read articles provided and watch videos provided then do 2 writing assignments

follow instructions and provide relevant work papers will be placed in turnitin

PAD4932: CONTEMPORARY ISSUES IN PUBLIC SAFETY

Mod 1 reading assignment there are 2 assignments attached to all the readings

Video Assignment watch these 3 videos:

Border Patrol Agent Boot Camp

US Border Security 2019

Patrolling the Border- https://youtu.be/FdM-f3oMQsA

Read these 3 assignments I have attached the pdf of them

REINERT, A. (2013). THE BEST LITTLE CHECKPOINT IN TEXAS. Texas Monthly, 41(8), 102-164. http://db07.linccweb.org/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=89570911&site=ehost-live

Stuesse, A. C. (2010). Challenging the border patrol, human rights and persistent inequalities: An ethnography of struggle in south texas.Latino Studies, 8(1), 23-47. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1057/lst.2009.46 http://search.proquest.com.db07.linccweb.org/docview/222617605?accountid=10674

(Links to an external site.)Nevins, J. (2012). On the Boundary of Abuse and Accountability. NACLA Report On The Americas, 45(2), 64-66.

http://db07.linccweb.org/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=77693018&site=ehost-live

Assignment 1 Locate and summarize one additional article tell how the formulation of a public policy (proposal) could be developed to respond to the selected issue. Discuss your article in relation to the reading (in 100-word s) and cite the source of your article using APA format.

Assignment 2 Prepare a 100-word response to each of the articles, summarizing them, and identifying specific concerns and strategies for response. Are there any multi-disciplinary approaches that could be implemented or are useful to consider? APA format

PAD4932: CONTEMPORARY I
SSUES IN PUB
LIC
SAFETY

Mod

1 readin
g
assignment

there are 2
assignments

attached to all the readings

Video Assignment

watch these 3 videos:

Border Patrol Agent Boot Camp

US Border Security 2019
https://youtu.be/xkMbA40H
–
TA

Patrolling the Border
–

https://youtu.be/FdM
–
f3oMQsA

Read these 3
assignments

I have attached the pdf of them

REINERT, A. (2013). THE BEST LITTLE CHECKPOINT IN TEXAS. Texas Monthly, 41(8), 102
–
164.
http://db07.linccweb.org/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a
9h&AN=89570911&site=
ehost
–
live

Stuesse, A. C. (2010). Challenging the border patrol, human rights and persistent inequalities: An ethnography of
struggle in south texas.Latino Studies, 8(1), 23
–
47. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1057/lst.2009.46
http://search.proquest.com.db0
7.linccweb.org/docview/222617605?accountid=10674

(Links to an external site.)Nevins, J. (2012). On the Boundary of Abuse and Accountability. NACLA Report On The
Americas, 45(2), 64
–
66.
http://db07.linccweb.org/login?url=http:/
/search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=77693018&site=
ehost
–
live

Assignment

1

Locate and summarize one additional article
tell
how the formulation of a public policy (proposal) could be
developed to respond to
the selected issue. Discuss your article in relation to the reading (in 100
–
word s) and cite the
source of your article using APA format.

Assignment

2

Prepare a 100
–
word response to each of the articles, summarizing them, and identifying specific concerns
and strategies for response. Are there a
ny multi
–
disciplinary approaches that could be implemented or are useful to
consider?

APA format

PAD4932: CONTEMPORARY ISSUES IN PUBLIC SAFETY
Mod 1 reading assignment there are 2 assignments attached to all the readings
Video Assignment watch these 3 videos:
Border Patrol Agent Boot Camp https://youtu.be/7W7Ir0yZReA
US Border Security 2019 https://youtu.be/xkMbA40H-TA
Patrolling the Border- https://youtu.be/FdM-f3oMQsA
Read these 3 assignments I have attached the pdf of them
REINERT, A. (2013). THE BEST LITTLE CHECKPOINT IN TEXAS. Texas Monthly, 41(8), 102-164.
http://db07.linccweb.org/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=89570911&site=
ehost-live
Stuesse, A. C. (2010). Challenging the border patrol, human rights and persistent inequalities: An ethnography of
struggle in south texas.Latino Studies, 8(1), 23-47. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1057/lst.2009.46
http://search.proquest.com.db07.linccweb.org/docview/222617605?accountid=10674
(Links to an external site.)Nevins, J. (2012). On the Boundary of Abuse and Accountability. NACLA Report On The
Americas, 45(2), 64-66.
http://db07.linccweb.org/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=77693018&site=
ehost-live
Assignment 1 Locate and summarize one additional article tell how the formulation of a public policy (proposal) could be
developed to respond to the selected issue. Discuss your article in relation to the reading (in 100-word s) and cite the
source of your article using APA format.
Assignment 2 Prepare a 100-word response to each of the articles, summarizing them, and identifying specific concerns
and strategies for response. Are there any multi-disciplinary approaches that could be implemented or are useful to
consider? APA format

O r i g i n a l A r t i c l e

C h a l l e n g i n g t h e b o r d e r p a t r o l ,
h u m a n r i g h t s a n d p e r s i s t e n t
i n e q u a l i t i e s : A n e t h n o g r a p h y
o f s t r u g g l e i n S o u t h Te x a s

A n g e l a C . S t u e s s e
The Ohio State University, Ohio.

Abstract The escalating militarization of the US–Mexico border since the mid-
1990s has been well documented. This article explores one community’s resistance
to it through ethnography of events that took place in El Cenizo, Texas at the turn of
the millennium. Following the passage of a ‘‘safe haven’’ ordinance in 1999 declaring
city officials would not reveal residents’ immigration status, residents endured the
Border Patrol’s increased presence and abuse of power. In response, this border town
founded a Human Rights Commission and spent the next 2 years collecting testimony
and documenting the Border Patrol’s violations of residents’ rights. This resistance
questioned the inequities inherent in the agency’s targeting of borderlands commu-
nities and contested the erasure of its residents as social actors and citizens by
reclaiming their rights. The discourses and practices employed in the struggle claimed
a right to equality while simultaneously asserting a right to difference. My analysis
engages this duality by exploring how the people of El Cenizo articulated it through
both words and actions. The article contributes to an ongoing dialogue surrounding
issues of rights, citizenship, immigration, and social movements and contributes to the
growing body of ethnographies of the borderlands by offering a glimpse into the lives
and activism of one South Texas immigrant community.
Latino Studies (2010) 8, 23–47. doi:10.1057/lst.2009.46

Keywords: immigration; citizenship; human rights; Border Patrol; US–Mexico;
activism

r 2010 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 1476-3435 Latino Studies Vol. 8, 1, 23–47
www.palgrave-journals.com/lst/

I n t r o d u c t i o n

In the summer of 2000 tensions peaked between the City of El Cenizo, Texas

and the United States Border Patrol. Residents of this border town were tiring of

the constant harassment and disruption of their daily lives that had been

mounting throughout the previous year, which spurred city officials to action.

