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<h1 class="title" id="page-title">How Israel’s war industry profits
from violent US immigration "reform"</h1>
<div class="field-author">
<a href="http://electronicintifada.net/people/gabriel-schivone"
typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Gabriel
Schivone</a> </div>
<div class="field-publisher"><b><small><small>
<a href="http://electronicintifada.net/people/electronic-intifada"
typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">http://electronicintifada.net/content/how-israels-war-industry-profits-violent-us-immigration-reform/13283</a>
</small></small></b></div>
<div class="field-publication-date">
<span class="date-display-single" property="dc:date"
datatype="xsd:dateTime" content="2014-04-08T14:50:00+00:00">8 April
2014</span> </div>
<div class="field-body">
<p><strong>Bill approved by Senate and stalled in the House guarantees
more deaths along the US-Mexico border and huge payouts to Israeli
contractors whose military technology has been “battle-proven” on
Palestinians living under occupation</strong></p>
<p>Im/migrant rights advocates in the US organized a <a
href="http://www.notonemoredeportation.com/take-action/april-5th-day-of-action-against-deportations/">national
day of action</a> on 5 April, the day they expected President Barack
Obama’s record-breaking rate of deportations to reach a total of 2
million during his administration.</p>
<p>But scant attention has been paid to the list of global benefactors
awaiting the profits from legislation escalating border militarization.</p>
<p>Israel, America’s closest ally, tops the lineup of patrons eager for
rewards while advocates demanding a meaningful overhaul of US
immigration and border enforcement <a
href="http://www.msnbc.com/all/activists-arrested-outside-white-house">continue
their defiant battle in the streets</a>. In this setting, rights
supporters must know which global partners stand beside the US in
repressing undocumented im/migrant communities.</p>
<p>But how does the situation in Palestine — thousands of miles away —
affect US immigration reform and <em>vice versa</em>? What does one
have to do with the other?</p>
<p>Quite a lot, actually.</p>
<h2>“Border security on steroids”</h2>
<p>Take the recent news that Israeli arms manufacturing giant <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/elbit">Elbit Systems</a> won
a US <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/department-homeland-security">Department
of Homeland Security</a> (DHS) <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/jimmy-johnson/contractor-israels-apartheid-wall-wins-us-border-contract">contract</a>
to provide surveillance technology along the southern divide with <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/mexico">Mexico</a>, initially
in <a href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/arizona">Arizona</a>.</p>
<p>Specifically, Elbit will provide its sensor-based <a
href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Npu3LeYyRkA">Peregrine</a>
surveillance system for Customs and Border Protection’s (CBP) <a
href="https://www.fbo.gov/index?s=opportunity&mode=form&id=ecb6c4b068620b12ce32c7661fe6f5a7&tab=core&_cview=1">Integrated
Fixed Tower</a> project, which <a
href="http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/kmd/hst_201402/#/10">consists</a>
of ground radar and camera technology mounted on towers strewn
throughout the borderlands. Congress approved the plan earlier this
year.</p>
<p>A Bloomberg trade analyst estimated that Elbit’s $145 million award
“may eventually reach $1 billion if legislation to rewrite US
immigration laws passes Congress and helps fund the project’s expansion
in the Southwest” (“<a
href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-02-27/israel-s-elbit-wins-u-s-border-surveillance-contract.html">Israel’s
Elbit wins US border work after Boeing dumped</a>,” 27 February 2014).</p>
<p>The little-discussed <a href="http://www.cbo.gov/publication/44372">Corker-Hoeven
amendment</a> attached to the 2013 Border Security, Economic
Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act (<a
href="https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/113-2013/s168">S. 744</a>)
is the key legislation referenced by the Bloomberg analyst. The Senate
passed the bill last June; the House of Representatives has stalled on
voting on the package in any form.</p>
<p>Promoted as “border security on steroids” by the bill’s co-author,
Republican Senator from Tennessee Bob Corker, the measure sets aside
$46 billion for security “triggers” that must be in place in areas
including Arizona before a pathway to citizenship can be opened for an
estimated 11 million people living undocumented in the US today.</p>
