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Border History and Vigilante Violence
Background Information

The emergence of anti-immigrant vigilantes is a decentralized phenomenon, occurring in many different areas of the country. As a result, the most effective responses to vigilantism (and other forms of anti-immigrant scapegoating) reflect local developments and conditions. The background information below offers some ideas for those who may wish to plan an event around Rights on the Line or write letters to elected officials and local news media. Please share your letters – and your experiences – by sending a copy to ProjectVoice@afsc.org and witness@witness.org.

The Border Build-Up

• Over the past 20 years, the federal government has invested billions of dollars in a futile attempt to prevent undocumented immigration by fortifying the Mexico-U.S. Border. The numbers of Border Patrol agents have skyrocketed past 16,000 — more than all other federal law-enforcement agencies combined. Meanwhile, expenditures for finding, arresting, and deporting undocumented immigrants at the southern border have risen to more than $2.5 billion a year.
  
• Since the mid-1990s, blockade-style border control policies have proliferated. Operation Gatekeeper, introduced in San Diego in 1994, was the first, followed by Operation Hold the Line (El Paso), Operation Safeguard (Arizona), Operation Rio Grande (South Texas), and others. Military-style technology used by the Border Patrol includes helicopters, airplanes, radar, floodlights, cameras, dogs, blimps, underground sensors, and more – creating, in military parlance, a typical “low-intensity conflict” zone.
  
• Vigilante groups often argue that they seek to “protect” US borders because the federal government lacks the will to do so. In reality, US border control policies have failed because they are inherently contradictory and unworkable. While blockading its southern border, the United States continues to promote regional economic agreements, like NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) and CAFTA (Central American Free Trade Agreement). In effect, US policy aims to develop a regional market for investments and commerce – while criminalizing the emergence of a regional labor market.

The Mounting Toll of Border Deaths

• The border blockade has shifted migrant flows from traditional crossing routes to far more dangerous desert terrain, costing the lives of well over 3500 migrants since 1994. Border crossers today are exposed to hypothermia, dehydration, drowning, and attacks by bandits, smugglers, and vigilantes – a lethal combination that results directly from the shift in U.S. border control policy. Indications are that 2005 has been the most deadly year to date, with more than 400 fatalities reported for the 12 months ending Sept. 30.
  
• The border blockade has failed entirely to stem the flow of undocumented migration into the United States. Both federal policy and vigilante groups are pursuing an unattainable goal. Again and again, policy makers have responded to clear signs of a failed policy with calls to redouble the money, equipment, and personnel invested in this fruitless effort.

Border Crossers and Border Communities

• The U.S.-Mexico border region is woven together by family, economic, and cultural ties that have grown over many generations. Movement back and forth across the border has always been part of life for as long as the border has existed. The border build-up has cut through the heart of the region, walling off merchants from their customers, grandparents from their grandchildren, and communities from their cultural roots.
  
• Not only border crossers but also residents of border communities, many of whom were born and raised in this country, have been intimidated and threatened by self-styled vigilantes. What does it mean when vigilantes travel the border region, offering a form of “protection” that local residents have never requested and don’t want?
  
• Border violence and vigilantism has a long history, stretching back to the mid-19th century when the U.S. conquered and annexed a third of Mexican territory by war. As many young activists in the border region say today, “we didn’t cross the border – the border crossed us.” Racial and ethnic violence, abuse of authority by law enforcement and the Border Patrol, and anti-Mexican and anti-immigrant outbreaks are all part of this history.

A Nation of Checkpoints

• Today, the violence, intimidation, and abuses of authority that have traditionally characterized the border region are spreading throughout the United States, to areas that are far from U.S. physical borders and ports of entry. Year after year, federal legislation has criminalized immigrants and stripped them of basic rights, turning detention and deportation into a growth industry.
  
• The spread of vigilante groups beyond the border echoes the expansion of law-enforcement policies that rely on checkpoints, indiscriminate arrests, and mass deportations. Vigilante groups have arisen in the context of government policies that target entire groups of people because of who they are, rather than responding to specific actions by individuals that threaten public safety.  
  
• Today, the “war on terror” is usually offered as the rationale for stepped-up border control. In reality, the rationale for tighter border security has changed every few years, from narcotics trafficking to “illegal” immigration to counter-terrorism. The solution – more military-style operations, more weapons, and more incarceration – is always the same, despite the fact that it never succeeds.
  
• By targeting immigrants, federal and state policy has eroded civil rights and civil liberties for everyone. Secret evidence, detention without charges, open racial profiling, warrantless searches, and unending surveillance reduce safety for all of us – by spreading the culture of fear and suspicion, forcing people into the shadows, and diverting public resources away from community needs.

Our Communities: Divided or United?

• Anti-immigrant vigilantes invite the larger community to enter into the fraudulent logic of separation, using the threat (and reality) of violence to enforce inequality, discrimination, and exclusion. Watchdog groups have repeatedly linked the vigilante movement to white supremacist figures
  
• Vigilante movements (like their “respectable” restrictionist counterparts) seek to respond to real problems, like economic insecurity, with false and unworkable solutions. To take just one example, if workplace protections are denied to some parts of the community, they are undermined for everyone. Social and economic problems can never be solved through violence; instead, they are only deepened
  
• Border communities have been at the forefront of voicing community opposition to vigilante violence. Their concerns have been echoed by many others – from the Catholic archbishop of Houston to the Texas AFL-CIO to faith communities, civil rights groups, and immigrant rights advocates.

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