City Commissioner Flora Barton met with an official of the Laredo sector of the

Border Patrol to discuss the problems. Over coffee, one morning she reflected on

their conversation:

y You know, [he came here to El Cenizo and] we had a meeting y . It

was in English, you know, and some in Spanish, and I just had to ask him.

I asked him, ‘‘All this time that you’ve been here, have you heard me

ask you if you were legal?’’ And he said, ‘‘No.’’ And I said, ‘‘Well, how am

I supposed to know that you really are a US citizen? Do you carry your

papers everywhere you go? Everywhere you go? If you want to go jogging

around five, six o’clock in the morning, are you going to carry your wallet

and everything with you?’’ He said, ‘‘No.’’ And I said, ‘‘Well here in El

Cenizo, if you go to the store, you have to carry your papers with you. If

you want to take just a dollar, or five dollars y you have to carry your

birth certificate and everything with you. If you have your mica1 to be a

legal resident, you have to carry the mica too, everywhere you go. And

I think that’s ridiculous.’’ And he said, ‘‘Yeah, it is ridiculous.’’ Because if

you’re walking, they stop you. If you’re in your vehicle, they stop you.

If you’re in front of your house or in the streets playing, they stop you.

They stop you from playing! They’ve never stopped my girls y But my

son? My [son’s skin] is a little bit darker, and they have stopped him a lot

of times. Now I hardly ever send him to the store because I’m afraid, you

know he’s growing up and everything, and if they don’t respect him, he

might not respect them back, and who’s gonna win? Not him. Not my son.

The United States Border Patrol has long been an imposing force along

the northern edge of the US–Mexico border. Following the passage of new

immigration legislation in 1996, the agency intensified its presence and

attempted to dominate, through fear, technologies and violence, the transna-

tional populations living in the area. In El Cenizo, residents intensely

experienced this presence through violations of their individual and collective

rights. Going beyond notions of legal status, in 1999 they began to organize to

curb such abuses. In the process they questioned state definitions of citizenship

and social membership and the role of the Border Patrol as enforcer of such

boundaries. While demands in this immigrant community focused on ‘‘dignity’’

and ‘‘respect,’’ the ethnography that follows demonstrates that its claims to

equal rights are rooted in residents’ recognition of their difference as inhabitants

1 The term mica is

used loosely in the

borderlands to

refer to a person’s

immigration

documents.

Stuesse

24 r 2010 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 1476-3435 Latino Studies Vol. 8, 1, 23–47

of the borderlands. This article chronicles El Cenizo’s collective resistance

movement to defend the rights of its borderlands inhabitants, illustrating that

simultaneous rights claims to equality and difference are not mutually exclusive;

rather, as this case shows, they sometimes go hand in hand.

L i f e a n d P o l i t i c a l P a r t i c i p a t i o n i n E l C e n i z o

El Cenizo sits on the banks of the Rio Grande on the outskirts of Laredo, Texas,

the most important trading port between the United States and Mexico since the

initiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1994. Although

Laredo is the second fastest-growing city in the country, it is also the poorest,

and affordable housing is in short supply (US Census Bureau, 2001). In response

to the region’s growth and many immigrants’ desire to gain an economic and

citizenship foothold through homeownership, El Cenizo was formed in 1983 as

a ‘‘colonia,’’ a low-income, peri-urban settlement devoid of the most basic

of services and distinguished by a majority Mexican immigrant population

and ‘‘self-help’’ housing construction (Ward, 1999; Velez-Ibañez et al, 2002a;

Vélez-Ibañez et al, 2002b; Dolhinow, 2005; Núñez, 2006). For many years El

Cenizo’s residents lived without water, wastewater infrastructure and paved

roads. At the turn of the millennium they continued to lack many amenities

the average American takes for granted, including local law enforcement,

emergency medical services, a fire department and traffic signals. Most residents

have gradually built their own homes with the help of friends and family,

and the median household income in Texas colonias is estimated between

US$7000 and $11 000 annually (Border Low Income Housing Coalition, 2008).

El Cenizo has grown over the years from a fledgling settlement with

‘‘plantation’’ politics controlled by an oppressive Anglo developer into one of

the largest and most well-known colonias, today claiming a population of over

7000 (US Census Bureau, 2000). As they fought throughout the 1980s to hold

the developer accountable to his pledges to provide utilities, and, when these

efforts fell flat, learned to navigate the Texas legal system in demand of basic

services, El Cenizo’s residents gained valuable experience in

community

organizing. They incorporated as a municipality in 1989, and 10 years later

began to use their status as a city – and the opportunities for local governance

this offers – when making collective claims to rights and resources. Due, in part,

to this history of struggle, El Cenizo residents live each day with an acute

awareness of society’s discrimination against them based on race, class, ethnicity,

language, and geographic location, and since the founding of their community

they have at times perpetuated and at others resisted these inequities.2

In 1999 El Cenizo received national and international press coverage in

response to its passage of two controversial ordinances. The first mandated that

all city business be conducted in the predominant language of the community,

2 For a more

complete

discussion of

colonias generally

Challenging the border patrol

25r 2010 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 1476-3435 Latino Studies Vol. 8, 1, 23–47

Spanish.
3

The second declared El Cenizo a ‘‘safe haven,’’ prohibiting city

officials from providing information about residents to outside parties,

including federal agencies such as the Immigration and Naturalization

Service

and its law enforcement arm, the Border Patrol.4 The media paid great attention

to these initiatives coming out of a virtually unheard of Texas town, propelling

the community to the center of the ongoing debate over the meanings of being

‘‘American.’’ El Cenizo was accused of attempting to ‘‘drop out’’ of the nation,

and the people of El Cenizo were portrayed as a group of decidedly political

revolutionaries (Whitworth, 1999). The sense that this town had chosen to

challenge the nation’s unity prevailed in public opinion, and it seemed that the

Border Patrol agreed.

I first contacted El Cenizo’s City Hall in the wake of this sensational media

attention, interested in better understanding the history of the ordinances and

the motivations of the city’s elected officials in passing them. Throughout a

number of phone conversations with the Mayor and City Commissioners, they

repeated a simple message: ‘‘Why, instead of criticizing us, don’t people try to

help us?’’; ‘‘Small, low-income communities need help’’; ‘‘We have our doors

open to anyone who is willing y who can give us a hand instead of pointing

fingers.’’ In response to this analysis of the media’s actions and its tacit criticism

of the classic anthropological notion that one can be an unperceived and

apolitical observer who leaves little to no trace of one’s presence, I made plans

to spend the following summer in El Cenizo, conducting research while

volunteering at City Hall.

