policies, and militarization of the borderlands. Border
Patrol is rooted in xenophobic policies and continues to dehumanize people
while profiting off of those with the need to travel North for economic or
political reasons.
Prevention Through Deterrence
In 1994, Border Patrol implemented its Prevention Through Deterrence
strategy <https://www.hsdl.org/?view&did=721845> in an attempt to control
migration from unauthorized points of entry. To do so, it created mortal
danger so that people would be deterred from crossing. For example, this
strategy drastically increased the number of Border Patrol agents in
addition to creating checkpoints, towers, and walls to weaponize natural
landscapes. Moreover, this strategy has worked alongside inhumane detention
conditions, enhanced the corporate industrial complex, and led to the
enactment of policies such as Operation Streamline, which increased the
criminalization of migration with no regard to the conditions causing
people to flee
<https://tucson.com/news/local/operation-streamline-a-look-at-federal-prosecutions-of-illegal-border/article_e05f87db-cb58-50eb-a6d2-fd56eb1b9eab.html>.
In 2003, Border Patrol became part of U.S. Customs and Border Protection
(CBP), taking on a counter-terrorism mission as it was reorganized
<https://www.hsdl.org/?view&did=457100> into the Department of Homeland
Security (DHS), never addressing the culture of brutality from which it
stems, but instead thriving on it.

The tactics implemented by Border Patrol as a result of the Prevention
Through Deterrence strategy result in deaths and disappearances
<http://www.thedisappearedreport.org/>. No More Deaths, a humanitarian aid
organization in the Sonoran Desert, recorded footage from 2010-2017 of
Border Patrol
<https://nomoredeaths.org/footage-of-border-patrol-vandalism-of-humanitarian-aid-2010-2017/>
slashing, dumping, and destroying gallons of water left for those crossing.
The leading cause of death for bodies found in the Sonoran Desert is
exposure to the elements. <https://humaneborders.info/app/map.asp>
Unfortunately, tracking the cause of death also reveals a depressing
reality — namely that the only evidence of migrants’ journeys to the U.S.
are skeletal remains. While there are sometimes clues as to how an
individual died, for many the cause of death remains undetermined. As a
result, the true number of those who have disappeared crossing the
U.S.-Mexico border will never truly be known.

...the cruelty under which Border Patrol was created has never been
dismantled.

Since 2010, 102 people have died at the hands of Border Patrol
<https://www.southernborder.org/deaths_by_border_patrol> and thousands have
disappeared <http://www.thedisappearedreport.org/>, and yet no Border
Patrol agent has ever been held accountable for murder, even when these
cases violate the sovereignty of another nation-state. Sergio Adrián
Hernández Güereca and José Antonio Elena Rodríguez are two of six people
killed on Mexican soil by agents located on the US side of the border,
establishing a disturbing precedent for agents to act of their own accord
by taking the lives of whomever they want with impunity. Sergio Adrián
Hernández Güereca was killed on June 7, 2010 while in Ciudad Juárez by
Border Patrol Agent Jesus Mesa Jr. in El Paso, Texas. There have not been
any criminal charges filed against Agent Mesa. Furthermore, earlier this
year, the Supreme Court ruled that the Hernández Güereca family does not
have a right to press civil charges as "Hernández did not have
constitutional protection against unreasonable use of deadly force under
the Fourth Amendment, as well as due process rights under the Fifth
Amendment, because he was not in the USA."
<https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2020/02/25/cross-border-shooting-supreme-court-clears-border-patrol/4860246002/>
One of the most emblematic killings is that of José Antonio Elena
Rodríguez, who was fatally shot in the back 10 times through the border
wall by Agent Lonnie Swartz on October 10, 2012 while in his hometown of
Nogales, Sonora.