<p>No wonder that DHS’s $145 million payment to Elbit could skyrocket
by 700 percent. And that’s just one bid by one Israeli company. There
could be many more to come.</p>
<h2>Israel and the “homeland security” industry</h2>
<p>Journalist Todd Miller, author of the book <em><a
href="http://www.citylights.com/book/?GCOI=87286100874610&fa=author&person_id=16890">Border
Patrol Nation</a></em> (City Lights Books), interviewed numerous
corporate leaders and scoured boundary-enforcement security fairs and
expos across the Southwest.</p>
<p>Miller described to The Electronic Intifada his constant encounters
with Israeli security peddlers in the borderlands.</p>
<p>During his research for the book, Miller wasn’t looking for Israel
anywhere. Yet the state’s agents kept surfacing at every turn, he said.</p>
<p>Israeli companies, specialists and top military brass have become an
increasingly visible presence at border and “homeland security” trade
shows in the years since the 11 September 2001 attacks.</p>
<p>The US has spent <a
href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175723/todd_miller_surveillance_surge">$100
billion on immigration enforcement</a> in the decade since then.</p>
<p>In that time, Israel became the world’s sixth-largest defense
exporter and a leading supplier and consumer in the budding
border-security industrial complex (“<a
href="http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/.premium-1.531956">Israel
ranks as the world’s sixth largest arms exporter in 2012</a>,” <em>Haaretz</em>,
25 June 2013).</p>
<p>Companies large and small such as Elta Systems, Elbit Systems and <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/nice-systems">NICE Systems</a>
have provided technologies including radar, virtual fencing and CCTV
surveillance for Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s Phoenix, Arizona department, as <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/jimmy-johnson">Jimmy Johnson</a>
has reported (“<a
href="https://nacla.org/blog/2012/6/29/palestine-mexico-border">A
Palestine-Mexico Border</a>,” North American Congress on Latin America,
29 June 2012).</p>
<p>The <a href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/golan-group">Golan
Group</a> (founded by former Israeli special forces officers) provided
training sessions for the US Border Patrol, as Naomi Klein notes in her
2007 book <em><a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/content/disaster-capitalism-israel-warning/">The
Shock Doctrine</a></em>.</p>
<h2>Israel aids deadly “deterrence” strategy</h2>
<p>Elta Systems got a boost in late 2012 when, <em><a
href="http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/.premium-1.531956">Haaretz</a></em><a
href="http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/.premium-1.531956">
reported</a>, the US Border Patrol hired the company to provide radar
along the border “to protect the US-Mexico border against illegal
migrant infiltration.” US Border Patrol’s deal offered the company “a
potential market worth hundreds of millions of dollars.”</p>
<p>The US partnership with Israel is reciprocal: where the US has the
finances, Israel has the expertise.</p>
<p>On the company’s end, according to Raanan Horowitz, CEO of Elbit
Systems of America, the Peregrine system “will meet the demanding
mission requirements of the Customs Border Protection (CPB) while
enhancing its agents’ safety” (“<a
href="http://ir.elbitsystems.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=61849&p=irol-newsArticle&id=1907341">Elbit
Systems of America awarded contract for US Customs Border Protection
integrated fixed towers project</a>,” Elbit Systems, 8 March 2014).</p>
<p>But what does this situation look like in terms of human
consequences? In CBP’s stated <a href="http://www.cbp.gov/about">mission</a>
of “keeping terrorists and their weapons out of the US,” under the
pretext of personal safety, Border Patrol agents have killed at least
19 persons in recent years, often under the alleged threat of
rock-throwing (“<a
href="http://articles.latimes.com/2014/feb/27/nation/la-na-border-killings-20140227">Border
Patrol’s use of deadly force criticized in new report</a>,” <em>Los
Angeles Times</em>, 27 February 2014).</p>
<p>In this deadly equation, the reform legislation’s amendment calls
for a “military-style surge” of 700 more miles of “border fencing” and
doubles the current number of Border Patrol agents to 40,000 (“<a
href="http://news.yahoo.com/border-security-boost-senate-immigration-bill-210012196.html">Border
security: Boost for Senate immigration bill</a>,” Associated Press, 20
June 2013).</p>
<h2>Two decades of border militarization</h2>
<p>Increased deployment of military-style resources to strategic areas
