Department of Natural and Behavioral
Sciences, Sul Ross State University—Rio
Grande College
Abstract
As no other time in U.S. history, policing involves a wide
2
Criminal Justice, Sul Ross State University
Rio Grande College
variety of local, state, and federal law enforcement agen-
Correspondence
Martin Guevara Urbina, Ph.D. Professor,
Criminal Justice, Department of Natural and
Behavioral Sciences, Sul Ross State University,
Rio Grande College, 205 Wildcat Drive, Del
Rio, TX 78840.
cies, with a unified mission of patrolling the 2,000?mile U.S.?Mexico border in the name of national security. As a culturally and socially diverse geographic setting, the U.S.?
Mexico border has intertwined notions of ethnicity, race,and skin color with citizenship, community safety, and national security. Invariably, this geographic, economic,
political, and social boundary has the power to shape the experience of not only law enforcement officers, but also border communities. The multiple issues that exist along
the U.S.?Mexico border provide a more nuanced view of the challenges involved in patrolling the border and policing communities, while seeking to respect privacy and honor international treaties and human rights. Subsequently, with pressing shifts in demographics, police tactics, border security, and social control profitability, in the midst of globalization, the central objective of this article is to further delineate, through analysis of existing data, the dynamics of border policing in the twenty?first century.
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I N T RO DU CT I O N
As no other time in U.S. history, policing involves a wide variety of local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies, with a unified mission of patrolling the 2,000?mi U.S.–Mexico border in the name of national security. As the frontline agents of the law, police officers are the gatekeepers controlling who enters and exits the country and who is
deported, funneled into immigration facilities, the criminal justice system, or juvenile courts. However, historically, law enforcement has been characterized as a hierarchy reinforcing institution, recruiting and hiring individuals who held anti?egalitarian beliefs (Sidanius, Liu, Shaw, & Pratto, 1994; Sidanius & Pratto, 1999; Skolnick, 2011; Urbina &
Álvarez, 2015). Geographically, the U.S.–Mexico border has been a central place for socioeconomic inequality,
Sociology Compass. 2019;13:e12654.
https://doi.org/10.1111/soc4.12654
wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/soc4
© 2018 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
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injustice, brutality, and violence (Álvarez & Urbina, 2018; Andreas, 2000; Chacon & Davis, 2006; Dunn, 2009;
Jimenez, 2009; Phillips, Rodriguez, & Hagan, 2002; Urbina & Álvarez, 2018).
As a culturally and socially diverse geographic setting, the U.S.–Mexico border represents intertwined notions of ethnicity, race, and skin color with citizenship, community safety, and national security. As the southwest shifted from Indigenous, Spanish, Mexican, and then U.S. control, it has heightened or intensify racialized border issues.
For instance, people of Mexican descent, who constitute the high majority of minorities along the border, have often walked an ambiguous line in terms of racial categorizations by government officials (Almaguer, 2008; Álvarez & Urbina, 2018; Bender, 2003; De León, 1983; Gómez, 2007; Lopéz, 2006; Mirandé, 1987; Salinas, 2015; Urbina, Vela, & Sánchez, 2014). Tracing the contours of race, citizenship, law, and social control along the border region, Laura Gómez (2007) illustrates the centrality of colonialism for the Mexican–American experience, and the paradoxical legal construction of Mexicans as racially White, with the social construction of Mexicans as racially inferior—strategically situating a legacy of hate, exclusion, and oppression (Aguirre, 2018; Urbina & Smith, 2007). In effect, the border has demonstrated a socially constructed political divide, where the ground itself cannot tell us which part is Mexico and which part is the United States, but the social construction of supposed “illegality” continues to escalate a militarized physical geographic separation, turning the international border into a militarized war zone (Álvarez & Urbina, 2018;
Andreas, 2000; Dunn, 1996; Heyman, 1999; Nevins, 2010; Urbina & Álvarez, 2015). In fact, years before Trump proposed his “big beautiful wall,” Josiah Heyman (2008) documented that this separation has become a “virtual wall” because of wide surveillance using highly advanced computer technologies along with the massing of police forces.
