Introduction: Out of Control
1.Agent Terrance J. Brady’s testimony in the original trial states that the stop was in the early evening. However, later rulings by the Appeals Court and Supreme Court put it in the early morning. Records and Briefs of the United States Supreme Court, 1973 term.
2.Latin surnames, like Brignoni-Ponce, can be complicated to use in English because they typically include both the father’s (Brignoni) and the mother’s (Ponce) last names. The most accurate way to describe Felix Brignoni-Ponce would be Mr. Brignoni. However, in all the cases, the courts opted to hyphenate the two surnames. Consequently, for clarity, throughout this book the hyphenated surnames will be used. There is a debate about whether to use the terms Hispanic, Latino/a, or Latinx, which lacks consensus at the time of publication. Latino/a is used in this book. McCarthy, Justin, and Whitney Dupreé, “No Preferred Racial Term Among Most Black, Hispanic Adults,” Gallup, August 4, 2021, https://news.gallup.com/poll/353000/no-preferred-racial-term-among-black-hispanic-adults.aspx.
3.The terms alien and illegal alien are used in this book when they appear in the historical record. In 2021, the US government decided to retire the term and instead use noncitizen. In this book, undocumented will be used as well.
4.“Criminal Justice Memorial for Howard Turrentine,” San Diego County Bar Association, https://www.sdcba.org/index.cfm?pg=CriminalJusticeMemorial#Turrentine.
5.“Video Shows Federal Agents Detaining People in Portland Based on Inaccurate, Insufficient Information,” The Washington Post, September 10, 2020.
6.Bree Newsome Bass, Twitter, July 18, 2020. https://twitter.com/BreeNewsome/status/1284613358600302592.
7.I briefly recounted this story in my first book. Reece Jones, Border Walls: Security and the War on Terror in the United States, India, and Israel (London: Zed Books, 2012).
8.Justin Rohrlich and Zoë Schlanger, “Border officers are arrested 5 times more often than other US law enforcement,” Quartz, July 16, 2019; Human Rights Watch, “‘They Treat You Like You Are Worthless’: Internal DHS Reports of Abuses by US Border Officials,” October 21, 2021; Jeremy Slack, Daniel Martinez, Scott Whiteford, and Emily Peiffer, In the Shadow of the Wall: Family Separation, Immigration Enforcement and Security (Tuscon: The Center for Latin American Studies, University of Arizona, 2013); Guillermo Cantor and Walter Ewing, “Still No Action Taken: Complaints against Border Patrol Agents Continue to Go Unanswered,” American Immigration Council (2017).
9.Southern Border Communities Coalition, Deaths by Border Patrol report (2021); Carrie Johnson, “Former Border Protection Insider Alleges Corruption, Distortion in Agency,” NPR, August 28, 2014. The story of Border Patrol agent Lonnie Swartz killing José Antonio Elena Rodríguez on October 10, 2012 is described in chapter 12; ACLU Rodriquez v. Swartz, summary; Mark Binelli, “10 Shots Across the Border,” The New York Times Magazine, March 3, 2016.
10.Jacob Soboroff, Separated: Inside an American Tragedy (New York: HarperCollins, 2020).
11.Chapin, Angela. “57 Migrant Women Say They Were Victims of ICE Gynecologist,” The Cut, October 28, 2020. https://www.thecut.com/2020/10/migrant-women-detail-medical-abuse-forced-hysterectomies.html.
12.Congressional and Administrative News, 2117-8.
13.40 USC § 1315.
14.There are many important books on the border and the Border Patrol. Miguel Díaz-Barriga and Margaret Dorsey, Fencing in Democracy: Border Walls, Necrocitizenship, and the Security State (Durham: Duke University Press, 2020); Kevin Johnson, “How Racial Profiling Became the ‘Law of the Land’: United States v. Brignoni-Ponce and Whren v. United States and the Need for Rebellious Lawyering,” UC Davis Legal Studies Research Papers Series (2009), 174; Deborah S. Kang, The INS on the Line: Making Immigration Law on the US-Mexico Border, 1917–1954 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017); Kelly Lytle Hernández, Migra! A History of the U.S. Border Patrol (Oakland: University of California Press, 2010); Todd Miller, Border Patrol Nation: Dispatches from the Frontlines of Homeland Security (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 2014); Todd Miller, Empire of Borders: The Expansion of the US Border around the World (New York: Verso, 2019); John Washington, The Dispossessed: A Story of Asylum and the US-Mexican Border and Beyond (New York: Verso, 2020).
15.From 2010 to 2020, the Border Patrol averaged 439,000 apprehensions per year. During that era, there were an average of 20,400 agents on duty.
16.American Immigration Council, “Rising Border Encounters in 2021: An Overview and Analysis,” August 2, 2021.
Chapter 1: Send Two Coffins
1.Dale Cox, The History of Jackson County, Florida: The Civil War Years, Amazon Digital (2010).
2.“Suicide of Gov. Milton, of Florida,” The New York Times, May 1, 1865.
3.Doug Swanson, Cult of Glory: The Bold and Brutal History of the Texas Rangers (Viking, 2020), 10.