As a politically engaged anthropologist, committed to scholarship in dialogue

and collaboration with people organizing to change the conditions of their lives,

I found myself answering phones, designing letterhead, setting up computers for

office use, researching grant possibilities for the city and planning community

events.5 I spent much of my time supporting a group of young people organizing

to develop a local park so they could have a safe space to play (Stuesse and

Vielma, 2000; Stuesse, 2001). In the two following years, I made frequent visits

back to El Cenizo and served as a volunteer consultant for the city’s Human

Rights Commission. As an ‘‘observant participant,’’ I listened to and spoke with

residents at community meetings, at quinceañeras, on the streets, in their homes

and at City Hall (Vargas, 2006, 18). Volunteering with the city, I spent most

time with elected officials, city employees and active community members, a

methodology that enriched my data by offering me privileged perspective and

insight into the social processes under study.6

P r o t e c t i n g t h e N a t i o n ’s B o r d e r s

As Commissioner Barton’s quote above suggests, skin color plays a critical

role in the social hierarchies of the borderlands, and research has repeatedly

and El Cenizo’s

political history

specifically, see

Stuesse (2001).

3 I have written

elsewhere about

the predominant

language

ordinance, the

national backlash

El Cenizo endured

in its wake, and the

city’s response to

outsiders’ hateful

discrimination. See

Stuesse (2002).

4 The Immigration

and Naturalization

Service (INS) was

reconfigured after

the terrorist attacks

of

September 11,

2001 as

Immigration and

Customs

Enforcement, part

of the newly

created

Department of

Homeland

Security.

5 For more on

activist research,

see, for example,

Gordon, 1998;

Hale, 2001, 2006,

2008; Harrison,

1991; Holland

et al, forthcoming;

Hyatt and Lyon-

Callo, 2003;

Paredes, 1993;

Sanford and Angel-

Ajani, 2006; Speed,

2008; Sudbury,

1998; Vargas,

2006.

6 Further discussion

of activist

anthropology and

Stuesse

26 r 2010 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 1476-3435 Latino Studies Vol. 8, 1, 23–47

demonstrated how race, language and dress marks individuals and communities

as targets for law enforcement and nativist sentiment (Chavez, 1997; Heyman,

1998; Lugo, 2000; Stuesse, 2002; Brotherton and Kretsedemas, 2008). If civil

society and the state perceive low-income, dark-skinned and Spanish-speaking

migrants to the United States as a threat to national unity, the physical border

with Mexico represents the fissure, where the ‘‘Third world’’ leaks into and

contaminates the ‘‘First’’ (Alvarez, 1995; Chavez, 1997; Anzaldúa, 1999). Since

its creation in 1924, the US Border Patrol has existed to ‘‘guard’’ this

border, to protect ‘‘us’’ from the ‘‘invader.’’ In fact, Guillermo Gómez Peña

suggests that, ‘‘for the North American the border becomes a mythical notion

of national security. y . A place of conflict, of threat, of invasion’’ (Fusco,

1989, 55). At the turn of the new millennium, this statement rang truer than

perhaps ever before.7

Border Patrol activity intensified at the close of the twentieth century,

largely owing to increased funding initiated by the Illegal Immigrant Reform

and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996. This legislation drastically

increased the number of Border Patrol agents, funded the construction of a

triple-layer fence at the border from the Pacific Ocean eastward, instituted a

biometric system of immigrant identification and provided state-of-the-art

equipment for the apprehension of illegal border crossers, among other

initiatives. In the years following its passage, US Border Patrol agents began

to wield some of the most sophisticated technologies in the world, including

motion and heat sensors, night vision scopes, stadium-style search lights, and

covert air, land, and sea patrols. This process has been referred to as the

‘‘militarization’’ of the border. By the late 1990s the Border Patrol began to

favor ‘‘blockade’’ measures, seeking to stem the flow of immigrants into urban

areas. They were given names that conjure up thoughts of combat and defense,

such as El Paso’s ‘‘Operation Hold-the-Line,’’ San Diego’s ‘‘Operation Gate-

keeper’’ and Southern Arizona’s ‘‘Operation Guardian’’ (Dunn, 1996; Cornelius,

2001). Even the National Guard was called in to ‘‘defend’’ threatened points

along the border.8

Anthropologist Michael Kearney has drawn a direct link between the

implementation of such militaristic strategies and a heightening sense of the

border as nationalist peril, stating, ‘‘These new forms of discipline correspond

to a movement from an offensive jingoist nationalism to a nationalism on

the defensive, a shift from a nationalism of expansion and domination

to a defensive nationalism concerned with a loss of control of its borders’’

(Kearney, 1991, 60). Whether or not these strategies actually curb illegal

entry into the United States, they do create a public sense that the govern-

ment is working hard to protect its citizens. In fact, the creation of such

an impression may be the ultimate goal, as truly curbing undocu-

mented immigration could prove disastrous for the US economy. Several

scholars have pointed to these tensions in arguing that US immigration

my experiences as a

politically engaged

researcher can be

found in Stuesse

(2001, 2008).

7 For a different

ethnographic

perspective on the

contemporary

institution of the

Border Patrol, see

Maril (2004). For

more on Border

Patrol history, see

Lytle Hernandez

(2010).

8 Similar efforts

continued to

increase

exponentially as

widespread

concern for

‘‘national security’’

grew in the months

and years

following

September 11,

2001. Most of the

events I explore in

this article take

place before 9/11

Challenging the border patrol

27r 2010 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 1476-3435 Latino Studies Vol. 8, 1, 23–47

enforcement serves as a ‘‘symbolic politics’’ purposefully lacking in efficacy

(Calavita, 1994; Andreas, 1998; Heyman, 1998; Heyman, 2008; Stuesse,

2010). Other immigration theorists have noted that, while the United

States is happy to have migrant bodies as labor power, it is the person-

hood, the rights that come attached to humanity, that are denied (Perea,

1997; Chang, 2000; De Genova, 2002; Flores, 2002). Thus, the government

must appear in the public eye to be blocking migrant entry to the United

States without actually affecting the flow of workers dictated by transnational

capitalism.

As important as the images of the Border Patrol produced for

mainstream consumption, the increased technological intensification of

the Border Patrol conveys a sense of power that enables the federal

government to more rigidly control borderlands populations. These practices

do not simply affect undocumented migrants. They create a constant

sense of anxiety and apprehension among communities throughout the

borderlands, regardless of residents’ immigration status (Lugo, 2000;

Núñez and Heyman, 2007).9 This analysis is supported by sociologist

Julia Sudbury, who argues that fear has been a key variable in the political

mobilization of minorities over time, wielded as a ‘‘critical weapon in

controlling black women and preventing them from organizing’’ (Sudbury,

1998, 85–86). Likewise, fear is used to control the attitudes and actions

of perceived ‘‘less-’’ or ‘‘anti-American’’ populations in the borderlands.

El Cenizo is one such community, and in and around the city, the Border

Patrol is omnipresent.

