Introduction to "Gatekeeper's State: Immigration and Boundary Policing in an Era of Globalization"

The U.S.-Mexican border es una herida abierta where the Third World grates against the first and bleeds. Gloria Anzaldua, Borderlands/La Frontera Once the inner connection is grasped, all theoretical belief in the permanent necessity of existing conditions breaks down before their collapse in practice. Karl Marx to Dr. Kugelmann, 1868 WHEN JULIAN AMBROSE MALAGA LEFT HIS SMALL VILLAGE IN CHAMIZAL, Veracruz, Mexico, he had hopes of reaching North Carolina to find work. Having recently married at 24 years of age, Julian was soon expecting to be a father. Julian and 13 other Mexican migrants perished while crossing the U.S.-Mexico border near the Yuma, Arizona, desert. Searchers found their rapidly decomposing bodies on May 23, 2001. Another 13 severely dehydrated immigrants survived the ordeal. The migrants who survived the 114-degree temperature had been lost in the desert for over a week. The coroners said the dehydration was so severe that the victims appeared to be mummified. The unrelenting dry heat of the Sonora desert contrasts sharply with the beautiful state of Veracruz, home to the migrants who attempted to cross this desolate stretch of border. Rich in resources, the state of Veracruz produces coffee, tobacco, sugar, and oil and its coastal fisherman harvest an abundance of seafood. However, declining coffee prices and a struggling oil industry forced many to leave their homes and travel north in search of work. "I cried when he told me he was leaving," Jose Hernandez, Julian's 18-year-old cousin told the New York Times (Thompson, 2001: A3). "But he said he was going to be the first one to start making life better for all of us. After a while, we started to believe him." Julian told his dad that, as soon as he found work, he would send the family money. Julian's dad said the following about his son: "He promised me that he would always behave with respect, and that he would make me proud" (Ibid.). According to immigration authorities, responsibility for the suffering and tortuous deaths of these migrants lay with the coyotes, or people smugglers. In the aftermath of the desert fatalities, Johnny Williams, the Western regional director for the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), promised that he would do "everything humanly possible to bring those responsible for [the Arizona] tragedy to justice" (Ellingwood, 2001: A10). Although some smugglers have taken migrants into dangerous areas, as in the Arizona case, we must ask, who really killed Julian Ambrose Malaga? Why has there been a progressive and almost systemic increase in fatalities among migrants along the U.S.-Mexico border? How has public policy created conditions that have forced so many migrants to risk their lives by crossing into the U.S. through treacherous and remote areas? Almost seven years earlier, in the isolated Arizona border area where Julian Malaga and 13 other migrants perished, the Border Patrol launched Operation Safegu ard. According to one INS report, the operation was designed to "redirect illegal crossings away from urban areas near the Nogales port of entry to open areas that the Border Patrol can easily control" (U.S. Department of Justice, 1997: 6). Conspicuously absent from the INS rationale was the role this policy would play in framing the treacherous conditions and risks of border crossing. As Peter Andreas (2001: 117) has noted, "U.S. officials have gone to great lengths to portray migrants as the victims of smugglers, and they use this both to deflect criticism and to provide a further rationale to crack down on smuggling." Contributors to this special issue of Social Justice on U.S.-Mexico border policing point out that in late 1993, the Clinton administration embarked on a "national strategy" (1) to reduce unauthorized crossings. The administration launched a series of coordinated operations that channeled unauthorized crossings away from urbanized areas, where it had been easier to cross, to remote and forbidden mountain and desert areas. …