4.James Gillett, Six Years with the Texas Rangers, 1875–1881 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1925), xxvii.
5.Details on Milton’s life are from Clement Hellyer, The U.S. Border Patrol (New York: Landmark Books, 1963), 21–22; Thomas Correa, The American Cowboy Chronicles: Old West Myths & Legends, the Honest Truth, Book 1 (New York: Page Publishing, 2019); Thomas Correa, “Jeff Milton & George Scarborough – Cowboys, Lawmen, Gunfighters,” The American Cowboy Chronicles website, October 10, 2014, http://www.americancowboychronicles.com/2014/10/jeff-milton-george-scarborough-cowboys.html.
6.Correa, American Cowboy Chronicles, 46.
7.Correa, “Jeff Milton & George Scarborough.”
8.James Ely, Bradley Bond, and Charles Wilson, The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, Volume 10, Law and Politics (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008), 129.
9.Gary Potter, The History of Policing in the United States (Richmond, KY: Eastern Kentucky University, 2013), 3.
10.Garrett Epps, “The Second Amendment Does Not Transcend All Others,” The Atlantic, March 8, 2018.
11.Sally Hadden, Slave Patrols: Law and Violence in Virginia and the Carolinas (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001).
12.Hidetaka Hirota, Expelling the Poor: Atlantic Seaboard States and the Nineteenth Century Origins of American Immigration Policy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017); Anna Law, “The Historical Amnesia of Contemporary Immigration Federalism Debates,” Polity 47, 2015, 302–319; Anna Law, “Lunatics, idiots, paupers, and Negro Seamen.” Studies in American Political Development 28, 2014, 107–128.
13.US Congressional Records, 1882, p. 1546.
14.US Congressional Records, 1890. The Executive Documents of the Senate of the United States, 97, part 5. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office.
15.Hellyer, The U.S. Border Patrol, 1963, 21–2.
16.Hellyer, The U.S. Border Patrol, 1963, 29.
Chapter 2: The Texas Rangers
1.Julia Cauble Smith, “Brite Ranch Raid,” Handbook of Texas Online, last modified August 14, 2015, https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/qyb02.
2.Robert Keil, Bosque Bonito: Violent Times along the Borderland during the Mexican Revolution, ed. Elizabeth McBride, (Alpine, TX: Center for Big Bend Studies, 2002).
3.Keil, Bosque Bonito.
4.Glenn Justice, “Porvenir Massacre Archaeology Most Revealing,” Glenn’s Texas History Blog, Rimrock Press, December 16, 2015, http://www.rimrockpress.com/blog/index.php?entry=entry151216-162435.
5.Swanson, Cult of Glory, 10.
6.Swanson, Cult of Glory, 56.
7.Swanson, Cult of Glory, 56.
8.Swanson, Cult of Glory, 66.
9.Swanson, Cult of Glory, 116.
10.Swanson, Cult of Glory, 118–9.
11.“John Coffee ‘Jack’ Hays.” Texas Rangers Hall of Fame and Museum website, last updated January 17, 2021, https://www.texasranger.org/texas-ranger-museum/hall-of-fame/john-coffee-jack-hays/.
12.Greg Grandin, The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2019).
13.Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, signed on February 2, 1848.
14.Michael Dear, Why Walls Won’t Work (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).
15.Gillett, Six Years with the Texas Rangers.
16.Lytle Hernández, Migra!, 36.
17.Keil, Bosque Bonito.
18.The account of cavalry member Bob Keil, written decades later, absolves the cavalry of any blame in the incident, saying they went and found the bodies and were appalled. This does not match other accounts of the event.
19.Swanson, Cult of Glory, 265.
20.Charles Harris and Louis Sadler, The Texas Rangers and the Mexican Revolution: The Bloodiest Decade, 1910–1920 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2007).
Chapter 3: Closing the Back Gate
1.David Reed, “America of the Melting Pot Comes to an End,” New York Times, April 27, 1924.
2.Immigration Act of 1924.
3.Kelly Lytle Hernandez, “How Crossing the US-Mexico Border Became a Crime,” The Conversation, April 30, 2017.
4.U.S. Congressional Record, House of Representatives, 1924, 6476.
5.U.S. Congressional Record, House of Representatives, 1924, 6477.
6.Mae M. Ngai, Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004).
7.Mary Kidder Rak, Border Patrol (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1938).
8.Kang, The INS on the Line.
9.Lytle Hernández, Migra!, 34, 38.
10.“Border Patrol History,” U.S. Customs and Border Protection website, last updated July 21, 2020, https://www.cbp.gov/border-security/along-us-borders/history.
11.Lytle Hernández, Migra!, 34.
12.43 Sta. 1049–105; 8 U.S.C. 110.
13.Registry of Aliens Act and Act of March 4, 1929 create penalties for entry.
14.Lytle Hernández, Migra!, 48.
15.Clifford Perkins, Border Patrol: With the U.S. Immigration Service on the Mexican Boundary 1910–1954 (El Paso: Texas Western Press, 1978) 116–7.