F o r g i n g C o m m u n i t y a m i d B o r d e r P a t r o l I n t i m i d a t i o n

As a result of the increase in technologies and manpower, by the late 1990s

more and more people in the Texas border region were being stopped,

questioned and harassed by Border Patrol officials. Perhaps ironically,

often these are Mexican American agents interrogating and intimidating

other Mexican American and Mexican individuals. When one considers the

very low percentage of non-Mexican descendants living in this part of

South Texas, coupled with the knowledge that Border Patrol agents earn

$34 000 a year plus overtime – far above the average salary for the region,

the irony dissipates. The Border Patrol, although dominated by Anglos, operates

through individuals from diverse backgrounds. In El Cenizo, the agency’s

presence notably increased in late 1998, shortly after a new city administration

took office. This concurrence sparked rumors throughout the first part of

1999 that local officials were providing tips about and names of undocumented

residents to federal agents. In a symbolic statement to allay these fears and

establish a trusting relationship with residents, in August of 1999 the

or immediately

thereafter, and I

therefore limit my

analysis of border

enforcement and

community

resistance to the

pre-9/11

world.

9 Citing the

American Friends

Service

Committee’s

Immigration Law

Enforcement

Monitoring

Project,

borderlands

scholar Josiah

McC. Heyman

refers to this as

‘‘the ‘cotidianidad’

(everydayness) of

the INS’’

(American Friends

Service Committee,

1990; Heyman,

1998).

Stuesse

28 r 2010 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 1476-3435 Latino Studies Vol. 8, 1, 23–47

administration passed an ordinance declaring El Cenizo a ‘‘safe haven.’’ The

legislation states:

El Cenizo was created from a long heritage of immigrant families. In

order to create better unity between the community and the governing

body the city council has enacted this ordinance disallowing any city

employee or elected official to disclose the national origin, immigration

status, or citizenship of any of its residents to any agency or individual.

Violators are subject to termination or impeachment. (City of El Cenizo,

1999)

By enacting the ordinance, the administration declared that they were in no

capacity to either ask or tell regarding any resident’s legal status. This action,

along with the simultaneous passage of ‘‘predominant language’’ legislation,

attempted to create a stronger sense of community and a more participatory

democracy in El Cenizo. In an interview I conducted with then-Mayor Rafael

Rodrı́guez in the weeks following the passage of the ordinance, he explained,

‘‘I have no idea what percentage of our residents are undocumented, and I don’t

care. They’re paying their taxes just like everyone else, and our role here is to

serve the community.’’ In his eyes, citizenship or legal residency was not the

issue at hand; rather, fulfilling one’s shared responsibilities as a resident of the

city was grounds for social membership.

The notion that all residents, regardless of legal status, are members of the

community and possess valid claims to rights is prominent in the politics of El

Cenizo and is central to the concept of ‘‘cultural citizenship.’’ Such affirmation

is key, for, as numerous scholars have suggested, it is only through their

struggles to be recognized as members of the nation and as holders of rights

that minority groups have at times achieved recognition (Ong, 1996; Benmayor

et al, 1997; Rosaldo, 1997; Dagnino, 1998). In fact, as cultural citizenship

theorist William Flores illustrates, because of their cultural differences,

minority groups’ struggles for equal rights have often entailed demands

that go beyond those made by dominant society: ‘‘Each group has had its

own particular needs and struggled for specific sets of rights that have

expanded the rights of the entire society’’ (Flores, 2003, 296). In other words,

claims for full membership in society, while demanding equality, are

often accompanied by claims to difference. Such is the case in Mayor

Rodrı́guez’s comment, above, in which his recognition of El Cenizo residents’

unique geographical location and immigration status is paralleled by his call

for equality. In this way, peripheral groups become ‘‘new’’ citizens, not only

‘‘demand[ing] existing rights, but creat[ing] new ones’’ in the process (Flores,

1997, 258).

The safe haven ordinance was rapidly and widely criticized for ‘‘wrongfully

encourag[ing] disrespect for law enforcement,’’ potentially ‘‘lead[ing] to

Challenging the border patrol

29r 2010 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 1476-3435 Latino Studies Vol. 8, 1, 23–47

dangerous confrontations,’’ and ‘‘hobbl[ing] progress rather than provid[ing]

relief’’ (Houston Chronicle, 1999). In retrospect, Mayor Rodrı́guez felt people

misunderstood the city’s intent and that his administration may have made a

mistake in using the words ‘‘safe haven’’ in the legislation. As we chatted at dusk

one evening, sitting side-by-side in wrought iron rocking chairs on the cement-

slab patio behind his home, he explained, ‘‘ ‘Safe haven’ means ‘puerto seguro.’

El Cenizo is not a ‘puerto seguro,’ it’s a peaceful community. ‘Puerto seguro’

is as if you were covering something up; giving people asylum. We are just

trying to live calm and peaceful lives.’’ In the wake of the negative press

coverage, some residents began to criticize their elected officials for passing

the legislation, yet their sentiments did not echo those of the press. Rather,

there was a quiet murmur spreading around town that by virtue of living in El

Cenizo, the controversy might make them even greater targets of the country’s

obsession with immigration control. During a break from work at City Hall

one afternoon, I asked Commissioner Barton to tell me more about the concerns

arising within the community. She explained that some people ‘‘felt

uncomfortable because they worried that they were gonna have more

harassment towards their children and their family members when it came

to the Border Patrol.’’ Unfortunately, the skeptics were correct, and

residents became quickly aware that the Border Patrol had heard the city’s

declaration.

In the weeks that followed, Border Patrol agents initiated a campaign, in the

words of Mayor Rodrı́guez, to ‘‘harass and intimidate the residents of El

Cenizo.’’ They erected a temporary checkpoint on Zapata Highway, the road

traveled daily by El Cenizo residents who work in the nearby city of Laredo,

and stopped every vehicle that passed for approximately four hours. Curiously,

the checkpoint was situated so as to stop traffic in the southbound lanes of the

highway – likely those people on their way home to El Cenizo after a day of

work in Laredo. Northbound traffic, which would contain vehicles heading

away from the border, passed undisturbed. ‘‘It’s just suspicious,’’ resident

Miriam Cantú confided. ‘‘Why would they stop the traffic heading south? It’s

like they want to remind us who’s in charge.’’ Cantú wasn’t alone; in fact,

I heard several El Cenizo residents label this action as an act of intimidation

against them and their families.