Invariably, this geographic, economic, political, and social boundary has the power to shape the experience of not only law enforcement officers, but also border communities. The multiple issues that exist along the U.S.–Mexico border provide a more nuanced view of the challenges and complexities involved in patrolling the border and policing communities, while seeking to respect privacy and honor international treaties and human rights. Subsequently, with
pressing shifts in demographics, police tactics, border security, and social control profitability, in the midst of globalization, the central objective of this article is to further examine, through analysis of existing literature, the dynamics of border policing in the 21st century.
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T H E SO C I A L CO N S T R U C T I O N OF ST I G M A T I Z E D T A R G E T E D G R O U P S
For decades, scholars have written about social construction of social problems in the United States, exposing the influence of historical intertwining factors, like power, economics, and the media. However, some individuals and groups continue to be more advantaged than others independent of traditional notions of political power and how
policies are designed and reinforced over time. As questioned by Lasswell (1936) some decades ago, we must thinly
delineate “who gets what, when, and how?” To be sure, we must return public policy to center?stage in the study of
social control, as masterfully demonstrated by Schneider and Ingram (1993) in their theory of social construction of
target populations. The social construction of target populations provides a more inclusive theoretical framework to
better understand the forces governing the experience of oppressed segments of society. The social construction
of target populations refers to the cultural characterizations or popular images, which tend to be created and propagated by the media, politicians, and some intellectual racists, of individuals whose behavior and well?being are
affected by public policy.
Their theory asserts that “the social construction of target populations has a powerful influence on public officials and shapes both the policy agenda and the actual design of policy. There are strong pressures for public officials
to provide beneficial policy to powerful, positively constructed target populations and to devise punitive, punishment?oriented policy for negatively constructed groups” (Schneider & Ingram, 1993 p. 334). The highly profitable
and popularity of harsh criminal justice laws and social control movements, where defendants (i.e., presumed deviants/criminals) have no control, such as the “war on terrorism” and the “war on immigrants,” are illustrations of the
political attractiveness of punishment (e.g., arrests, prosecutions, convictions, and incarcerations) directed at
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powerless and negatively viewed people of low socio?economic status. Given the ethnic realities of Latinos, particularly people of Mexican heritage, we will situate our discussion within the social construction of target populations
theory, allowing us to better understand the social construction of immigrants and, more broadly, stigmatized
targeted individuals and groups. The theory demonstrates that social constructions, which are highly prone to manipulation, influence the policy agenda, the selection of policy tools, and the rationales that legitimate policy choices. As
such, constructions become embedded in formal policy as powerful messages, which are then absorbed by citizens
and subsequently affect their orientations and participation in the legal making process and everyday social life. Additionally, we will go beyond Schneider and Ingram’s framework to consider the profit motives that underlie social control policy, which impacts not only the criminal justice system, but also the American economy and everyday life.
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S I T U A T I N G TH E C O N T O U R S O F P O L I C I N G B O R D E R S
For decades, critics, from all walks of life, have passionately and sometimes aggressively claimed that the U.S.–Mexico border is porous, unsafe, a safe haven for “illegal aliens,” drug traffickers, narco?terrorists, and international terrorists, and that additional federal agents, like Border Patrol, Customs and Border Protection (CBP), and
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and military personnel are needed to secure the borders, along with
high?tech military equipment for national security. In 2014, for instance, various lawmakers and other government
officials quickly capitalized on the increase of unaccompanied children arriving on the U.S.–Mexico border, trying
to cross into the Untied States to make a tenuous connection to an insecure border and grave lack of border enforcement. Some politicians even suggested that Central American children could be disease carriers or terrorists. During
the second Republican Party (GOP) debate in September 2015, Carly Fiorina charged, “The border’s been insecure for
25 years,” Ben Carson proclaimed that “If we don’t seal the border, the rest of this stuff clearly doesn’t matter, and
Donald Trump declared the need to “build a wall, a big beautiful wall” to keep out the “bad hombres.” Strategically
used as a powerful political slogan, Trump charged, “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best
… they’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems [to] us. They’re bringing
drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.”