16.Lytle Hernández, Migra!, 58.
17.Lytle Hernández, Migra!, 62.
Chapter 4: They Have No Right to Go into the Interior
1.“Ogden Mills Dies Suddenly at 53,” The New York Times, October 12, 1937.
2.William MacDonald, “Ogden Mills Speaks in Behalf of ‘The 17 Million,’” The New York Times, August 29, 1937.
3.The Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, House of Representatives. 1930. Hearing on H.R. “A Bill to Regulate the Entry of Persons into the United States, to Establish a Border Patrol in the Coast Guard, and for Other Purposes.” April 24–25.
4.Lytle Hernández, Migra!, 47–8, 52.
5.Lytle Hernández, Migra!, 52.
6.Kang, The INS on the Line, 51; David Reed, 68 Cong. Rec., part 3, 3202 (February 9, 1925).
7.Kang, The INS on the Line, 60; Lew Moy v. United States (1916), 237 Fed. 50. Cited in 1944 training manual.
8.Kang, The INS on the Line, 61.
9.Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce transcript 1930, 11.
10.Kang, The INS on the Line, 59; June 9, 1930, 71st Cong 2nd session, 1828, pp. 6–7.
11.Kang, The INS on the Line, 77.
12.Kang, The INS on the Line, 79.
13.“Daniel W. MacCormack,” U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services website, last updated April 6, 2020, https://www.uscis.gov/history-and-genealogy/our-history/commissioners-and-directors/daniel-w-maccormack.
14.Hellyer, The U.S. Border Patrol, 97.
Chapter 5: Unreasonable Searches and Seizures
1.Carroll v. United States, 267 U.S. 132 (1925).
2.Edwin Harwood, “Arrests Without Warrant: The Legal and Organizational Environment of Immigration Law Enforcement,” Davis Law Review, 17, no. 2 (1984): 505–48; Tracy Maclin, The Supreme Court and the Fourth Amendment’s Exclusionary Rule (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012); Thomas McInnis, The Evolution of the Fourth Amendment (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2009).
3.Terry v. Ohio, (1968) 392 U.S. 1, 14–15.
4.Terry v. Ohio, (1968) 392 U.S. 38.
Chapter 6: A Reasonable Distance
1.“For the Prosecution Herbert Brownell Jr,” The New York Times, June 28, 1957.
2.“The Cabinet: Cleanup Man,” Time Magazine, February 16, 1953.
3.Gladwin Hill, “Tide of ‘Wetbacks’ Reaches Crest; 1,500,000 in Southwest in 1952,” The New York Times, January 12, 1953.
4.President’s Commission (1951), 76; K. Calavita, Inside the State: The Bracero Program, Immigration and the I.N.S. (New York: Routledge, 1992).
5.John Crewdson, The Tarnished Door: The New Immigrants and the Transformation of America (New York: Times Books, 1983).
6.Calavita, Inside the State.
7.Kang, The INS on the Line, 107.
8.Act of August 7, 1946. 60 STAT 865; U. S. C. 110.
9.Federal Register 12, no. 149 (July 31, 1947): 5047.
10.Public law (S 1851).
11.98 Cong. Rec., part 1, 1355 (February 25, 1952).
12.Willard Kelley, “The Wetback Issue,” The I & N Reporter, January 1954, 39.
13.President’s Commission (1951), 69.
14.Calavita, Inside the State, 48.
15.Louis Hyman and Natasha Iskander, “What the Mass Deportation of Immigrants Might Look Like,” Slate, November 16, 2016.
16.“Brownell Tours ‘Wetback’ Border,” The New York Times, August 16, 1953.
17.“Mexico Cites Difficulties,” The New York Times, August 18, 1953.
18.Joan Cook, “J. M Swing, Wartime Airborne Commander,” The New York Times, December 12, 1984.
19.“Guard of the Borders, Joseph May Swing,” The New York Times, April 24, 1958.
20.Gladwin Hill, “Plan Gains to End Use of ‘Wetbacks,’” The New York Times, June 27, 1954.
21.Lytle Hernández, Migra!.
22.Gladwin Hill, “700 on Coast Open ‘Wetback’ Drive,” The New York Times, June 18, 1954.
23.Gladwin Hill, “‘Wetback’ Stream Stemmed in Part,” The New York Times, June 20, 1954.
24.Some reports say they were all stuck in a locked truck, but I could not find confirmation of that. Hearings before the Subcommittee on Equipment, Supplies, and Manpower of the Committee on Agriculture, House of Representatives (March 16, 17, 21, 22, 1955): 214.
25.Lytle Hernández, Migra!
26.Calavita, Inside the State, 55.
27.Customs and Border Protection, “U.S. Border Patrol Total Apprehensions (FY 1925–FY 2020),” n.d., https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/media-resources/stats.
28.Federal Register 22, no. 236 (Friday, December 6, 1957): 9808, https://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/service/ll/fedreg/fr022/fr022236/fr022236.pdf.
29.Calavita, Inside the State.
30.“Ban on Braceros,” The New York Times, June 3, 1964.
31.“New Door for Braceros?” The New York Times, December 9, 1964.
