In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

9 US–Mexico Border Enforcement We have lost control of our borders. —Attorney General William French Smith The likelihood that any given person of Mexican ancestry is an alien is high enough to make Mexican appearance a relevant factor, but standing alone it does not justify stopping all Mexican Americans to ask if they are aliens. —United States v. Brignoni-Ponce T his chapter touches on an issue that is unquestionably relevant today to the continuing debate over US immigration law and policy. Over the last decade, the US government has greatly increased border enforcement operations, especially along the nation’s southern border with Mexico. The result has been thousands of deaths along the US–Mexico border and, surprisingly enough, a doubling of the undocumented immigrant population in the United States. Moreover, border enforcement operations have had other negative collateral consequences. They have led to more networks of human smugglers , who charge immigrants thousands of dollars for passage to the United States. And the beat goes on. Immigration enforcement increased dramatically after the tragic events of September 11, 2001 (which are discussed in chapter 11), and even more enforcement remains a popular choice among many politicians and US citizens. Unfortunately, US government enforces the laws in ways that have unquestionably disparate racial impacts. This can be seen with the common problem of racial profiling in immigration enforcement, which has been sanctioned by the US Supreme Court, as well as the fact that those arrested in immigration raids are of particular racial backgrounds. Enforcement of the immigration laws has been directed at Mexican and Central American nationals. This is no doubt because the modern immigration “problem” is primarily perceived to be “illegal aliens” from Mexico. 170 US–Mexico Border Enforcement Demons of OurTime: Mexican Immigrants As the pattern of immigration enforcement suggests, Mexican and other Latina/o immigrants—especially undocumented immigrants—are among the most disfavored immigrants of modern times. Their current demonization fits into a long history of discrimination against immigrants from Mexico as well as, more generally, all persons of Mexican ancestry in the United States. This discrimination unfortunately has often directly affected US citizens of Mexican descent as well as immigrants from Mexico. As outlined in chapter 2, discrimination against persons of Mexican ancestry has a long history, particularly in the US–Mexico border region. From the days of the US–Mexican War, which ended in 1848, to more recent times, with such things as the “repatriation” of persons of Mexican ancestry during the Great Depression, the mass deportation campaign known as Operation Wetback in 1954, and Proposition 187 in 1994, there has been an anti-Mexican undercurrent to US immigration law and its enforcement in the United States. This undercurrent continues to this day, with some recent examples being the anti-immigrant, anti-Mexican agitation seen in the last few years that has fueled the enactment of a flood of state and local immigration legislation. Anti-Mexican sentiment, often combined with class-based bias, has long been common to American social life and specifically to US immigration laws. Persons of Mexican ancestry are often stereotyped as nothing other than peasants who undercut the wage scale of “American” workers because they will work for “inhuman” wages, which they presumably can do because they are less than human. The modern debates over the ever-expanding fence along the US–­ Mexico border and immigration enforcement generally, the proliferation of state and local immigration enforcement measures, and the fear that some Americans express over the “Hispanization” of the United States reveal both anti-Mexican and anti-immigrant sentiment as well as legitimate concerns with lawful immigration and immigration controls. The difficulty of disentangling lawful from unlawful motivations for supporting such controls does not change the fact that invidious motives to some degree influence both the enactment and the enforcement of US immigration law and policy. Public concern is often expressed with the magnitude of the flow of immigrants from Mexico. Chapter 1 provides data about the numbers of Racial Profiling in Immigration Enforcement 171 immigrants from Mexico who come annually to the United States. Some people contend that the United States is being inundated—“flooded” is the word frequently used—with poor Mexican immigrants. The “flood” of migrants, in the view of some, is effectively ruining the United States economically, politically, and socially. Related to the fear of the destruction of America as we know it is the alleged failure of immigrants to assimilate into US society, which is also an...

Share