In addition to the suspicious checkpoint, community perceptions suggested

that vehicle stops by roving patrols increased dramatically. As a result, the

county-run Community Center in El Cenizo stopped allowing undocumented

children to ride in its vans and buses for fear of being held accountable for not

being able to produce papers for all passengers. One focal point of the Border

Patrol’s vehicle detentions was the county’s public bus service, El Aguila. Many

El Cenizo residents, particularly those with more precarious economic

situations who cannot afford a vehicle, depend on El Aguila on a daily basis

to get to and from Laredo. Quoted in a legal essay publicizing and analyzing the

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30 r 2010 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 1476-3435 Latino Studies Vol. 8, 1, 23–47

Border Patrol’s searches of El Aguila, an anonymous resident described a

typical scene:

When the bus came up to the turn, just before the highway, the Border

Patrol car used its lights and sirens to pull the bus over. It was seven

o’clock and I was on my way to work that morning. This was the third

time I was aboard El Aguila when it was stopped. Two armed Border

Patrol officers boarded the bus and announced that they were going

to check for illegal aliens. The officers proceeded to tell every passenger to

present documentation indicating residence or citizenship. They did not

ask, they demanded. I told myself this time it was going to be different

because I would refuse to provide documentation; after all, I was a United

States citizen and had the right to remain silent. The Border Patrol officers

did not take my exercise of rights well; they hassled and insulted me

until they were convinced that I was a United States citizen. (Ortiz, 2000,

290–291)

Detainments typically lasted between 20 and 45 minutes, and passengers

missed appointments and even lost jobs for consistently arriving late. Moreover,

those residents without papers lived in constant fear of being deported, and

some quit their jobs or moved elsewhere, where their presence would be less

visible. This ethnography supports Núñez and Heyman’s analysis that popula-

tions of smaller and more rural borderlands communities face greater levels of

entrapment than more urban locales owing to the Border Patrol’s manipulation of

their more limited transportation options (Núñez and Heyman, 2007).

In addition to patrolling the highways, the Border Patrol also increased its

presence in the city of El Cenizo, a tangible threat to many who could look out

their windows at virtually any hour of the day to see one of the agency’s official

white and green trucks speeding up and down the streets. Many residents

commented on the hostility they felt from agents. One mother recalled that once

she saw a Border Patrol vehicle parked in front of her house, so she approached

it and said, ‘‘Excuse me, may I help you?’’ The agent curtly replied, ‘‘I’m not

asking for help,’’ and turned away. ‘‘How,’’ she asked, ‘‘are we supposed to trust

and respect a person in uniform when we receive no respect in return? When we

know that if we are in need we will have to show proof of US citizenship before

getting help?’’

In a letter written to a Laredo chapter of the League of United Latin American

Citizens (LULAC) the following spring, Mayor Rodrı́guez detailed specific

actions of the Border Patrol that intimidated the residents of El Cenizo,

including parking in front of Kennedy Zapata Elementary School when parents

drop off and pick up their children, entering private properties and peering into

windows, and routinely stopping individuals walking down the street, requiring

them to prove their citizenship status. He also described a case in which Border

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Patrol agents looking for a fleeing suspect detained, handcuffed and nearly

arrested a 15-year-old boy right in front of his home. The officers were

preparing to take him away for deportation until neighbors managed to

convince them that the boy did indeed live at the residence and was a US citizen.

At a meeting of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law of

Texas – Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project, which Border Patrol officials

attended in San Antonio in 2000, Commissioner Barton candidly asked one

agent if the increased harassment came in direct retaliation to the passage of El

Cenizo’s safe haven ordinance. His response shocked her. Upon her return from

the meeting, she recounted to me:

He actually replied, ‘‘What do you expect? What do you expect from us?

How do you think we’re going to see you now after what you did?

You know, you do something like this and we’re gonna have to act on it.’’

And I said, ‘‘Excuse me? Are you really admitting this?’’ And that’s when

he stayed quiet (Figure 1).

Figure 1: El Cenizo and its Human Rights Ordinance, ‘‘tasty little morsels’’ for the Border Patrol.

Source: (El Mañana de Nuevo Laredo, 2000).

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D e m a n d i n g R e s p e c t : T h e F o r m a t i o n o f U n i d a d y F i r m e z a

The Border Patrol’s actions throughout 1999 and 2000 instilled fear and

uncertainty in the residents of El Cenizo. These abuses of power, blatantly

disregarding federal regulations stipulating that Border Patrol officials must

establish ‘‘reasonable suspicion’’ before detaining an individual, attempted to

dominate the entire community – US citizens, legal residents and undocumented

persons alike. In resistance to this marginalization and erasure of legitimacy – as

citizens, social actors and legitimate members of their community – residents

organized to demand accountability from the Border Patrol.

In the summer of 2000, El Cenizo residents began to speak out. Sandra

Martı́nez, a grandmother in her late forties who was born and raised in

California, lives with her extended family in a decaying home and in numerous

broken-down vehicles scattered across her lot. Martı́nez says that because she

refuses to send her grandchildren to live in the streets, she does not qualify for

state or federal aid programs that might help improve her living conditions. One

hot and dusty afternoon, she shared with me her experiences of nearly being

deported because Border Patrol agents refused to accept her birth certificate as

valid. Once released and back at home, she endured their daily ridicule and

persecutions until she finally built a fence around her yard so they could no

longer enter. Commissioner Barton questioned these and similar actions:

Why should I have to carry my birth certificate and those of all my

children when I walk to the store in the evening to buy a gallon of milk?

In Austin or Chicago or Alabama no one is expected to be able to prove

their citizenship at every hour of the day, and just because we live near

the border doesn’t mean we should be treated any differently than the rest

of the country in this respect.

Throughout the summer, similar discussions about individual and collective

rights of people living in El Cenizo could be heard in private homes, local

businesses and City Council meetings.

During my time there, I sought to grasp how people in El Cenizo thought

about the ‘‘rights’’ they were invoking. In a community meeting, one resident

stated:

In reality, there are many of us living in the United States, young and old,

who don’t know our rights as human beings. Some people have even

died without ever knowing they had human rights. Our human rights are

taken away from us and violated, and we don’t even know what they

are or how to defend them. It is only when you understand the law, when

you know that you do have rights, that you can say, ‘‘Wait, what is this?

My rights are being violated.’’

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Statements such as this revealed a recognition of the existence of an intangible

group of rights to which residents of El Cenizo felt they did not have access.

‘‘Rights’’ seemed to represent an abstraction to which they believed they were

collectively entitled, but out of which they were being cheated owing to their

lack of understanding of the protections available to them under US and

international law. Violations of these rights were not understood in the abstract,

however; they were felt through concrete experiences, such as those illustrated

throughout this article.

In response to local outcries against the intensified harassment and abuse by

the Border Patrol, a small group of longtime residents formed a group, which

they named Unidad y Firmeza por Nuestros Derechos Humanos (Unity and

Strength for Our Human Rights). This organization was comprised mostly of

individuals active in local politics, and thus had a big impact in terms of political

force and consciousness raising. It was slow to attract membership, however,

and the group wondered whether residents’ fears of being singled out by the

Border Patrol for belonging to a controversial organization might make them

reluctant to officially join. Especially for individuals without documentation,

taking this step entailed a risk that few were willing to take.