32.Kang, The INS on the Line, 87.
Chapter 7: Law and Order
1.Charles Lamb and Stephen Halpern, eds., The Burger Court: Political and Judicial Profiles (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1991), 132.
2.Evan Thomas, First: Sandra Day O’Connor (New York: Penguin, 2018).
3.Lamb and Halpern, The Burger Court, 316–9.
4.The Burger Court reinstated capital punishment in 1976 in Gregg v. Georgia.
5.John Jeffries, Justice Lewis F. Powell: A Biography (New York: C. Scribner’s Sons, 1994), 142.
6.Jeffries, Justice Lewis F. Powell: A Biography, 214; Lewis Powell, “Address,” Nebraska Law Review 44 (1965): 358; Lewis Powell, “Civil Disobedience: Prelude to Revolution?” New York State Bar Journal 40 (1968): 172.
7.Lewis Powell, “An Urgent Need for More Criminal Justice,” American Bar Association Journal 51 (1965): 437–44, 438–9.
Chapter 8: Terrorists in Suits
1.Chanoux passed away eight years later, in 1981, at the still-young age of forty-eight while vacationing in Texas. “Obituary for James A. Chanoux,” Chula Vista Star-News, February 26, 1981.
2.The details on John Cleary’s life were gathered through interviews with Chuck Sevilla and his academic profiles. Unfortunately, Cleary passed away on January 31, 2020, before I was able to interview him.
3.Rate My Professors site, rating of “John Cleary,” August 15, 2005, https://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ShowRatings.jsp?tid=50617.
4.Oral arguments, United States v. Martinez-Fuerte.
5.The oral arguments for all Supreme Court cases since 1955 were recorded and are publicly available. They are held at the National Archives and are posted on websites such as www.oyez.org.
6.Alexander v. United States, 1966; United States v. Ramsey, 431 U.S. 606, 616 (1977).
7.Interview, Chuck Sevilla, January 31, 2020.
Chapter 9: Change of Heart
1.J. Harvie Wilkinson III, Serving Justice: A Supreme Court Clerk’s View (New York: Charterhouse, 1974).
2.Jeffries, Justice Lewis F. Powell: A Biography, 431.
3.Interview, Christina Whitman, January 21, 2021.
4.I suspect but could not confirm that the identity of the clerk is J. Harvie Wilkinson. Wilkinson had a close relationship with Powell and recounts a similar story, without specifying the exact case, in his book Serving Justice, 33, 63, and 116.
5.Bob Woodward and Scott Armstrong, The Brethren: Inside the Supreme Court (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1979), 259-60.
6.Jeffries, Justice Lewis F. Powell: A Biography, 265.
7.Powell Papers, Almeida-Sanchez, 178.
8.Almeida-Sanchez v. United States, 413 U.S. 266, 275.
Chapter 10: Rank Racism
1.Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, Brignoni-Ponce. 499 f.2d 1109 (1974).
2.Section 287 of the U.S. Code.
3.United States v. Brignoni-Ponce. Supreme Court Case Files Collection. Box 25. Powell Papers. Lewis F. Powell Jr. Archives, Washington & Lee University School of Law, Virginia (p. 3 74-114 document).
4.Interview, Penny Clark, February 20, 2020.
5.Powell Papers, Brignoni-Ponce 9.
6.Email correspondence with Chuck Sevilla, April 25, 2021.
7.Patricia Brennan, “Seven justices, on camera,” Washington Post, October 6, 1996.
Chapter 11: Mexican Haircuts
1.Quoted in Lamb and Halpern, The Burger Court, 188, from William Douglas, The Court Years: The Autobiography of William O. Douglas (New York: Random House, 1988), 329–30.
2.Woodward and Armstrong, The Brethren.
3.U.S. v. Ortiz. Supreme Court Case Files Collection. Box 24. Powell Papers. Lewis F. Powell Jr. Archives, Washington & Lee University School of Law, Virginia. 33–34.
4.Powell Papers, Brignoni-Ponce 23.
5.Powell Papers, Brignoni-Ponce 32.
6.Powell Papers, Brignoni-Ponce 44.
7.Powell Papers, Brignoni-Ponce 45.
8.Powell Papers, Brignoni-Ponce 53.
9.Powell Papers, Brignoni-Ponce 54.
10.Powell Papers, Brignoni-Ponce 65.
11.Powell Papers, Brignoni-Ponce 67.
12.Powell Papers, Brignoni-Ponce 72.
13.Interview, Penny Clark, February 20, 2020.
14.Interview, Penny Clark, February 20, 2020.
15.Interview, Penny Clark, February 20, 2020.
16.Johnson, “How Racial Profiling in America Became the Law of the Land.”
Chapter 12: A Sixth Sense
1.David Zimmerle, “Border Check,” The San Clemente Times, April 8, 2010.
2.United States v. Martinez-Fuerte, 9th Circuit Court (1975), 313.
3.United States v. Baca, 368 F. Supp. 398 (S.D. Cal. 1973).
4.United States v. Martinez-Fuerte, 9th Circuit Court (1975).