Reality, however, is far from highly charged political rhetoric, which is propagated and sensationalized by conservative media and sometimes legitimized by intellectual racists. In actuality, the 2,000?mi U.S.–Mexico border is not
only heavily guarded but already a testing region for domestic militarization where wartime technologies are not just
stockpiled in warehouses in case of a foreign invasion, but are being deployed on immigrants. The militarization of the
southern border has been unfolding for years (Dunn, 1996; Kraska & Kappeler, 1997), but drastically escalated after
September 11, 2001 (Balko, 2013; Golash?Boza, 2012a, 2012b; Miller, 2014; Welch, 2002, 2006, 2007, 2009). The
Department of Homeland Security constructed 649 miles of high?tech fencing along the U.S.–Mexico border in 2011,
adding federal agents (Border Patrol, ICE), radio towers, flood lighting, mobile surveillance, and other advanced military technology. Not surprisingly, by 2012, there were 21,370 Customs and Border Protection agents, targeting
“high?risk areas and flows” and prepared to act on any given threat, including the apprehension of children from Central America. By some accounts, the United States already has over 60,000 border guards, more than double the size
of Ecuador’s army, illustrating that the U.S. government has strategically militarized the U.S.–Mexico border, funneling $17.9 billion into more “boots?on?the?ground” and infrastructure by the 2012 fiscal year (Álvarez & Urbina, 2018;
Lee, 2015; Salinas, 2015). Therefore, Trump’s political move in April 2018, deployment of National Guard troops to
the U.S.–Mexico border, is a continuation of strategic social control movements to intimidate, oppress, and silence
certain segments of society, while further expanding the immigration industrial state. Americans often denounce
walls, fences, and war zones around the world for their tendency to divide communities; however, what is going
on in America, in a sense, in our own backyard? After all, we tend to envision war in foreign countries, but not in
the United States and certainly not in our neighborhoods, as detailed below.
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4 | POLICING AMERICA IN THE AGE OF GLOBALIZATION: THE
MILIT A RI ZATIO N OF THE U. S. – M E X I C O B O R D E R
As detailed by Radley Balko in Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America’s Police Forces (2013) and Todd
Miller in Border Patrol Nation: Dispatches from the Front Lines of Homeland Security (2014), along the border the American police is looking more reflective of an occupying army than a “protect and serve” law enforcement agency. While
the army metaphor might seem far?fetched, the border region is in fact looking more and more like a war zone. Consider, for instance, about 700 miles of wall have remarked the landscape of the borderlands, backed by sophisticated
surveillance equipment, like cameras, towers, and more than 12,000 motion sensors.
Customs and Border Protection (part of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security) has its own air and marine
forces, a special operations branch, and a separate tactical unit, with rapid?response teams of 500 federal agents
ready for deployment within 48 hours, anywhere. The federal agency also has armored personnel carriers and uses
operating bases like those used in U.S.?involved wars to secure positions in remote areas along the border. In fact,
its Blackhawk helicopters and Predator B drones have been patrolling areas of the border region as if they were in
a war zone, like Afghanistan. Subsequently, for decades, government spending has astronomically increased (Urbina
& Álvarez, 2016), but since 9/11, the government has funneled more than $100 billion into border armament and
high?tech surveillance systems. In the words of Drew Dodds, a salesperson trying to cash in on the border security
gold rush at the 2012 Border Security Expo, “we are bringing the battlefield to the border,” now that the United
States intervention in Afghanistan, Iraq, and other places is winding down (Miller, 2014, p. 129). In effect, according
to a report by Professor Neta Crawford (2016) of Brown University, spending by the United States Departments of
Defense, State, Homeland Security, and Veteran Affairs since 9/11 was close to 5 trillion dollars by August 2016.