along the border has mushroomed since the early 1990s, as Joseph Nevins
documents in his book <em>Operation Gatekeeper: The Rise of the
“Illegal Alien” and the Making of the US-Mexico Boundary</em>.</p>
<p>President <a href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/bill-clinton">Bill
Clinton</a>, expanding on past boundary security-enforcement trends
under his predecessors Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter, instituted a new
“deterrence” strategy designed to “reroute” migrants away from urban
areas and into “geographically harsher,” more “remote and hazardous
border regions” where the treacherous terrain would potentially kill
them (“<a
href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gabriel-schivone/immigrant-border-crossings_b_2269547.html">656
Weeks on the Killing Fields of Arizona</a>,” <em>The Huffington Post</em>,
12 November 2012).</p>
<p>In such a way, planners <a
href="http://www.abqjournal.com/news/state/apfunnel02-15-07.htm">devised</a>,
the “mortal danger” of the “geography would be an ally to us.”</p>
<p>This aggressive shift came less than a decade after the last
immigration overhaul. In 1986, the <a
href="http://www.uscis.gov/tools/glossary/immigration-reform-and-control-act-1986-irca">Immigration
Reform and Control Act</a> opened the door to citizenship for three
million people of extra-legal status and increased border controls for
those continuing to come, but without addressing the US-based economic
and political policies driving migration.</p>
<p>Predictably, within a decade of the “deterrence” policy’s onset,
“Arizona had become a killing field,” Tucson-based journalist Margaret
Regan <a
href="http://books.google.com/books?id=vIN8CBHCor4C&lpg=PT16&vq=killing%20field&pg=PT16#v=snippet&q=killing%20field&f=false">describes</a>
in her book <em>The Death of Josseline: Immigration Stories from the
Arizona Borderlands</em>.</p>
<p>Israel continues to reap the benefits from US border militarization
as the levels of death and suffering grow in line with an enriching
investment climate.</p>
<h2>Border death rate doubles</h2>
<p>A June 2013 study by scholars and forensics specialists at the
University of Arizona’s Binational Migration Institute and the local
county medical examiner’s office found that the rate of migrant deaths
had nearly doubled in the previous two years (“<a
href="http://bmi.arizona.edu/sites/default/files/border_deaths_final_web.pdf">A
continued humanitarian crisis at the border: undocumented border
crosser deaths recorded by the Pima County office of the medical
examiner, 1990-2012</a>” [PDF]).</p>
<p>As more and more bodies are recovered, government and media continue
to report all-time lows in apprehensions by the Border Patrol. Yet the
simultaneous increase in border deaths remains enormously underreported.</p>
<p>But this is all good news to Senator Corker, who urged those
concerned with border security not to worry because the bill is so
tough that it’s “<a
href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2013/06/20/corker-my-border-security-deal-is-almost-overkill/">almost
overkill</a>.”</p>
<p>In fact, the package “is not only sufficient, it is well over
sufficient,” Arizona Republican Senator <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/john-mccain">John McCain</a>
concurred. “We’ll be the most militarized border since the fall of the
Berlin Wall,” <a
href="http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/mccain-u-s-will-have-most-militarized-border-since-the-fall-of-the-berlin-wall-video">McCain
boasted</a>.</p>
<h2>More drones</h2>
<p>One provision in S. 744 would add 18 more unmanned aerial vehicles
(also known as <a href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/drones">drones</a>
or UAVs) to the already ballooning fleet operated by Customs and Border
Protection.</p>
<p>Israeli-built “<a href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/hermes">Hermes</a>”
drones were the first <a
href="http://www.cbp.gov/xp/CustomsToday/2004/Aug/other/aerial_vehicles.xml">deployed</a>
along the southern border with Mexico as early as 2004. Currently, the
fleet buzzing throughout the borderlands skies is wholly comprised of
US-made Predator B drones, according to a CBP spokesperson.</p>
<p>Rivaling the US as the world’s leader in such technology, Israel can
still view immigration reform as a hefty bounty for its “<a
href="https://nacla.org/blog/2012/6/29/palestine-mexico-border">battle-proven</a>”
military technology that is “tried and <a
href="https://nacla.org/news/2013/4/23/israel%E2%80%99s-proxy-war-guatemala">tested</a>
on the West Bank and Gaza.”</p>
<p>As proposed in the legislation, the path to citizenship for the 11
million undocumented people in the US would take at least 13 years.