5.United States v. Martinez-Fuerte, 9th Circuit Court (1975), 314.
6.United States v. Martinez-Fuerte, 9th Circuit Court (1975), 315.
7.United States v. Martinez-Fuerte, 9th Circuit Court (1975), 318.
8.Interview, Christina Whitman, January 21, 2021.
9.Powell Papers, Martinez-Fuerte, 10.
10.Powell Papers, Martinez-Fuerte, 14.
11.Oral arguments from the United States v. Martinez-Fuerte are cited through the next three pages.
12.Interview, Christina Whitman, January 21, 2021.
13.Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. (1968).
Chapter 13: Free to Stop Any and All Motorists
1.Interview, Christina Whitman, January 21, 2021.
2.United States v. Martinez-Fuerte, 428 U.S. 543 (1976).
3.Woodward and Armstrong, The Brethren, 443.
4.United States v. Martinez-Fuerte, 428 U.S. 543 (1976).
Chapter 14: America’s Frontline
1.ACLU Rodriquez v. Swartz, summary. Mark Binelli, “10 Shots Across the Border,” The New York Times Magazine, March 3, 2016.
2.Joseph Nevins, Operation Gatekeeper and Beyond: The War on “Illegals” and the Remaking of the U.S.-Mexico Boundary (Oxfordshire, UK: Routledge, 2010).
3.Katy Murdza and Walter Ewing, “The Legacy of Racism within the U.S. Border Patrol,” The American Immigration Council, January 2021.
4.Robert Reinhold, “A Welcome for Immigrants Turns to Resentment,” The New York Times, August 25, 1993.
5.Border Patrol, “Border Patrol Strategic Plan 1994 and Beyond: National Strategy.”
6.Timothy Dunn, Blockading the Border and Human Rights: The El Paso Operation that Remade Immigration Enforcement (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2009); Nevins, Operation Gatekeeper.
7.Todd Miller, Border Patrol Nation: Dispatches from the Front Lines of Homeland Security (San Francisco: City Lights, 2014).
8.6 USC § 211(f)(3)(C).
9.“About CBP,” U.S. Customs and Border Protection website, last updated December 18, 2020, https://www.cbp.gov/about.
10.Reece Jones, “Border Wars: Narratives and Images of the US-Mexican Border on TV,” ACME 13, no. 3 (2014): 530–50.
11.Family Members of Anastasio Hernández-Rojas v. United States, complaint, Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, March 2016, 30.
12.Debbie Nathan, “How the Border Patrol Faked Statistics Showing a 73 Percent Rise in Assaults Against Agents,” The Intercept, April 23, 2018.
13.Ted Hesson, “U.S. to outfit Border Patrol agents with body cameras in major oversight move,” Reuters, August 4, 2021, https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-outfit-border-agents-with-body-cameras-major-oversight-move-2021-08-04/.
14.Jeremey Slack, Daniel Martinez, Scott Whiteford, and Emily Peiffer, In the Shadow of the Wall: Family Separation, Immigration Enforcement and Security, (Tucson: The Center for Latin American Studies, University of Arizona, 2013); Guillermo Cantor and Walter Ewing, “Still No Action Taken: Complaints against Border Patrol Agents Continue to Go Unanswered,” American Immigration Council, 2017.
15.Binelli, “10 Shots.”
16.The Police Executive Research Forum, “U.S. Customs and Border Protection Use of Force Review: Cases and Policies,” 2013.
17.“Perez, C. Y. v. United States,” Hold CBP Accountable website, last modified June, 24, 2021, https://holdcbpaccountable.org/2016/04/12/perez-c-y-v-united-states/.
18.Perla Trevizo, “Not guilty: Jury acquits Border Patrol agent Lonnie Swartz of involuntary manslaughter,” Arizona Daily Star, November 22, 2018.
19.Hernandez v. Mesa, 589 U.S (2020).
20.Southern Border Communities Coalition, Deaths by Border Patrol.
Chapter 15: Hostile Terrain
1.Amy Wang, “Border Patrol agents were filmed dumping water left for migrants. Then came a ‘suspicious’ arrest,” The Washington Post, January 24, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2018/01/23/border-patrol-accused-of-targeting-aid-group-that-filmed-agents-dumping-water-left-for-migrants/.
2.Interview, Max Granger, March 18, 2021.
3.Fernanda Santos, “Border Patrol Raids Humanitarian Aid Group Camp in Arizona,” The New York Times, June 16, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/16/us/border-patrol-immigration-no-more-deaths.html.
4.Complaint, “Dr. Scott Warren Motion to Dismiss Due to Selective Enforcement,” 14. https://www.scribd.com/document/402020760/Dr-Scott-Warren-Motion-to-Dismiss-due-to-Selective-Enforcement.
5.Complaint, “Dr. Scott Warren,” 15.
6.Adrian Skabelund, “The graveyard in Arizona’s borderlands,” The Lumberjack, March 2, 2017.
7.Jason De León, The Land of Open Graves: Living and Dying on the Migrant Trail (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2015).
8.Border Patrol, “Border Patrol National Strategic Plan 1994 and Beyond,” July 1994.