Part of the Customs and Border Protection, Border Patrol agents (component of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security), who can easily and quickly be spotted along the border, are also increasingly being up?armored with a
military?style combination of military hardware, assault rifles, helicopters, drones, and surveillance technologies. The
once somewhat “open” border region is being transformed into what Timothy Dunn in The Militarization of the U.S.?
Mexico Border (1996) characterizes as a state of “low?intensity warfare.” A new warfare, which contrary to the argument of only in certain areas, is not restricted to the desert or the Arizona border, but all along the river (Fernández,
2014; Kil, 2011; Kraska & Kappeler, 1997; Michalowski, 2007). In the Rio Grande Valley of Texas, for instance, federal agents are using a surplus military aircraft once used to safeguard U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan from Taliban attacks
or other targets. Stationed on the U.S. side of the international divide, the aerostat (moored balloon) is an unmanned,
high?altitude sentinel carrying sophisticated cameras that enable U.S. Customs and Border Protection to look deep
into Mexican territory and “spot” people from 12 miles away in the darkness of the night, allowing immigration officials to detect mobility and mobilize forces.
In fact, with less U.S. involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan, more than 70 Defense Department aerostats are now
available for use along the U.S.–Mexico border. Reportedly, along the Rio Grande Valley, four balloons are currently
flying the skies, overlooking the Mexican state of Tamaulipas.
5 | T HE P A L ES TI N E – M E X I C O B O R D ER : A M ER I C A ‘S C O N S T I TU T I O N ? F R E E
ZONE
Until recently, war zones, airstrikes, police–community confrontations or riots, and even police brutality have been
associated with so?called third world countries lacking democracy and civility and in terrorist countries. However,
in the 21st century, no foreign travel, television set, or internet is required to witness the frontline of warfare, dividing, intimidating, and sometimes brutalizing communities, in operations that resemble testing grounds for federal
agents (Border Patrol, CBP, ICE), along with local police departments (City Police and Sheriff’s Department) and state
police agencies (e.g., Department of Public Safety), military personnel, and tech companies. The American Civil
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Liberties Union, for instance, reports that like the Gaza Strip for the Israelis, the U.S.–Mexico border region has been
transformed into a “constitution?free zone,” an open?laboratory for exploration, exploitation, and profit (Álvarez &
Urbina, 2018; Urbina & Álvarez, 2016), as illustrated by Chavez?Duenas and Adames (2018) in “Criminalizing Hope:
Policing Latino/a Immigrant Bodies for Profit”.
Under the new border regime, almost any type of security, surveillance, and equipment can be developed, tested,
and showcased, like in a militarized shopping mall, for politicians, law enforcement officials, and other nations to see
and buy. In fact, border security is increasingly becoming a globalized industry, where corporate dealers like Israel’s
Elkabetz are revolutionizing transnational boundaries. In February 2014, before Donald Trump’s supposed Great
Mexican Wall idea, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) in charge of policing U.S. borders, contracted with Israel’s
giant private military manufacturer Elbit Systems to build a “virtual wall,” a highly technologically advanced physical
divide set back from the actual international boundary in the Arizona desert. The Israeli company (through Elbit Systems of America), whose U.S.?traded stock increased by 6% during Israel’s massive military operation against Gaza in
the summer of 2014, seek to utilize the same databank of advanced technology used in Israel’s border region (Gaza
and the West Bank) in Arizona (Miller, 2014; Miller & Schivone, 2015). With possibly up to 1 billion dollars at its disposal, CBP has tasked Elbit with building a “wall” of “integrated fixed towers,” utilizing the latest and most advanced
equipment, including radars, cameras, motion sensors, and control rooms, making Arizona the mecca of border
enforcement for other states to follow. Wall construction began in the rugged, desert canyons around Nogales, Arizona. Once completed, the project would be evaluated by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to determine
the effectiveness of the multi?million dollar wall, and decide if the rest of the wall will be built to monitor and patrol
the entire state’s border with Mexico.