Swartz claimed that he was acting in self-defense, and yet had the
opportunity to reload his weapon to continue shooting at the teenager who
was already dead. Swartz faced trial twice
<https://tucson.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/border-agent-lonnie-swartz-wont-face-a-third-trial-in-deadly-shooting/article_9f7afee8-f9a1-11e8-a319-2726e598c923.html>
in Tucson, AZ; during the first trial, he was found not guilty of
second-degree murder and faced a hung jury on the charges of voluntary and
involuntary manslaughter. During the second trial, he was acquitted of
involuntary manslaughter with a hung jury on voluntary manslaughter. The
case did not go to trial a third time. Seven years after his murder, Elena
Rodríguez’s mother Araceli Rodríguez and grandmother Taide Zojo continue to
seek justice. They are hoping to present their case to the Supreme Court
despite the alarming precedent set by the Hernández Güereca case.

The human rights abuses by Border Patrol stem from the expanded
militarization of the borderlands and the increasing use of detention.
Torturous
conditions in short-term facilities such as malnutrition, lack of water,
and lack of medical care, even imposed on pregnant women,
<http://www.guamap.net/uploads/4a9c982ea3914.pdf> are prevalent and have
worsened under the Trump administration. From December 2018 to May 2019, five
children have died in Border Patrol custody
<https://www.southernborder.org/deaths_by_border_patrol>. Felipe Gómez
Alonzo, an eight-year-old from Guatemala, died of Influenza type B on
December 23, 2018 in Border Patrol custody. He was transported to a
hospital in New Mexico where he was found to have a 103-degree fever. After
being observed for 90 minutes, he went back to Border Patrol custody and by
the evening, he was “vomiting, nauseous and lethargic and lost
consciousness during transport back to the same hospital.... He was
pronounced dead at 11:48 p.m.”
<https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/doctors-raise-questions-about-medical-care-received-guatemalan-boy-who-n952501>
A few months later, on May 19, 2019, Carlos Gregorio Hernández Vásquez, a
16-year-old who was also from Guatemala, died in South Texas at a Border
Patrol station because he had the flu and was not given adequate medical
attention even though his fever was at 103 degrees. A video from the
detention facility shows that he was “writhing for at least 25 minutes on
the floor and on a concrete bench. It shows him staggering to the toilet
and collapsing on the floor, where he remained in the same position for the
next four and a half hours.”
<https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-the-cell-where-a-sick-16-year-old-boy-died-in-border-patrol-care>
Gómez Alonzo and Hernández Vásquez are examples of how the cruelty under
which Border Patrol was created has never been dismantled. Instead it has
grown and kills without remorse with its policies and tactics, directly and
indirectly.

...Border Patrol continues to thrive on their culture of cruelty while
operating with an alarming level of impunity...

Border Patrol, COVID-19, and Black Lives Matter Protests
Border Patrol has made a practice of keeping people in inhumane conditions:
water is unavailable, the food makes them sick, the cells are freezing and
overcrowded, medical care is so insufficient that children die in its
custody, and pregnant women are mistreated and do not get adequate care
<https://www.blumenthal.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/2020.04.08%20DHS%20OIG%20Letter%20re%20CBP%20Mistreating%20Pregnant%20Detainees.pdf>.
Now that we are in an era of a global pandemic that requires social
distancing, frequent handwashing, and use of masks in order to stay and
keep others safe, Border Patrol has “implemented the kind of rapid-fire
deportation system President Donald Trump has long extolled as his
preferred approach to immigration enforcement.”  Before even being taken
into a Border Patrol station and without any medical evaluation, migrants
are expelled in an average of 96 minutes. Border Patrol deports about 85%
of people it detains, and criminalizes those who have prior deportations
<https://www.texastribune.org/2020/03/30/coronavirus-crisis-hastens-undocumented-immigrants-sent-back-mexico/>.
The rhetoric of protecting borders from disease is once again part of
Border Patrol’s public narrative, now even barring children from the
protections they once received. “‘The disease doesn't know age,’ Acting CBP
Commissioner Mark Morgan told reporters. ‘When [minors] come across the
border, they pose an absolute, concrete public health risk to this country
and everybody they come in contact with.’”
<https://www.cbsnews.com/news/coronavirus-immigration-migrant-children-protections-border/>
New immigration rules implemented on March 21, 2020 under the guise of the
global health pandemic have led to Border Patrol expelling and detaining
over 10,000 Mexican and Central American asylum seekers without the ability
to exercise their right to seek refuge and asylum.
<https://apnews.com/7e9426532434bdda47f270a57d091c91> Under the Trump
administration, decades of work to protect migrant and refugee rights have
been undone as Border Patrol operates with unlimited and unchecked power,
essentially functioning as a paramilitary organization continuously
violating human and civil rights.

