Collateral Subjects: The Normalization of Surveillance for Mexican Americans on the Border

2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 548-561
Author(s):  
Adriana C. Núñez
Keyword(s):  
Mexican Americans ◽  
The United States ◽  
Mexican Descent ◽  
Border Enforcement ◽  
Mexico Border ◽  
Late Generation ◽  
Customs And Border Protection ◽  
Immigrant Policies ◽  
Depth Interviews ◽  
Trump Administration

The U.S.-Mexico border has been of particular interest to the Trump administration in its ongoing efforts to restrict immigration. Though unauthorized immigrants are the purported targets of measures to increase border enforcement, U.S.-born individuals of Mexican descent also bear the consequences of nativist policies. Based on 42 in-depth interviews, I focus on late-generation (third-plus) Mexican Americans to analyze individuals’ experiences with surveillance by U.S. Customs and Border Protection in Nogales and Tucson, Arizona. In this study, I explore the effects of anti-immigrant policies on Mexican Americans by examining how surveillance operates in people’s everyday lives as well as how people respond to the presence of surveillance. I find that the pervasiveness of surveillance elicits a mixture of fear and desensitization from residents, as they simultaneously grow accustomed to surveillance while navigating an ever-changing political terrain. Finally, I explore responses to the authority of immigration officers, which vary from strategies of compliance to strategies of resistance. These varied approaches are complicated by the liminal status of Mexican Americans in the United States as both a racialized group and a community that benefits from some of the privileges of holding U.S. citizenship.

Racializing American Authenticity: Mexican Americans’ Perceptions of the Foreign Other

2021 ◽  
Vol 45 (2) ◽  
pp. 202-224
Author(s):  
Angela J. Silva ◽  
Aurelia Lorena Murga
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Lived Experiences ◽  
Mexican Americans ◽  
The United States ◽  
Mexican Descent ◽  
Foreign Born ◽  
Mexico Border ◽  
White Racial Frame ◽  
Depth Interviews ◽  
The U.S

Anti-Mexican sentiment in the United States has long plagued the lives of people of Mexican descent. Since their incorporation, Mexican Americans have experienced processes of racialization as second-class citizens while a continuous anti-immigrant climate continues to impact them. This has influenced their use of a white racial frame resulting in their distancing of themselves from perceived foreign-ness. Drawing on 15 in-depth interviews with self-identified Mexican Americans along the U.S.-Mexico border, we find that divisions between the two nations have become embedded in the lived experiences of those residing in the borderland region. The themes raised by our respondents illustrate how Mexican Americans use notions of illegality, belonging to a nation, and the dangerous other to differentiate themselves from foreign-born Mexicans and the ways they address immigration. We argue that Mexican Americans living in a transnational border space navigate their everyday lives as racialized beings, resulting in their search for ways to situate themselves apart from the foreign other. We argue that the larger implications for understanding how Mexican Americans use the white racial frame is significant since their embedded ideas and beliefs are founded upon racist nativist differences that are used to create and support policies that target racialized others.

Risky Border Crossings

2019 ◽  
pp. 19-31
Author(s):  
Jason De León
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
Children And Youth ◽  
Border Crossings ◽  
Undocumented Migrants ◽  
Border Enforcement ◽  
Killing Field ◽  
Risk Of Death ◽  
Enforcement Policy ◽  
Mexico Border ◽  
Border Crossers

De León provides a critique of “Prevention through Deterrence,” the federal border enforcement policy that encourages migrants to cross in areas characterized by extreme environmental conditions and a high risk of death. This policy has failed to deter border crossers while successfully turning the rugged terrain of southern Arizona into a killing field for all undocumented migrants. The threatening space of the U.S.-Mexico border poses particular threats to children and youth who are attempting to cross, especially when crossing without adult family members. Guides and smugglers typically facilitate the movement of young people, or—which is equally dangerous—children increasingly attempt to cross alone or with groups of other children. As children and youth are apprehended trying to enter the United States, they also enter a complicated system of immigration enforcement and detention.