To be sure, these towers are only part of a much broader border operation, the Arizona Border Surveillance Technology Plan. The Arizona wall project is simply a blueprint for a historically unprecedented infrastructure of high?tech
border battlements, which has attracted various companies and the attention of lawmakers and other government
officials for several years. In fact, this is not the first time Israeli corporations have been involved in border build?
up in the United States. Soon after 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States in 2004, Elbit’s Hermes drones were
the first so?called unmanned aerial crafts to patrol the U.S.–Mexico border. Then in April 2007, details Naomi Klein in
The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (2007, p. 438), another Israeli consulting company (Golan Group)
composed of former officers of IDF Special Forces (Israel Defense Forces), provided an intensive eight?day course
for special DHS immigration agents working along the Mexican border, covering “everything from hand?to?hand combat to target practice to ‘getting proactive with their SUV’.” Beyond federal immigration agencies, the Israeli company
NICE Systems (Neptune Intelligence Computer Engineering) also supplied “America’s toughest sheriff,” Joe Arpaio,
with a surveillance system to monitor one of his “infamous” Arizona jails. Exploring America’s transformation of
the southern region, journalist Jimmy Johnson (2012) characterizes the border as the new “Palestine?Mexico border,”
illustrating America’s new constitution?free zone, where law becomes illusive and law enforcement practice is highly
questionable (Álvarez & Urbina, 2018; Salinas, 2015; Urbina & Álvarez, 2018).
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A M E R I C A ‘ S NE W B A T T L E F I E LD : T H E U . S .– M E X I C O B O R D E R R E G I O N
Pointing to the surveillance industry “synergy” between two distant places, Naomi Weiner, project coordinator for
the Israel Business Initiative, proclaims “We’ve chosen areas where Israel is very strong and Southern Arizona is very
strong,” further indicating that Arizona possesses the “complete package” for Israeli companies (Miller & Schivone,
2015, p. 5). Her language is quite telling, “We’re sitting right on the border, close to Fort Huachuca,” a nearby U.S.
military base where technicians maneuver the drones surveilling the U.S.–Mexico borderlands, and “We have the
relationship with Customs and Border Protection, so there’s a lot going on here. And we’re also the Center of Excellence on Homeland Security” (Miller & Schivone, 2015, p. 5). Along the way, as an additional layer of “legitimacy,”
DHS designated the University of Arizona the lead university for the Center of Excellence on Border Security and
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Immigration in 2008, incorporating selected universities into the global border security enterprise, enabling schools to
receive millions of dollars in federal grants. Conducting research, while developing border?policing technologies and
related equipment, engineers in the Center for Excellence are analyzing locust wings in order to develop miniature
drones equipped with high?tech cameras that can move into the tiniest areas near ground level, while large military
drones (like the Predator B) continue to patrol over the U.S.–Mexico border region at 30,000 ft. With growing interest in the Arizona?Israeli border security and economic venture, officials from Tech Parks Arizona see Global Advantage as the ideal collaboration to strengthen the United States–Israel “special relationship,” exposed in military
operations around the world.
As reported by Todd Miller and Gabriel Schivone (2015, p. 6), “that mammoth security firm is ever more involved
in finding ‘civilian applications’ for its war technologies,” aggressively pushing to bring the battlefield to borderlands
around the world, where the notion of national security serves as a prime justification for increased border enforcement, neutralizing laws, while redefining borders and justice systems and generating billions in profit (Álvarez &
Urbina, 2018; Golash?Boza, 2012a, 2012b, 2015; Welch, 2002, 2007), as documented by Welch in Crimes of Power
& States of Impunity: The U.S. Response to Terror (2009) and in Scapegoats of September 11th: Hate Crimes and State
Crimes in the War on Terror (2006). In “Scenes from an Occupation” (2011), demographer Joseph Nevins documents
that although there are multiple differences between the political, economic, and social situations of the United
States and Israel, Israel?Palestine and Arizona share the common target of keeping out “those deemed permanent
outsiders,” Palestinians, undocumented Mexicans, unauthorized Latinos from Central or South America, indigenous
people from remote areas of the world, Black people from unwanted countries, or others who are perceived as a
“threat,” as often passionately charged by President Trump (and others), referring to Haiti, El Salvador, and African
countries as “shithole countries” in January 2018.