9.Geoffrey Boyce, Samuel Chambers, and Sarah Launius, “Bodily Inertia and the Weaponization of the Sonoran desert in US Boundary Enforcement: A GIS modeling of Migration Routes through Arizona’s Altar Valley,” Journal on Migration and Human Security, 7, no. 1 (2019): 23–3; Samuel Chambers, Geoffrey Boyce, Sarah Launius, and Alicia Dinsmore, “Mortality, Surveillance and the Tertiary ‘Funnel Effect’ on the US-Mexico Border: A Geospatial Modeling of the Geography of Deterrence,” Journal of Borderlands Studies, 36, no. 3 (2021): 443–468.
10.No More Deaths, “Left to Die: Border Patrol, Search and Rescue, and the Crisis of Disappearance,” February 3, 2021, https://nomoredeaths.org/new-report-left-to-die-border-patrol-search-rescue-and-the-crisis-of-disappearance/.
11.Rob O’Dell, Daniel Gozález, and Jill Castellano, “‘Mass disaster’ grows at the U.S.-Mexico border, but Washington doesn’t seem to care,” USA Today, n.d., https://www.usatoday.com/border-wall/story/mass-disaster-grows-u-s-mexico-border/1009752001/.
12.No More Deaths, “Left to Die,” 74.
13.Border Patrol, “Border Patrol Agents Rescue Man Missing for Eight Days,” March 16, 2021, https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/local-media-release/border-patrol-agents-rescue-man-missing-eight-days.
14.No More Deaths, “Left to Die,” 10.
15.No More Deaths, “Left to Die,” 11.
16.No More Deaths, “Left to Die,” 12.
17.No More Deaths, “Left to Die.”
18.Interview, Max Granger, March 18, 2021.
19.90-191, United States of America v. Scott Daniel Warren, No. 17-00341MJ-001-TUC-RCC (US District Court, D. Arizona 2019).
20.“Drop all charges against No More Deaths volunteer Scott Warren,” petition, MoveOn.org, https://sign.moveon.org/petitions/drop-all-charges-against-7.
21.Scott Warren, “I gave water to migrants crossing the Arizona desert. They charged me with a felony,” The Washington Post, May 28, 2018.
22.Isaac Stanley-Becker, “An activist faced 20 years in prison for helping migrants. But jurors wouldn’t convict him,” The Washington Post, June 12, 2019.
23.Ryan Devereaux, “Humanitarian Volunteer Scott Warren Reflects on the Borderlands and Two Years of Persecution,” The Intercept, November 23, 2019, https://theintercept.com/2019/11/23/scott-warren-verdict-immigration-border/.
24.No More Deaths, “No More Deaths Volunteers Win #cabeza9 Appeal: Convictions Reversed,” February 4, 2020.
25.No More Deaths, “Second Military Style Raid in Two Months: Border Patrol Detains 12 people Receiving Humanitarian Aid,” October 7, 2020, https://nomoredeaths.org/second-military-style-raid-in-two-months-border-patrol-detains-12-people-receiving-care-at-humanitarian-aid-station/.
26.Geneva Sands, “Border Patrol Tallies Record 557 Migrant Deaths on US-Mexico Border in 2021 Fiscal Year,” CNN, October 29, 2021.
Chapter 16: Checkpoint Nation
1.Interview, Terry Bressi, February 11, 2021.
2.8 U.S.C. § 1357(a)(3).
3.Tim Gaynor, “Ex-Arizona governor, 96, detained at checkpoint in sweltering heat,” Reuters, July 5, 2012.
4.United States v. Martinez-Fuerte, 428 U.S. 543 (1976).
5.United States v. Martinez-Fuerte, 428 U.S. 543 (1976).
6.Alex Nowrasteh, “Border Patrol Checkpoints Do Not Work—End Them,” The Cato Institute, November 20, 2017.
7.ACLU, “Record of Abuse: Lawlessness and Impunity in Border Patrol’s Interior Enforcement Operations” (2015).
8.General Accountability Office, Border Patrol: Issues Related to Agent Deployment Strategy and Fixed Checkpoints (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 2017), 39.
9.General Accountability Office, Border Patrol, 52.
10.Al Reinart, “The best little checkpoint in Texas,” Texas Monthly, August 2013.
11.John Burnett, “At ‘checkpoint of the stars,’ Texas sheriff takes a pass on pot cases,” Morning Edition, National Public Radio, October 1, 2015.
12.Drewniak v. U.S. complaint (2020), 13.
13.Drewniak v. U.S. complaint (2020), 13.
14.Interview, Gilles Bissonnette, February 03, 2021.
15.State of New Hampshire v. Daniel McCarthy (2018) Docket #469-2017-CR-01888.
16.Interview, Jenn Budd, February 01, 2021.
17.The videos of over 300 of Terry Bressi’s checkpoint encounters are available at https://vimeo.com/user66259598.
18.Federal Emergency Management Agency, “Operation Stonegarden (OPSG) Program,” solicitation, 2019.