Despite limited participation, Unidad y Firmeza quickly initiated a campaign

to educate residents about their rights. The group collaborated with attorneys

and law clerks at Texas Rural Legal Aid’s (TRLA) Colonias Project to produce

an informational packet that neighborhood children delivered to every

doorstep. The bilingual bulletin included an open letter to the residents;

information on immigrants’ civil and political rights; a ‘‘Know Your Rights’’

card to hand to an official in the event of detainment; and an anonymous ballot

for an informal election. The ballot asked specific questions related to one’s

personal knowledge of abuses at the hands of the Border Patrol and polled

people about the role they thought the city government should play in

addressing these abuses. A section of the letter to the residents implored:

Unidad y Firmeza por Nuestros Derechos Humanos is a group recently

formed in response to the growing number of people, ourselves and our

families included, who hold one degrading experience in common: we

have been victimized by the Border Patrol, our Constitutional rights

and ‘‘guarantees’’ violated y . We have a right to a life free from these

abuses y . In order to prevent these abuses from reoccurring, we have

joined together y . But without your help, change is impossible y . Please

help us make El Cenizo, our city, a city of peace and not one of abuse.

The returned ballots overwhelmingly voiced strong support for the movement,

and many articulated humiliation experienced at the hands of the Border Patrol.

Several directly identified race as the key factor motivating disregard of

their rights.

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Unidad y Firmeza sought to raise public awareness and create a community-

based group through which people could organize against the Border Patrol’s

erasure of their rights. These aims echo those of another borderlands

community described by Flores, in which people chose to respond to abuses

by creating a ‘‘reverse’’ Border Patrol, complete with green cards and ‘‘illegal

alien’’ buttons. These acts of political significance, like the formation of Unidad

y Firmeza, allow persecuted immigrant groups to abandon their role as ‘‘passive

onlookers forced to hide’’ by recasting them as ‘‘political subjects acting upon

and changing power relationships’’ (Flores, 1997, 272–274). In this way,

Unidad y Firmeza represented one path toward local empowerment, serving

both as a venue for anonymous voices to share their concerns and as a more

formal platform from which citizens could pressure elected officials to take an

official stand against the Border Patrol’s actions.

E l C e n i z o ’s H u m a n R i g h t s C o m m i s s i o n

By the end of the summer Unidad y Firmeza had convinced El Cenizo’s

governing body to establish an official Human Rights Commission to act as

mediator between the community and the Border Patrol. The city created a

five-member committee to:

y monitor and review law enforcement activity, handle citizen com-

plaints, and recommend action to protect and promote the interest, rights,

and privileges of persons in this jurisdiction; to avoid strife and unrest; to

preserve the public safety, health, and welfare; and to secure for all persons

in this jurisdiction freedom from discrimination. (City of El Cenizo, 2000)

The Commission was to act as an independent civilian review board that

would conduct investigations of human rights abuses by the Border Patrol and

make recommendations to the city based on its findings. The legislation stated

that it intended to ‘‘restore legitimacy of the law enforcement institutions of

democratic governance by clearly articulating the limits of their authority.’’

The original five members of the Commission included two longstanding El

Cenizo residents and outspoken community activists – to ensure it remained

accountable to local people – and three high profile individuals external to

the community (a Laredo attorney, a psychotherapist and founder of a local

LULAC chapter, and a popular religious leader and director of Catholic

Missions in several area colonias) to situate the Commission within a thick

web of allies. Creating the Commission from a network of local leaders lent

legitimacy to its actions, a critical move for the group that would represent

El Cenizo’s claims for space, rights and recognition before the state and

civil society.

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In late 2000 and throughout 2001, the Human Rights Commission worked,

in collaboration with TRLA, to build partnerships between El Cenizo residents

and students from Saint Mary’s School of Law in San Antonio, Texas. The

Commission trained and ‘‘deputized’’ these volunteers, and in resident-student

pairs they went door-to-door collecting testimonies. The first complaint received

by the Commission, alleging that a resident was held at gunpoint by a Border

Patrol agent, received coverage in the Laredo Morning Times:

The sun hadn’t risen yet when Jesús Olivares saw the flashing lights in his

rearview mirror. It was just another morning for the 44-year-old father,

who pulls down extra cash delivering the Laredo Morning Times after his

night shift at the gas station. He was tossing newspapers into a darkened

ranch road when the agents stopped his truck, Olivares said. Then, he said,

an agent held a gun to his head and questioned him. ‘‘It was like I was a

criminal – it was terrible y I was angry and frustrated and scared.

I couldn’t even talk.’’ (Stack, 2000)

The article encouraged others to come forward, and by early 2002 the

Commission’s deputies had collected over 40 personal testimonies describing

human rights abuses at the hands of the Border Patrol in El Cenizo.

The Commission then collaborated with legal advisors and scholars,

including myself, in the preparation of the first draft of its report. The United

Nations’ 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights provided a framework

around which residents’ complaints were organized (General Assembly of the

United Nations, 1948). The themes included several that are central to basic

human rights, such as freedom, dignity, life, liberty, security, family, home, and

privacy, and rejected arbitrary arrest and detention and cruel, inhuman,

and degrading treatment. The draft report documented outrageously blatant

abuses of authority, including an account of two adolescents who were waiting

at the bus stop when they were pushed to the ground, handcuffed and held

at gunpoint by an agent; a report of a teenage boy who was run over by a Border

Patrol vehicle, which then abandoned the scene; a story about a woman riding

the public bus whose newborn baby was taken from her when she couldn’t

produce proof of citizenship; and the testimony of a man walking down the

street who was detained and handcuffed to a bench in the back of a Border

Patrol vehicle for hours while the agent drove in circles around the city, and he

slipped back and forth across the bench as the handcuffs cut into his wrists until

they were swollen, bloody and almost completely numb.

The draft also included complaints that on the surface appeared less egregious,

such as the Border Patrol’s habitual detainment and search of public busses

described above; sitting for hours at a time in front of someone’s private home;

brandishing weapons in public spaces; and one account from a woman who

answered a knock at her door at 3:00 a.m. only to encounter an officer asking for

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a cup of coffee. Although these episodes may appear innocuous or fail to violate

US laws, taken as a whole and contextualized within the historical and political

milieu of the US–Mexico border, it is clear that they endanger the Universal

Declaration of Human Rights’ most basic protections, including the rights to

personal security, freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each

state, special protection of children, and freedom from physical and verbal abuse.

The Commission held a public hearing in El Cenizo, inviting residents to

share their testimonies in person and allowing the Commission to further

analyze the complaints. Although a handful of individuals came forward at

the hearing, most complainants were unwilling to speak publicly for fear of

reprisal. Those individuals who did testify brought to life the powerful stories

of abuse that the Commissioners had previously only read on paper. The act of

public testimony may have also represented a ‘‘coming to voice’’ for some of

the victims. Social movement scholar Patricia Hill Collins highlights the

significance of such actions when she writes that the breaking of silence is a

‘‘moment of insubordination in relations of power, of saying in public what had

been said many times before [in private]’’ (Collins, 1998, 50).