scholarly journals Introduction

2020 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
pp. 391-405
Author(s):  
Nathan K. Hensley
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Homeland Security ◽  
The United States ◽  
National Standards ◽  
Legal Guardian ◽  
Department Of Homeland Security ◽  
The Us ◽  
Mexico Border ◽  
Customs And Border Protection ◽  
Physical Custody

“We saw no issues,” reports the Department of Homeland Security in a self-study of its practices for detaining children at the US–Mexico border, “except one unsanitary bathroom.” The system is working as it should; all is well. “CBP [Customs and Border Protection] facilities we visited,” the report summarizes, “appeared to be operating in compliance with the 2015 National Standards on Transport, Escort, Detention, and Search.” A footnote on page 2 of the September 2018 document defines the prisoners at these facilities, the “unaccompanied alien children,” as “aliens under the age of eighteen with no lawful immigration status in the United States and without a parent or legal guardian in the United States ‘available’ to care and [provide] physical custody for them.” Available is in scare quotes. This tic of punctuation discloses to us that the parents of these children have been arrested and removed. They are not available, and cannot take physical custody of their children, because they themselves are in physical custody. In a further typographical error, the word “provide” has been omitted: the children are without a parent or legal guardian in the United States “available” to care and physical custody for them. The dropped word turns “physical custody” into a verb and sets this new action, to physical custody, in tense relation to “care.”

Latinx Frontiers

Inland Shift ◽  
2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juan D. De Lara
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
Social Movement Organizations ◽  
Policy Debate ◽  
Local Institutions ◽  
Border Enforcement ◽  
Race And Class ◽  
Mexico Border ◽  
United States Mexico ◽  
Movement Organizations

In the final chapter, the book considers how the region’s emerging Latinx majority has confronted and transformed inland California’s old geographies of race and class. It examines how key elected leaders tied the region’s growing Latinx population to the national discourse on border enforcement and undocumented immigration. One result is that the growing Latinx population was racialized as suspect citizens within the broader policy debate about the United States–Mexico border. The chapter concludes by showing how social-movement organizations mobilized to transform local institutions.

scholarly journals Shopping and Working in the Borderlands: Enforcement, Surveillance and Marketing in Tijuana, Mexico

2010 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 355-373 ◽  
Author(s):  
Magalí Murià ◽  
Sergio Chávez
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
Border Crossing ◽  
Border Enforcement ◽  
Legal Documents ◽  
Tech Nologies ◽  
Consumption Practices ◽  
Mexico Border ◽  
The Rich ◽  
International Border ◽  
The City

This article examines how border enforcement at the U.S.-Mexico border affects the border crossing and consumption practices of Tijuana residents.  Drawing on three years of combined ethnographic research, we focus on the experiences of Tijuana residents who cross the international border with legal documents to work and consume in the United States.  We argue that the tech-nologies of surveillance and deterrence that regulate cross-border transit also reshape the geographical and social landscape of Tijuana. We explain how identities and patterns of difference among border residents are reconstructed by a legal taxonomy that identifies and classifies crossers according to categories of legality. We find that these categories are locally framed and translated into a binary distinction between consumers and workers that reflect a growing gap between the rich and poor in the city. Finally, we conclude that this distinction ignores the transnational character of the city, and in particular, that consumers and workers are not mutually exclusive categories at the borderlands.

scholarly journals A Study and Analysis of the Treatment of Mexican Unaccompanied Minors by Customs and Border Protection

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 96-110
Author(s):  
Kiera Coulter ◽  
Samantha Sabo ◽  
Daniel Martínez ◽  
Katelyn Chisholm ◽  
Kelsey Gonzalez ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Due Process ◽  
Well Being ◽  
The United States ◽  
Executive Summary ◽  
Human Rights Abuses ◽  
Legal Standards ◽  
Mexico Border ◽  
Customs And Border Protection ◽  
Trafficking Victims