19.Office of Inspector General, “FEMA and CBP oversight of Operation Stonegarden program needs improvement,” Department of Homeland Security, November 9, 2017.
20.Jasmine Demers, “Pima County supervisors reject Operation Stonegarden grant funding 3-2,” Arizona Daily Star, February 4, 2020.
21.Patrick Leahy, “Leahy, Murray and Welch Reintroduce Legislation to Curtail Warrantless Vehicle Checkpoint Stops and Property Searches Away from the Border,” press release, 2019.
Chapter 17: Somebody Speaking Spanish
1.Details of the interactions between Suda, Hernandez, and O’Neill are described in the complaint. Additional details from an interview with their lawyer, Alex Rate, March 19, 2021.
2.Census data, 2019 estimates.
3.Matt Volz, “Backlash over Border Agency lawsuit forces Montana Women to leave town,” Associated Press, September 20, 2019.
4.ACLU, “Customs and Border Protection Settles Federal Lawsuit with American Citizens Racially Profiled and Unlawfully Detained for Speaking Spanish,” press release, November 24, 2020.
5.Border Patrol, “M-69 The Law of Arrest, Search, and Seizure for Immigration Officers,” INS 1981 Investigator’s Handbook.
6.Customs and Border Protection, “CBP Enforcement Law Course, 510-1” (2012). This document was obtained by Max Rivlin-Nadler of The Intercept through a Freedom of Information Act Request; Max Rivlin-Nadler, “Newly Released FOIA Documents Shed Light on Border Patrol’s Seemingly Limitless Authority,” The Intercept, January 7, 2019.
7.ACLU, “Fact Sheet: Implementing Law Enforcement Best Practices for our Nation’s Biggest Police Force (CBP)” (2015).
8.ACLU Michigan, The Border’s Long Shadow: How Border Patrol Uses Racial Profiling and Local and State Police to Target and Instill Fear in Michigan’s Immigrant Communities (2021), 4; Mat Coleman and Austin Kocher, “Rethinking the ‘Gold Standard’ of Racial Profiling: §287(g), Secure Communities and Racially Discrepant Police Power,” American Behavioral Scientist 63, no. 9 (2019): 1185–1220; Geoff Boyce and Todd Miller, “An anti-Latin@ policing machine: Enforcing the US/Mexico border along the Great Lakes and the 49th Parallel,” Handbook on Human Security, Borders and Migration, eds. Natalia Ribas-Mateos and Tim Dunn (London: Edward Elgar, 2021).
9.ACLU Michigan, The Border’s Long Shadow, 5.
10.United States v. Martinez-Fuerte, 428 U.S. 543 (1976).
11.Interview, Sophie Smith, March 23, 2021.
12.Jacobson et al. v. DHS et al., Nos. 14-02485.
13.Yoohyun Jung and Perla Trevizo, “Group finds racial profiling at Amado border checkpoint,” Arizona Daily Star, October 19, 2014.
14.ACLU, “CBP tapes show systemic racism,” November 24, 2020.
15.Interview, Jenn Budd, February 1, 2021; Fernanda Echavarri, “Border Patrol’s Toxic Culture Goes Way Beyond Facebook Groups. It’s Actually for Sale on a T-Shirt,” Mother Jones, July 19, 2019.
16.Francisco Cantú, The Line Becomes a River: Dispatches from the Border (New York: Penguin Random House, 2019), 101.
17.The term is used frequently in the TV series Border Wars.
18.A. C. Thompson, “Inside the Secret Border Patrol Facebook Group where Agents Joke about Migrant Deaths and Post Sexist Memes,” ProPublica, July 1, 2019.
19.A. C. Thompson, “House Committee to Subpoena Records on Discipline Related to Secret Border Patrol Facebook Group,” Government Executive, November 3, 2020; Maria Sacchetti and Nick Miroff, “Border agents who made violent, lewd Facebook posts faced flawed disciplinary process at CBP, House investigation finds,” The Washington Post, October 25, 2021.
20.Monmouth University Polling Institute, “Protestors’ Anger Justified Even if Actions May Not Be,” June 2, 2020; Reason-Rupe Poll, “Poll: 70% of Americans Oppose Racial Profiling by the Police,” October 9, 2014; Kaiser Family Foundation, “Poll: 7 in 10 Black Americans Say They Have Experienced Incidents of Discrimination or Police Mistreatment in Their Lifetime, Including Nearly Half Who Felt Their Lives Were in Danger,” June 18, 2020.
21.U.S. Department of Justice, “Guidance for Federal Law Enforcement Agencies Regarding the Use of Race, Ethnicity, Gender, National Origin, Religion, Sexual Orientation, or Gender Identity” (2014).
22.Chris Rickerd, “A Dangerous Precedent: Why Allow Racial Profiling at or Near the Border?” ACLU, December 8, 2014.
23.Matt Apuzzo and Michael Schmidt, “U.S. to Continue Racial, Ethnic Profiling in Border Policy,” The New York Times, December 5, 2014.
24.Interview, Alex Rate, March 19, 2021.
Chapter 18: The Everywhere Border
1.General Accountability Office, “Northern Border Security,” GAO-19-470 (2019).