Even then, the measures would benefit only those who are able to afford
the mounting fees associated with the process, according to an <a
href="http://www.derechoshumanosaz.net/2013/04/senates-gang-of-8-reform-bill-enormous-expenditure-for-walls-drones-surveillance-agents-national-id-system-guarantees-for-big-business-mass-firings-increases-in-depo/">analysis
by Coalición de Derechos Humanos</a>.</p>
<p>Though it won overwhelming approval in the Democrat-controlled
Senate, the bill has stalled for nine months in the
Republican-controlled House of Representatives.</p>
<p>Many House members are hostile to any pathway to citizenship for
undocumented people. Worse, House Republicans, like their Senate
counterparts, have shown a penchant for fueling the fantasy of border
security as a sound solution to US immigration issues.</p>
<h2>A new military occupation</h2>
<p dir="ltr">The US and Israel both continue to dispossess indigenous
people of their lands, and even of their existence. </p>
<p>In the US, Native peoples are left out of the “immigration reform”
discourse altogether. Even though some are US-born, they are
“undocumented” in every sense of the term, since they were born at home
and lack a birth certificate.</p>
<p>The ancestral lands of the Tohono O’odham people span from
modern-day Sonora, Mexico into southern Arizona — bisected by the
Mexico-US border wall. Some were born on one side of the divide but
grew up or spend most of their time on the other side and are therefore
considered suspect by Border Patrol.</p>
<p>Miller writes in Border Patrol Nation: “While it may seem that the
days of killing or corralling Native Americans and annexing their
territories are an ancient and forgotten chapter in US history, the
experience of the Tohono O’odham Nation show us that nothing can be
further from the truth.” O’odham people regularly face abuse,
harassment and even death at the hands of US Border Patrol.</p>
<p>Some of the country’s largest Border Patrol stations (and at least
one US military outpost in a remote location, known as a
“forward-operating base”) surround the Tohono O’odham Nation as the
second-largest reservation in the US, and military-style checkpoints
control all movement entering and leaving the nation. According to
Miller, this presence of federal forces occupying permanent positions
on Tohono O’odham lands is the largest in US history.</p>
<p>The extra layers of militarized infrastructure isolates the nation
while still in Arizona, Miller observes, “as if the nation itself were
a foreign country under a new, post-9/11 form of military occupation.” </p>
<h2>Israel benefits either way</h2>
<p dir="ltr">Whether or not Congress passes the reform bill, Israel
will benefit from any security legislation subsidized through the
emerging border-security complex. Even without anticipated reform
boosts in funding, for instance, Congress passed its 2014 Consolidated
Appropriations Act <a
href="http://www.hstoday.us/single-article/elbit-wins-cbp-s-integrated-fixed-towers-contract/b54c8c0c1492e875a136a3031c3f62c3.html">earmarking</a>
some $351 million for “border security fencing, infrastructure and
technology” through 2016 — nearly half of which DHS dished out right
away for Elbit’s Peregrine contract.</p>
<p>The first time Elbit <a
href="http://www.counterpunch.org/2008/11/14/barricading-the-border/">won</a>
a major border enforcement contract was in 2006, subcontracted by
leading US firm <a href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/boeing">Boeing</a>
for “virtual fence” technology. The contract was part of the <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/bush-administration">George
W. Bush administration’s</a> “Secure Border Initiative.” Security-based
programs continue to be funded, and appear likely to increase, so long
as US policy remains fixed on border militarization.</p>
<p>More broadly, Israeli access to the gargantuan US defense industry
is mutually serving. Grateful for its own piece of the pie, the Arizona
state legislature observed in a unanimous 2012 resolution: “Israel
receives vital military and security assistance from the United States,
much of which, in turn, is spent here in Arizona with its defense
contractors” (“<a
href="http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/opinions/articles/2012/03/25/20120325arizona-israel-bill-raises-some-unsettling-questions.html">Arizona-Israel
bill raises some unsettling questions</a>,” The Arizona Republic, 25
March 2012).</p>
<p>Israel’s security merchants eagerly hope US immigration reform