Executive Summary The routine human rights abuses and due process violations of unaccompanied alien children (UAC) by US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) have contributed to a mounting humanitarian and legal crisis along the US–Mexico border. In the United States, the treatment of UAC is governed by laws, policies, and standards drawn from the Flores Settlement, the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (TVPRA), and CBP procedures and directives, which are intended to ensure UAC’s protection, well-being, and ability to pursue relief from removal, such as asylum. As nongovernmental organizations and human rights groups have documented, however, CBP has repeatedly violated these legal standards and policies, and subjected UAC to abuses and rights violations. This article draws from surveys of 97 recently deported Mexican UAC, which examine their experiences with US immigration authorities. The study finds that Mexican UAC are detained in subpar conditions, are routinely not screened for fear of return to their home countries or for human trafficking, and are not sufficiently informed about the deportation process. The article recommends that CBP should take immediate steps to improve the treatment of UAC, that CBP and other entities responsible for the care of UAC be monitored to ensure their compliance with US law and policy, and that Mexican UAC be afforded the same procedures and protection under the TVPRA as UAC from noncontiguous states.

The United States–Mexico Border

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. J. Alvarez
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Mexican Americans ◽  
Local Level ◽  
The United States ◽  
Porous Membrane ◽  
Mexico Border ◽  
Scarce Water ◽  
United States Mexico ◽  
Established Firm ◽  
The U.S

The region that today constitutes the United States–Mexico borderland has evolved through various systems of occupation over thousands of years. Beginning in time immemorial, the land was used and inhabited by ancient peoples whose cultures we can only understand through the archeological record and the beliefs of their living descendants. Spain, then Mexico and the United States after it, attempted to control the borderlands but failed when confronted with indigenous power, at least until the late 19th century when American capital and police established firm dominance. Since then, borderland residents have often fiercely contested this supremacy at the local level, but the borderland has also, due to the primacy of business, expressed deep harmonies and cooperation between the U.S. and Mexican federal governments. It is a majority minority zone in the United States, populated largely by Mexican Americans. The border is both a porous membrane across which tremendous wealth passes and a territory of interdiction in which noncitizens and smugglers are subject to unusually concentrated police attention. All of this exists within a particularly harsh ecosystem characterized by extreme heat and scarce water.

Liberal Policies, Punitive Effects: The Politics of Enforcement Discretion on the US-Mexico Border

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-23
Author(s):  
Patrisia Macías-Rojas
Keyword(s):  
Crime Control ◽  
The United States ◽  
Bill Clinton ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Border Enforcement ◽  
The Us ◽  
Mexico Border ◽  
Liberal Reform ◽  
Legal Immigrants ◽  
Us Mexico Border

This article examines why deportation and imprisonment for immigration offenses rose under presidential administrations that claimed to favor more “humane” approaches to immigration enforcement. I examine the politics of enforcement discretion on the US-Mexico border during the administrations of Bill Clinton (1993–2001) and Barack Obama (2009–17). Drawing on historical and ethnographic research, I argue that the Clinton and Obama administrations took a punitive humanitarian approach to enforcement discretion aimed at punishing “illegal immigration” at the border while protecting “legal immigrants” with long-standing ties to the United States from deportation. The findings show that such an approach extended crime control to US-Mexico border enforcement. This blend of humanitarian and punitive approaches systematized criminal enforcement priorities and expanded the discretion of border agents to deport and imprison. Just as other scholars have shown how liberal reform contributed to the rise of the carceral state, this article shows how immigration policies that blended humanitarianism and security punished the very people such policies were designed to protect.

scholarly journals Experiencing Anti-Immigrant Policies on Both Sides of the U.S./Mexico Borderland: A Comparative Study of Mexican and Iranian Families