The notion of national security, however, tends to bypass the human element—violations of international law and
human rights—along with ethnic/racial profiling and police brutality by immigration agents, state police, and local law
enforcement (Álvarez & Urbina, 2018; Golash?Boza, 2012a, 2012b; Urbina & Álvarez, 2015, 2017, 2018; Welch,
2006, 2007, 2009; Whitehead, 2013). Of course, as the saying goes, blood is thicker than water and money is thicker
than both. Invariably, violations seem to matter little when there is great profit to be made, as Brigadier General
Elkabetz indicated in a 2012 border technology conference. As charged by Miller and Schivone (2015, p. 6), considering the aggressive move that the United States and Israel are taking in “securing” borders and patrolling borderlands, “the deals being brokered at the University of Arizona look increasingly like matches made in heaven (or
perhaps in hell).” Or, as characterized by journalist Dan Cohen and colleagues, “Arizona is the Israel of the United
States,” and with great profits to be made, borders are being redefined to maximize profitability (Urbina & Álvarez,
2016), not only in Arizona but other border states are also following similar trends, as recently documented by
Barajas (2018) in “Prison by Any Other Name: How Texas Created a New For?Profit Lockup, Which it Really Doesn’t
Want You to Call a ‘Prison’.”
7 | R E D E F I N I N G B O R D E RS A N D P O L I C E M I S S I O NS : N A T I O N A L S E C U RI T Y
OR DIVIDING COMMUNITIES?
In this new era of border security, where borders are being redefined to further expand “border enforcement,” we
must also question if the ultimate mission of the new regime is in fact for national security; or to create an environment of fear, instilling a mentally of us versus them (the enemy), which then calls for even more security? If we spend
a little time along the U.S.–Mexico border, we soon realize that “in the name of safeguarding the nation” (Fernández,
2014, p. 2), the border has expanded far beyond the river where militarized immigration enforcement is exacerbating
a climate of fear and impunity. Officially, for instance, the jurisdiction of Custom and Border Protection (CBP) extends
100 mi inward from the U.S.–Mexico border, enveloping a substantial segment of the nation’s population along the
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2,000?mi international boundary. In fact, 197.4 million people live within the specified zone; that is, 66% of Americans live in areas where they are, essentially, stripped of basic constitutional and human rights (Kagel, 2014; Salinas,
2018). A closer look shows that constitution?free zones are not just at the U.S.–Mexico border, as the zone where
CBP and Border Patrol agents patrol extends 100 mi inland. In fact, CBP jurisdiction envelops the entire perimeter
of the United States, reaching 100 mi inland along both coasts, the 2,000?mi southern border, and the 4,000?mi long
northern border.
As one example of strategic rapid expansion of social control across the United States, Miller (2014) utilizes the
2010 Super Bowl at the Sun Life Stadium in Miami, Florida to illustrate the rapidly expanding operations of border
enforcement. Using the security service of the Border Patrol, the agency showed how it can quickly “mobilize international boundaries … to any part of the homeland for any given reason” (Miller, 2014, p. 19). Similarly, in Lockdown
America: Police and Prisons in the Age of Crisis (1999, p. 141), Christian Parenti details how “militarized immigration
enforcement … has been repatriated, piece by piece, to the U.S. interior.” Working with local law enforcement agencies (e.g., Police Department, Sheriff’s Department) and state police (like DPS in Texas, also known as Texas Highway
Patrol or State Troopers) across the country, Border Patrol anti?immigrant sweeps often involve “heavily armed tactical raiding parties backed up by helicopters and dogs” (Parenti, 1999, p. 141; Urbina & Álvarez, 2015), intimidating
and harassing both undocumented and documented citizens, as documented by John Whitehead in A Government of
Wolves: The Emerging American Police State (2013) and Álvarez and Urbina in Immigration and the Law: Race, Citizenship, and Social Control (2018).