Following the hearing, the Commission pledged to finalize its findings and

release a public draft of its report. However, over time the composition of the

Commission had shifted, with few of the original members remaining. Attempts

to replace them had proved largely symbolic, as the new members were

unfamiliar with and disconnected from the Commission’s history. Although it

had worked over 2 years to thoroughly document a wide range of human rights

abuses, much of its momentum during this period came from the energies of

students and supporters, including myself, external to the Commission. When

the time came for the Commissioners to act, they were unable to agree upon a

set of recommendations for the city. Some felt the report should include strictly

the ‘‘facts’’ of people’s testimonies, whereas others believed their role was to

make a more principled statement and policy recommendations based on the

Commission’s findings. Amid the discord and distance from the Commission’s

creation, a report was never produced. Moreover, the Commission was unaware

of any similar efforts emerging in other areas, and was thus poorly positioned to

draw upon or fuel the work of others seeking to monitor and reform law

enforcement in the borderlands.10 Despite the Commission’s failure to bring its

written findings to public light, its unfinished work plainly illustrates that,

through both de jure and de facto policies, the US Border Patrol’s practices in El

Cenizo are in grave danger of violating provisions of international human rights law.

B o r d e r l a n d s I d e n t i t y, S o c i a l M e m b e r s h i p a n d S t r a t e g i c
D e p l o y m e n t o f R i g h t s D i s c o u r s e

The Commission’s anticlimactic finale notwithstanding, perhaps the greatest

theoretical lessons from this struggle are to be found in the process itself. It is

10 The American

Friends Service

Committee, the

Texas Civil

Rights

Project and the

Border Rights

Coalition/Border

Network for

Human Rights

are a few

organizations that

potentially could

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important to remember that collective resistance movements like that of El

Cenizo take place amid very basic struggles of everyday survival. Historian

Thomas Sugrue reminds us that ‘‘economic and racial inequalit[ies] constrain

individual and family choices, y [setting] the limits of human agency’’ (Sugrue,

1996, 5). At the same time, we must keep in mind that, because communities

like El Cenizo are battling over issues vital to their very survival, their residents

are also precisely the people who ultimately ‘‘do not have the luxury not to fight

back’’ (Kelley, 1997, 158). With these necessities and constraints in mind, then,

how might we understand and explain El Cenizo’s collective resistance? In a

world where notions of rights have been historically compartmentalized into

discrete, clean categories, finding a framework through which to make sense of

this borderland community’s claims to rights is challenging, as its articulation of

rights cuts across and through traditional categories. Just as ‘‘y so-called

border people are constantly shifting and renegotiating identities with

maneuvers of power and submission, y often [adopting] multiple identities’’

(Alvarez, 1995, 452), within these multiplicities they also strategically wield

manifold discourses on rights as deemed advantageous to their struggles.

‘‘American, Mexican, Chinese, Black, Japanese, in God’s eyes we are all

equals,’’ Mayor Rodrı́guez once announced at a city meeting. The elected

officials of El Cenizo, in representation of their constituency, carefully framed

their struggle using the dominant liberal discourse of equal rights, asserting that

all individuals are created equal and using the non-threatening concept of

‘‘respect’’ to assert their claims. This theme emerged throughout my research:

‘‘We got their attention to actually move forward in trying to get the agents to

respect the people. y we’re not stopping them from doing their job, we just

want respect!’’; ‘‘We’re gonna have to make them understand that we’re human

beings, like everybody else. You know, we’re no animals … . We’re human

beings’’; ‘‘We’ve just got to make them stop the abuse, because this is not a joke.

I mean, we get no respect at all. Why can’t they roll down their windows and be

friendly? Even our children feel threatened’’; ‘‘You know that what we are

asking for is not a big thing! We aren’t telling [the Border Patrol] not to do their

job at the river. That’s fine. But if they’re going to come just because they want

to see who they can catch y . No, no, no. The main thing is just to show us a

little respect.’’

Many liberation movements in the United States since the mid-twentieth

century have utilized what Chela Sandoval has called the ‘‘equal rights mode of

consciousness in opposition’’ (Sandoval, 1991). By suggesting that all

individuals are created equal, that differences are only skin deep, the discourse

of equal rights allows peripheral groups to ‘‘demand that their own humanity be

legitimized and recognized’’ (Sandoval, 1991, 12). This is, in part, strategic, as

minority communities often recognize that their claims will be more readily

accepted if they emphasize their similarities with, as opposed to their differences

from, dominant society. By speaking of equal rights, then, residents of El Cenizo

have helped El

Cenizo’s Human

Rights

Commission link

its efforts with

similar work

elsewhere for

broader impact.

See, for example,

Border Network

for Human Rights

(2005). For a

discussion of

some of the

limitations of

local organizing,

see Orr (2007).

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38 r 2010 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 1476-3435 Latino Studies Vol. 8, 1, 23–47

seek to legitimate their claims in the eyes of the state and civil society by

explaining and defending themselves with the same liberal discourse embraced

by large sections of the population.

Blanca Silvestrini reminds us that claims for equality under the law are not

always made in opposition to claims to difference; rather, she argues, Latino

cultural citizenship often entails a ‘‘quest for multiple paths’’ (Silvestrini, 1997,

53). In the case of El Cenizo, as residents assert an entitlement to equal rights,

we can also discern a claim to difference in the very demands they make. By

speaking out both behind closed doors and in public, by forming a community

organization to act on the problems they collectively identify, and by pressing

their elected officials to systematically compile and analyze their experiences of

abuse at the hands of a government agency, El Cenizo residents critique a social

and political institution that not only intimidates on the individual level,

but also excludes on the collective level based on race, economic status,

geographical location and cultural attributes such as language – all identity

markers that set borderlands communities apart from dominant US society.

In demanding that Border Patrol agents ‘‘do their job’’ at the border but not

interfere with peaceful life in a borderlands community, El Cenizo residents’

difference from dominant American society – their liminal status as inhabitants

of the borderlands – reveals itself as central to their rights claim. How might the

Border Patrol fulfill its mandate directly north of the border without pursuing

people based on racial and cultural difference? I asked many in El Cenizo this

question, and though it was never completely resolved, Commissioner Barton’s

response attempted to reconcile the conflict by redefining what makes a person

‘‘illegal’’:

The main thing that we’re doing is that we just want the Border Patrol to

respect the residents, either way, if you’re legal or illegal or an ‘‘alien’’ or

not an ‘‘alien,’’ you know, if you’ve gotta do your job, do it. But why don’t

you work where the people are crossing [the river]? Crossing the street

from one house to the other doesn’t make you an illegal person. What

really makes an illegal person is when you cross the river. And that’s the

people they’re supposed to be asking for their papers. Not the people that

live in El Cenizo. Because they’ve struggled so hard to get what they have

right now. Their homes, their lots, their cars, their children’s education.

Especially their children. And I don’t see why we have to be harassed all

the time. I just don’t see the picture. If somebody would explain to me why

we have to be harassed if we live in the US, because we are a part of the

US, you know. If we live here, why do we have to be harassed? Do it

another way.