Amidst COVID-19 —which disproportionately impacts people of color— large
scale Black Lives Matter protests
<https://www.vox.com/2020/5/29/21274364/george-floyd-minneapolis-uprising>
have erupted in the United States and globally to end state-sanctioned
murder of Black people. The coldblooded lynching of George Floyd by four
Minneapolis Police officers
<https://abc7.com/what-to-know-about-officers-charged-in-george-floyd-death/6229951/>
on May 25, 2020, in addition to the murders of Tony McDade, Breonna Taylor,
Ahmaud Arbery, Michael Lorenzo Dean, Atatiana Jefferson and so many others,
have sparked righteous rage against state violence that serves to uphold
white supremacy and capitalism again and again at the cost of Black life.
As protests gained strength and Minneapolis police retreated, Trump
tweeted: “when the looting starts, the shooting starts.”
<https://www.vox.com/identities/2020/5/29/21274754/racist-history-trump-when-the-looting-starts-the-shooting-starts>
Later that day, a CBP Predator drone, frequently used for surveillance in
the borderlands to create a “technological barrier made up of a patchwork
of tools like drones and sensors to help surveil and identify unauthorized
individuals
<https://www.vox.com/recode/2019/5/16/18511583/smart-border-wall-drones-sensors-ai>,”
flew over protesters in Minneapolis. According to a CBP spokesperson, the
Predator drone was deployed “to provide live video to aid in situational
awareness at the request of our federal law enforcement partners in
Minneapolis”
<https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/5/29/21274828/drone-minneapolis-protests-predator-surveillance-police>.
Not only is Border Patrol culpable for the murder of thousands of
individuals forced to flee their homelands and migrate North, it is also
aiding in the repression and violent murder of Black people in this country.
On May 31st, Morgan
announced via Twitter, “CBP is currently deploying officers, agents and
aviation assets across the country at the request of our federal, state and
local partners confronting the lawless actions of rioters. CBP carries out
its mission nationwide, not just at the border, consistent with federal
laws.” <https://twitter.com/cbpmarkmorgan/status/1267149923893612544?s=21>
By June 1st, Border Patrol was also present in DC, Buffalo, Chicago,
Detroit, El Paso, Miami, and San Diego
<https://twitter.com/cbpmarkmorgan/status/1267610381930901509?s=21>.
American Civil Liberties Union’s senior legislative counsel Neema Singh
Guliani responded: “this rogue agency's use of military technology to
surveil protesters inside U.S. borders is deeply disturbing, especially
given CBP's lack of clear and strong policies to protect privacy and
constitutional rights....This agency's use of drones over the city should
be halted immediately.”
<https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/05/29/us-border-patrol-denounced-rogue-agency-using-predator-drone-spy-minneapolis>
Border Patrol continues to abuse its power without accountability. It
continues to act in a way that dehumanizes and oppresses communities of
color, and it stays true to its white supremacist roots. These are examples
of why now, more than ever, it is time to dismantle the Border Patrol.

*Dévora González is a field organizer with the School of the Americas Watch
<https://soaw.org/home/>; she tweets @SOAWatch
<https://twitter.com/SOAWatch>. Azadeh Shahshahani is legal and advocacy
director with Project South <https://projectsouth.org/> and a past
president of the National Lawyers Guild. She tweets @ashahshahani
<https://twitter.com/ashahshahani>.*
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/news_freedomarchives.org/attachments/20200701/ed22e1dc/attachment.htm>