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Chapter 1 1. For an overview of the four operations, see Dunn and Palafox 2005. 2. The complete version from each source on the selective deterrencecum -displacement strategy is as follows. The General Accounting Office report in its summary of Justice Department and Border Patrol border enforcement strategy statements and documents states: “The new border strategy involved ‘prevention through deterrence.’ . . . The key objectives of the . . . strategy were to (1) close off the routes most frequently used by smugglers and illegal aliens (generally through urban areas) and (2) shift traffic through the ports of entry or over areas that were more remote and difficult to cross illegally” (U.S. General Accounting Office 1997, 64). The Border Patrol national strategy document similarly stated: “The Border Patrol will improve control of the border by implementing a strategy of ‘prevention through deterrence.’ The Border Patrol will achieve the goals of its strategy by bringing a decisive number of resources to bear in each major entry corridor . . . raising the risk of apprehension high enough to be an effective deterrent. . . . The national strategy builds on El Paso’s success. . . . The prediction is that with traditional entry and smuggling routes disrupted, illegal traffic will be deterred, or forced over more hostile terrain , less suited for crossing and more suited for enforcement” (U.S. Border Patrol 1994, 6–7; emphasis added). 3. “The strategic approach on the Southern Border is to leverage the success of the 1994 Border Patrol Strategy, which focused on . . . a ‘prevention through deterrence’ posture” (Office of Border Patrol 2004, 15). The 2004 Border Patrol National Strategy stresses that its top priority is the prevention of the entry of terrorists and their weapons into the United States, and that agents will do so by maintaining and building on the unit’s previous 1994 “prevention through deterrence” strategy that enabled it to gain “operational control” of some high-traffic areas (El Paso, San Diego, McAllen) and that will now be expanded to other priority areas as “defined by threat analysis” (Office of Border Patrol 2004, 5, 9). The specific antiterrorism measures are relatively minor, Notes 230 Notes to Page 2 as they include more partnerships with other law enforcement bodies (such as through Joint Terrorism Task Forces), more extensive use of terrorist-related intelligence in operations, using more technology to detect and respond to illegal border crossings, heightening rapid deployment capability, and increased antiterrorism training for agents (Office of Border Patrol 2004, 7–8). 4. Border Patrol apprehensions remained high borderwide from 1993 to 2002, varying between 1 million and 1.5 million, and only dipping slightly below 1 million in 2003 (ins 2003) and 2004–which is just slightly less than when the main operations started eight years earlier, despite a near doubling of the number of Border Patrol agents (to almost 10,000) and almost tripling of the budget for ins border-enforcement efforts, 1994–2001 (Reyes et al. 2002). Typically more than 90 percent of Border Patrol apprehensions are of Mexicans. Apprehensions have shifted geographically away from the sectors where there are new special blockade-style operations–El Paso, San Diego, and South Texas– though not away from Southern Arizona, which, despite Operation Safeguard, has become the highest-volume unauthorized traffic point, whereas before the mid-1990s it accounted for only a small share of all Border Patrol apprehensions . Meanwhile, the size of the undocumented immigrant population within the United States has grown from an estimated 3 million in the early 1990s to an estimated 11.5–12 million by 2005 (Passel 2006), suggesting more undocumented immigrants are opting to stay once in rather than engage in circular, seasonal migration. Moreover, Massey and colleagues (2002; Massey 2005a, 2005b, 2007) and others (Cornelius and Salehyan 2007; Fuentes et al. 2007) have found that undocumented Mexican immigrants have not become more reluctant to try to cross or more likely to be caught. 5. I start with 1994, because this is the first full year of Operation Blockade and the beginning of the expansion of the new model in border enforcement. Cornelius (2006, 5–6; Cornelius and Salehyan 2007, 142) posits that 4,045 unauthorized border crossers have died from 1995 to 2006, including a record 516 in 2005; he draws on Mexican Consulate reports tracking the issue (Cornelius 2005, 784). Based on his data for 1995–2006 and adding U.S. data for 1994 (200 deaths–see U.S. Government Accountability Office 2006, 16) and 2007 (400 deaths–see Associated Press 2007a), there were 4...

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