The INS on the Line: Making Immigration Law on the U.S–Mexico Border by S. Deborah Kang (review)

The INS on the Line offers an institutional history of the Immigration and Naturalization Service from World War I to the mid-1950s. Kang’s first chapter discusses how a long period of lax border enforcement came to an end in 1917, as U.S. leaders’ wartime fear of foreign subversives led to a “new tapestry” (11) of regulations along the U.S.–Mexico border. But the INS was unable to enforce the new federal laws effectively. Constrained by shortages in resources and personnel and facing resistance to the new immigration regulations from border residents and businesses, the INS devised ways to allow residents and workers to cross and recross the border. INS was not flouting federal immigration law, according to Kang; it was an overstretched agency reconciling congressional mandates with local realities.

The problem with these legal contingencies was that, in combination with heavy labor demand from southwestern fruit and vegetable growers, they led to a massive influx of immigrants. The inability of the over-extended INS to regulate the border led to harsh criticism at both the federal and local levels. During the 1920s, then, the INS called for the creation of a patrol force that could effectively enforce U.S. immigration laws. Kang’s second chapter discusses the creation of that force, the Border Patrol, in 1924. The fledgling agency was burdened with enforcing a new comprehensive, quota-based immigration-restriction regime that curtailed European immigration and blocked Asian immigration entirely. Concurrently, the new Border Patrol faced pressure from INS immigration inspectors, tourists, border residents, and businessmen who were intent on sustaining cross-border, Prohibition-era economic growth.

Chapter 3 details how the Border Patrol, considered a nuisance to border residents during the 1920s, was recast as a protector of the American labor force after the onset of the Great Depression. Legal constraints and a perpetual shortage in manpower and resources precluded the agency’s ability to conduct deportation sweeps, however. Instead, the Border Patrol helped orchestrate a massive, nationwide effort to coerce ethnic Mexicans to leave the United States during the early 1930s. But this “repatriation” push inspired backlash. New Deal liberals of the mid-1930s were appalled at accounts of aggressive apprehension tactics by Border Patrol officers. Consequently, the INS reformed its customary seizure practices by immigration officials.

The resulting Bracero Program, the subject of the fourth chapter, put into sharp relief the contradictory mission of the INS. The program was a logistical and administrative nightmare for the overstretched and under-staffed agency. While the INS was the de facto labor recruitment agency of braceros by the late 1940s, it was also tasked with fortifying the border against undocumented workers. On the one hand, the U.S. government wanted to keep out foreign subversives; on the other, southwestern growers and the Mexican government feared that rising American public anger over “illegal” immigration would undermine support for the profitable guest worker program.

Chapter 5 documents how, during the immediate postwar years, the INS built a more robust administrative infrastructure. In the late 1940s, Congress granted the INS broader powers to enforce immigration laws, such as the right to conduct warrantless arrests as well as the ability to operate beyond the border region. The postwar years also witnessed a subtle shift in immigration policy at the federal level. Political liberals started to question the race-based justification for the immigration quota system established in the 1920s. Consequently, the executive and legislative branches of the federal government became increasingly critical of southwestern growers (and their lobbyists in Washington, D.C.), who continually insisted that access to cheap labor was essential for continued economic prosperity and, by connection, national security.

This was the pretext for Operation Wetback, the subject of chapter 6. The Border Patrol launched the endeavor in June 1954 with the hopes of diminishing high rates of undocumented...