passes; if not, they’ll look out for the next gravy train.</p>
<h2>“Not 1 More” deportation</h2>
<p dir="ltr">On 11 October 2013, I and others in Tucson, Arizona <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/nora-barrows-friedman/palestine-solidarity-activists-protest-us-deportation-policies-arizona">kicked
off</a> the first of many efforts to shut down Immigration and Customs
Enforcement (ICE).</p>
<p>The actions have been cropping up across the country, known as the “<a
href="http://www.notonemoredeportation.com/">Ni Uno Mas/Not 1 More</a>”
campaign. </p>
<p>Early that October morning, a group of us stopped two deportation
buses — run by British security giant <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/g4s">G4S</a>, a major Israeli
contractor in the occupied Palestinian territories — off the I-10
freeway and locked our arms into devices around the buses’ front tires.</p>
<p>The prison vehicles were on their way to the downtown federal
courthouse (around whose front gates a group of six others locked their
arms) to dump their newly captured “human cargo” into a mass
prosecution program called <a
href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/under-operation-streamline-fast-track-proceedings-for-illegal-immigrants/2014/02/10/87529d24-919d-11e3-97d3-f7da321f6f33_story.html">Operation
Streamline</a>.</p>
<p>But the buses never made it to their destination that day, sparing
72 detainees from a ghastly show trial that epitomizes the inhumanity
of current US immigration and border enforcement policies.</p>
<p>Every day, Operation Streamline takes approximately seventy
apprehended migrants and gives them criminal records and often lengthy
jail sentences. The US government does this instead of processing
undocumented migrants’ cases through civil or administrative
immigration courts, a long-established legal practice in such
situations.</p>
<p>Thanks to such industrial-scale prosecutions, Latin@s now represent
more than half of all those sentenced to federal prisons.</p>
<p>As of 2012, more than 200,000 people have been <a
href="http://azstarnet.com/laestrella/ciudad/immigration-bill-could-swamp-overwhelmed-tucson-court/article_be71df17-623e-52af-80ba-64a6f8e408b9.html">prosecuted</a>
through Streamline-related enforcement throughout the Southwest and US
interior since the program’s onset in 2005 — with 74,000 prosecutions
in Tucson alone since January 2008.</p>
<p>The “triggers” contained in S. 744 would expand Streamline by 300
percent.</p>
<p>Since October, civil disobedience actions — many of them
nationally-coordinated, involving both non-citizen and citizen
activists alike — have spread all over the United States. Tactics range
from blocking deportation buses to shutting down ICE offices,
facilities and jails.</p>
<p>Immigrant youth <a
href="http://www.notonemoredeportation.com/2013/12/23/fresno/">climbed</a>
up on ladders in Fresno, California, to block deportations from the
city jail.</p>
<p>In New Jersey, snow fell on activists as they lay on their backs,
locked together,<a
href="http://www.notonemoredeportation.com/2013/12/10/jersey/">
blocking</a> the entrance of a detention center in Elizabeth.</p>
<p>There have been similar efforts in San Francisco, Philadelphia, Los
Angeles, Atlanta, Tacoma, Austin and Washington, DC, among other cities.</p>
<p>In Arizona on 17 February, outside Eloy Detention Center, family
members of detainees — some imprisoned for years — <a
href="http://www.kpho.com/story/24788801/hunger-strike-continues-outside-phoenix-ice-office">began</a>
a two-week hunger strike.</p>
<p>The longer the possibility of immigration reform is delayed, the
greater the levels of social indignation may escalate.</p>
<p>With these actions, im/migrant justice advocates have created a
“left flank” to dramatize the human voices and stories left out of
“immigration reform” debates. Such efforts can potentially pull the
liberal-rightist agenda, crystallized in S. 744, away from the current
path of more mass death in the deserts and higher family separations in
the cities.</p>
<p>As Israeli war profiteers and their US paymasters act as the syringe
for the deadly “steroids” injection into efforts at immigration reform,
im/migrant and Palestinian justice advocates can and must strengthen
their resistance to these injustices — from Palestine to Arizona.</p>
<p><em>Gabriel M. Schivone is a youth organizer with UNIDOS indigenous
ethnic studies group in Tucson, Arizona and an ad hoc steering
committee member of National Students for Justice in Palestine.</em></p>
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