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 148
Author(s):  
Sandra L. Candel ◽  
Shahla Fayazpour
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Critical Race Theory ◽  
Mexican Immigrants ◽  
Immigrant Families ◽  
The United States ◽  
Mexican Immigrant ◽  
Mexican Immigrant Families ◽  
Immigrant Policies ◽  
The U.S ◽  
Trump Administration

The experiences of Mexican and Iranian immigrant families are often unheard and unpacked. The purpose of this qualitative study is to examine how race, ethnicity, and national identity are at the core of the sociopolitical and economic issues that Latino and Iranian families undergo in the United States. Using critical race theory as a framework, this research analyzed the ways in which Mexican immigrant families who were deported, and Iranian-immigrant families living in the United States, have been differently affected by post 9/11 anti-immigrant policies and by zero tolerance policies enacted by the Trump administration. The research question guiding this study was: How do U.S. anti-immigrant policies affect Iranian and Mexican immigrant families and their children’s futures? Our findings uncovered that both groups were negatively affected, however, in different ways. Iranian immigrant parents worried about their socioeconomic status in the United States and their children’s future. They also feared that their relatives might not be able to visit them due to the U.S. Muslim Travel Ban placed on people from seven Muslim-majority countries, including Iran. On the other hand, Mexican immigrants who lived in the United States undocumented were deported to Mexico. However, after deportation, and responding to the threat of the Trump administration to deport millions more, the Mexican government provided dual citizenship to U.S.-born children of Mexican returnees to facilitate their access to government services, including education. All people and place names are pseudonyms.

scholarly journals 0375 Culturally Consistent Diet Among Individuals of Mexican Descent at the Us-Mexico Border is Associated with Sleep Duration and Quality

SLEEP ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 43 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. A143-A144
Author(s):  
S Ghani ◽  
M E Delgadillo ◽  
W D Killgore ◽  
C C Wills ◽  
M A Grandner
Keyword(s):  
Sleep Quality ◽  
Sleep Duration ◽  
Mexican Americans ◽  
Parental Education ◽  
Severity Index ◽  
Mexican Descent ◽  
Food Culture ◽  
The Us ◽  
Mexico Border ◽  
Us Mexico Border

Abstract Introduction Previous studies have shown that people who consume culturally consistent foods have improved cardiometabolic profiles. Few studies have examined whether this finding extends to sleep health. Methods Data were collected from N=100 adults (age 18-60, 53% female) of Mexican descent in the city of Nogales, AZ (66% not born in the US, 33% 1st-generation). Surveys were presented in English or Spanish. Acculturation was assessed with the Acculturation Scale for Mexican-Americans (ARSMA-II), which has separate scales for Mexican and Anglo acculturation (subscale range 0-4). A supplemental ARSMA item asks how often “My family cooks Mexican foods.” Responses were coded as either frequent or infrequent. Insomnia was assessed with the Insomnia Severity Index (ISI), Sleepiness with the Epworth Sleepiness Scale (ESS), Sleep quality with the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI), and Sleep duration and sleep medication use with PSQI items. Regression analyses examined these outcomes relative to whether individuals frequently consumed Mexican foods. Covariates included age, sex, and acculturation scores. Parental education level was also included, as an indicator of childhood socioeconomic status and since food culture likely involves parents. Results Regular consumption of Mexican foods was associated with 1.41 more hours of sleep, on average (95%CI 0.19,2.62, p<0.05). It was also associated with a decreased likelihood of snoring (oOR=0.25; 95%CI 0.07,0.93; p<0.05). No differences were seen for PSQI, ISI, or ESS score. Conclusion Individuals of Mexican descent at the US-Mexico border who regularly consume culturally consistent food report overall more sleep and less snoring. Previous studies show that Mexican acculturation may be associated with improved sleep sufficiency; it is possible that this reflects an overall healthier lifestyle that also includes a culturally consistent diet. Further studies would be beneficial to help determine the role acculturation plays in sleep and diet and how it effects cardiometabolic risk. Support Dr. Grandner is supported by R01MD011600. This work was supported by a UAHS grant.

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