2.Office of the Inspector General, “U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s Unmanned Aircraft System Program Does Not Achieve Intended Results or Recognize All Costs of Operations, Department of Homeland Security” (December 24, 2014): 1.
3.General Accountability Office, “Border Security: Additional Actions Needed to Strengthen Collection of Unmanned Aerial Systems and Aerostats Data” (February 27, 2017).
4.Tom McKay and Dhruv Mehrotra, “Customs and Border Protection flew a Predator Surveillance drone over Minneapolis Protests Today,” Gizmodo, May 29, 2020.
5.Jason Koebler, Joseph Cox, Jordan Pearson, “Customs and Border Protection is Flying a Drone over Minneapolis,” Vice Motherboard, May 29, 2020.
6.Zolan Kanno-Youngs, “U.S. Watched George Floyd Protests in 15 Cities Using Aerial Surveillance,” The New York Times, June 19, 2020.
7.General Accountability Office, “Northern Border Security,” 9.
8.Jennifer Lynch, “Customs & Border Protection Logged Eight-Fold Increase in Drone Surveillance for Other Agencies,” Electronic Frontier Foundation, July 3, 2013.
9.Yessenia Funes and Dhruv Mehrotra, “CBP Drones Conducted Flyovers Near Homes of Indigenous Pipeline Activists, Flight Records Show,” Gizmodo, September 18, 2020.
10.Customs and Border Protection, “U.S. Border Patrol Total Apprehensions (FY 1925–FY 2020).”
11.Interview, Jenn Budd, February 1, 2021.
12.Interview, Jenn Budd, February 1, 2021.
13.Interview, Jenn Budd, February 1, 2021.
14.Ryan Devereaux, “An Unchecked Union,” Intercept, December 27, 2020.
15.Caitlin Dickerson, Zolan Kanno-Youngs, Annie Correal, “‘Flood the Streets’: ICE Targets Sanctuary Cities with Increased Surveillance,” The New York Times, March 5, 2020.
16.Miller, Empire of Borders.
17.Customs and Border Protection, “Border Patrol Tactical Unit,” n.d., https://www.cbp.gov/sites/default/files/documents/Border%20Patrol%20Tactical%20Unit.pdf.
18.Sergio Olmos, Mike Baker, and Zolan Kanno-Youngs, “Federal Officers Deployed in Portland Didn’t Have Proper Training, D.H.S. Memo Said,” The New York Times, July 18, 2020.
19.Elián González is in his twenties now, and is an industrial engineer at a state company in Cuba.
20.40 USC § 1315, (b) (2) (C) and (E). Interview with Mitra Ebadolahi, August 3, 2021.
21.Interview with Mitra Ebadolahi, August 3, 2021.
22.Steve Vladeck and Benjamin Wittes, “DHS Authorizes Domestic Surveillance to Protect Statues and Monuments,” Lawfare, July 20, 2020.
23.“Video Shows Federal Agents Detaining People in Portland Based on Inaccurate, Insufficient Information,” The Washington Post, September 10, 2020.
24.Kate Oh, “New Law Requires Federal Agents to Identify Themselves to Protesters,” ACLU, January 4, 2021.
25.Don’t Shoot Portland v. Wolf, 1:20-cv-02040 (D.D.C.) https://clearinghouse.net/detail.php?id=17742; Pettibone v. Trump, 3:20-cv-01464 (D. Or.)
26.ACLU, “Documents Obtained by ACLU Reveal Border Patrol Agents Were Authorized to Use Deadly Force at George Floyd’s Burial,” October 1, 2020.
Conclusion
1.Interview, Mitra Ebadolahi, August 3, 2021.
2.This is the argument of my previous book. Reece Jones, White Borders: The History of Race and Immigration from Chinese Exclusion to the Border Wall (Boston: Beacon Press, 2021).
3.Emma Dumain, “‘Trash Public Lands?’ Republicans take a Fraught Border Hike,” E&E News, August 5, 2021, https://www.eenews.net/articles/trash-public-lands-republicans-take-fraught-border-hike/.
4.Garrett Graff, “The Border Patrol Hits Its Breaking Point,” Politico, July 15, 2019.
5.Sonia Shah, The Next Great Migration: The Beauty and Terror of Life on the Move (New York: Bloomsbury, 2020).
6.Reed, “America of the Melting Pot.”
7.Interview, Jenn Budd, February 1, 2021.
8.Jamie Raskin, “Subcommittee Requests Briefing from DHS after Allegations of Discrimination by Border Patrol Agents in Michigan,” press release, August 5, 2021, https://raskin.house.gov/press-releases?ID=0160EA15-BF08-4B54-B33D-346237E6DE33; Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, “‘The Squad’ Calls for Reductions to U.S. Customs and Border Patrol Budget,” press release, July 16, 2020, https://ocasio-cortez.house.gov/media/press-releases/squad-calls-reductions-us-customs-and-border-patrol-budget.
9.Jack Herrera, “The Government Is Testing Mass Surveillance on the Border before Turning It on Americans,” Medium, October 16, 2019.