Clearly, militarized border security functions, including surveillance and operations, are strategically designed for
mass social control (Álvarez & Urbina, 2018; Urbina & Álvarez, 2015, 2017, 2018) as a governing mechanism to not
only easily manage the population but also to maintain total control and dominance, while oppressing and silencing
the poor and minorities (Alexander, 2012; Salinas, 2015; Urbina & Álvarez, 2016, 2017, 2018). Parenti (1999, p.
159), for instance, reports that racialized law enforcement practices (like the profiling of Brown people, “Mexican”?
looking people, or the harassment of anyone who looks Latino) have fueled a system of “apartheid by other means,”
a “de facto criminalization and political marginalization of documented and undocumented immigrants alike.” Miller
(2014, p. 260) documents how mass surveillance, intimidation, and aggressive operations amount to a “process of
self?segregation” that “results in a white monopoly on public space” (Fernández, 2014, p. 2); and subsequently,
“cleansing” to ensure that “public space—parks, libraries, streets, and hospitals—will be largely reserved for those
privileged by citizenship, wealth, and, most important, Whiteness” (Golash?Boza, 2012a, 2015; McDowell & Wonders, 2010, p. 68; Romero, 2006).
David Lyon (1994, 2015) illustrates how the design and implementation of surveillance and social control technologies always start by targeting society’s most disadvantaged population, the weakest and most marginalized
groups, which normally tend to be the poor and people of color, as recently documented by Sandra Weissinger
and Dwayne Mack in Law Enforcement in the Age of Black Lives Matter: Policing Black and Brown Bodies (2018). From
international boundaries and side margins, high?tech technologies, along with militarized immigration enforcement
officers, move inward across the country. Beyond selected segments of society, reports Craig Whitlock and Craig
Timberg (2014, p. 1), law enforcement agencies are “increasingly borrowing border patrol drones for domestic surveillance operations,” creating “novel privacy challenges” (Finn, 2011) for all citizens. In truth, as charged by some
critics, “whether it’s gunning down rock throwers on Mexico’s side of the border or racially profiling residents of Arizona, you don’t need a video?equipped drone to see that the Border Patrol is overstepping its bounds” (Álvarez &
Urbina, 2018; Fernández, 2014, p. 3).
Since militarized immigration officials are free to patrol in the border zone and far into the country’s interior with
the “right” to violate the Fourth Amendment, immigration agents use the 100?mi zone to enter private property,
search vehicles and private possessions, and randomly or arbitrarily stop people without a warrant or probable cause
(Álvarez & Urbina, 2018; Golash?Boza, 2012a, 2012b; McDowell & Wonders, 2010; Michalowski, 2007; Romero,
2006; Stephen, 2004). In 2009, for example, U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy was forced out of his vehicle 125 mi from
the New York State’s border, and in 2012, former Arizona Governor Raul Castro, who was 96 years old at the time,
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was detained by CBP agents, who forced him out of his vehicle and stand in a 90° heat for about half an hour
because the immigration agents detected radiation from his pacemaker. In a recent case, Shena Gutiérrez (U.S. citizen) was detained for 5 hours, experiencing a traumatizing encounter, as CBP agents interrogated and searched
through her possessions. Reportedly, agents trampled her and cuffed her so tight that Gutiérrez was left with bruises
(Kagel, 2014). Therefore, as immigration reform is being debated and borders redefined in the name of national security, with civil liberties being push to the margins, U.S. militarized zones reveal that human rights violations are
becoming the challenge of our times (Álvarez & Urbina, 2018; Salinas, 2015, 2018), in our own backyard.
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S O C I A L C O N T R O L M O V E M E N T S : BE Y O N D T HE B O R D E R
A comprehensive analysis of the immigration discourse also requires an appreciation of internat