Spaces of Law in American Foreign Relations: Extradition and Extraterritoriality in the Borderlands and Beyond, 1877-1898

FIVE. Uncertainties of Citizenship and Sovereignty

CHAPTER FIVE Uncertainties of Citizenship and Sovereignty If I were asked to mention a subject that would clearly illustrate the slowness with which the human mind may rid itself of primitive conceptions that have ceased to have any foundation in existing conditions, I should not hesitate to suggest the subject of extradition. . . . The moment a national boundary line is crossed, a change seems to come over the spirit of our dreams. John Bassett Moore, “Difficulties of Extradition,” 1911 In the violent and heady days of 1877, citizenship served variously as a shield, weapon, and escape hatch, and nowhere more pungently than on the U.S.Mexico border. Both sides of the Rio Grande were “lawlessly invaded” with regularity, and U.S. generals on the frontier described “the disturbed condition of the frontier [as] in a continual state of anarchy.” Extradition exchanges still occurred at this time, but each was heavily larded with jurisdictional conflicts over citizenship. The citizenship exception in U.S.-Mexico extradition was an increasing oddity in American relations, and its existence was enormously revealing about the U.S. governance of citizenship regimes along the border and beyond. At the border, citizenship had real and valuable clarity unequaled along the oftenindistinct geographic line and also surprisingly elusive in global jurisdictional terms. This most imaginary of legal forms had real resonance at the territorial border. The recognition of citizenship on the part of Mexicans and Americans in issues of extradition and fugitive surrender also provided a convenient means of excluding all who were defined as not citizens while sometimes successfully skirting thorny conflicts of sovereignty. In August 1877, fifteen to twenty men launched a very controversial trans- [232] Chapter Five boundary assault on the jail in Rio Grande City, Texas, which led to the escape of “two notorious criminals, murderers, and horse-thieves” and the “severe” wounding of the state attorney, Noah Cox, and three jailers. U.S. troops pursued the escapees to the river. Texas governor R. B. Hubbard immediately made a direct extradition demand to Mexico as was authorized by the 1861 treaty. The sheriff of Starr County was ordered to demand the extradition directly from the governor of Tamaulipas. Hubbard later explained to the State Department that “as the executive of a State having over five hundred miles of exposed border, with a shallow stream as the boundary-line between it and a people who cherished a traditional prejudice toward the American people, intensified by the Texas revolution for independence, and the international war of 1846,” he wanted extradition of the people “irrespective of nationality” because they were guilty of crime on Texas territory. Hubbard had also asked for a “simultaneous demand” from President Hayes, decrying the “outrageous violation of our treaty relations and international law.” Acting Secretary of State F. W. Seward followed through on Hayes’s order and urged Mexico to extradite the perpetrators since the act was “no merely ordinary crime. It partakes of the character of a national injury.” If Mexico failed to surrender them, Seward presumed they would be “no longer disposed to maintain the attitude of a friendly power at peace with the United States.” Mexico agreed to surrender the jailbreakers because it was sure they were Americans and that no actual invasion had occurred. Mexico did not even require any official “formal or written application for the extradition of the criminals” because the border states clause was enough “as the treaty conferred ample powers upon the authorities of the frontier States to effect the extradition without diplomatic intervention or the action of the central federal government.” It seemed as though the system operated smoothly. The early clarity soon devolved into a sharp dispute over extradition and jurisdiction , fueled by the newly proven fact that the attackers were indeed Mexican . This was the common pattern in the citizenship exclusion extradition cases with Mexico; the requesting state almost always swatted aside concerns about citizenship while on the other hand, it caused everything from friction to fullblown political crisis in the surrendering state. In the Rio Grande City Jail case, it was Mexico that experienced convulsions while the United States harbored its well-worn sense of injured national pride. For a time it seemed that Mexico was “concentrating troops . . . with the evident intention of protecting rather than delivering them” to the United States. General Servando Canales, the governor Uncertainties of Citizenship [233] of Tamaulipas, assured Brigadier General E. O...