This reconception of an ‘‘illegal’’ body as one in the process of border

crossing, but not those in residence just steps north of the border, effectively

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attempts to reshape the modus operandi of the Border Patrol, and hence, the

regulatory practices of the state in US society.

In fact, El Cenizo’s collective resistance challenges the very role of the

government and the limitations set by the state upon borderlands communities,

thus moving beyond the discourse of equal rights and liberal multiculturalism

at the very moment they embrace it. This strategy exemplifies a trend in

minority claims to rights:

At the same time that they assert and defend their differences from the

nation as a whole and other groups within it, the ethnic and ‘‘identity’’

groups and other new social movements of the past two decades have

tended to appeal to universal standards of equality, justice and rights,

as the basis of their collective claims against the state for recognition of

equal rights, cultural value, and economic opportunities on a par with

those of other groups within the same state. Differentiation at one level

thus begets uniformization at another, and relativistic assertions of

difference give rise to appeals to universal principles. (Turner, 1997, 281)

El Cenizo’s strategies illustrate how a liberal discourse of equality can become

rearticulated into more radical goals with transformative potential through faith

in the very principles of the system already in place, those of democratic

governance. Stemming from the community’s desire for all residents to be

considered full members of society, equal to people living anywhere else in the

country, the City Council passed the ‘‘safe haven’’ ordinance. This legislation,

passed by an elected body to increase confidence in the city administration and

participation in local decision making, falls well within accepted boundaries of

discourse on liberal governance. Over time, however, the legislation gained

transformative potential that was ultimately able to articulate a radical

challenge of the border, pushing at the very limits of a dominant but contested

social construction while all the while reaffirming its position through the tropes

of equality and democracy. In this way, though never completely escaping the

bounds of hegemony, people in El Cenizo demonstrate how marginalized

communities might challenge the state through creative use of the system

itself. They tack back and forth; they are within, yet beyond. They claim a right

to equality and right to difference, implying that ‘‘difference shall not constitute

a basis for inequality’’ (Dagnino, 1991, 15; Benmayor et al, 1997; Silvestrini,

1997). They illustrate a path forward that allows them simultaneously ‘‘to claim

and to deny their specificity,’’ to borrow the words of Nancy Fraser as she

grappled with what she called the ‘‘redistribution-recognition dilemma’’ (or,

later, the redistribution-recognition-representation triad) of people subject to

intersecting forms of economic, cultural and political injustice (Fraser, 1997, 16;

Fraser et al, 2004).11 In their struggles with the Border Patrol for dignity and

respect, residents of El Cenizo transcend liberal notions of citizenship by basing

11 For a critique of

and alternative

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40 r 2010 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 1476-3435 Latino Studies Vol. 8, 1, 23–47

their practices and claims to rights on their sense of belonging and community

membership, or cultural citizenship. In this way, their rights claims attempt

to create a space within the existing system while at the same time striving to

reshape it.

L e s s o n s

What lessons or policy recommendations might we glean from this ethnography

of struggle at the US–Mexico border? First, El Cenizo residents’ experience

demonstrates the need for all Americans, particularly those in positions

of power in the federal government, to rethink our country’s policies of

immigration enforcement. Those who ‘‘guard’’ the border can never turn a

porous, living and breathing space into a sterile, impenetrable wall. Beliefs to

the contrary have led to the existence of an institution that relies on a myriad

of ethnic, classist and racial profiling tactics in order to carry out its mission

in borderlands communities and beyond. Not only is this sort of profiling

prohibited under federal law, but any policy that has the effect of terrorizing

a particular segment of the US population must be interrogated and

reconsidered.

Second, El Cenizo’s experiences offer important lessons for municipal

governments and local law enforcement. The city’s elected officials took

courageous steps in asserting that their principal responsibility is to ensure the

safety and wellbeing of local residents. While more and more municipalities in

the post-9/11 United States have begun to collaborate closely with immigration

officials, others have passed resolutions stating that the enforcement of

immigration laws is outside the purview of their abilities (Major Cities Chiefs

Immigration Committee, 2006; National Immigration Law Center, 2008;

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, 2008; U.S. Immigration and

Customs Enforcement, 2009). Like El Cenizo’s administration, those who

have rejected calls to embrace immigration-related duties recognize that

their ability to protect and serve their residents would be hindered were

they to take on the responsibilities of the Border Patrol, as it would

damage their relationships with residents and make it less likely that

individuals would report crimes or cooperate with law enforcement for fear

that they would be turned over to immigration authorities. Indeed, local

bodies choosing instead to act as immigration officials have reported such

problems, and would be wise to consider alternative policies such as those

enacted in El Cenizo.

Finally, El Cenizo’s experience demonstrates the importance of locally rooted,

community-led initiatives to hold elected officials accountable. As this

ethnography illustrates, such initiatives may be strengthened by cultivating a

diverse web of allies or by collaborating with politically engaged activists or

solution to

Fraser’s

‘‘dilemma,’’ see

Honneth (2004).

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researchers who can contribute technical support, labor power, political capital,

or other forms of knowledge and resources to the organizing effort. Moreover,

El Cenizo offers an example for other communities looking to cultivate social

membership, responsibility or a sense of belonging regardless of formal

citizenship status. The path taken here, of reclaiming a people’s simultaneous

right to equality and right to difference by appealing to standards of

international human rights, could be used as a model and adapted to local

needs throughout the borderlands and beyond.

By contesting the marginalization and oppression of borderlands peoples, El

Cenizo’s politics challenge United States citizens to broaden their accepted

notions of ‘‘Americanness’’ and membership in society to include communities

that have traditionally been excluded from such formulations. And as migration

to the United States shows no sign of dissipating in the foreseeable future, such

communities might be better understood as spaces that represent ‘‘normality’’ in

our increasingly transnational world:

The borderlands are just such a place of incommensurable contradictions.

The term does not indicate a fixed topographical site between two other

fixed locales (nations, societies, cultures), but an interstitial zone of

displacement and deterritorialization that shapes the identity of the

hybridized subject. Rather than dismissing them as insignificant, as

marginal zones, thin slivers of land between stable places, we want to

contend that the notion of borderlands is a more adequate conceptualiza-

tion of the ‘‘normal’’ locale of the postmodern subject. (Gupta and

Ferguson, 1992, 18)

By attempting to bring to the center what has long been liminal, Gupta and

Ferguson empower us to work to re-humanize immigrant and borderlands

communities in the eyes of dominant society.

Today we can see more clearly than ever that ‘‘the US has thrived not because

of its efforts at cultural homogenization, but despite them’’ (Flores and

Benmayor, 1997, 5). El Cenizo’s struggle with the Border Patrol, although

locally specific, couched in liberal discourse, and adhering strongly to notions

of equality and democracy, nevertheless affirms this community’s pride in its

cultural difference and challenges the limits imposed by civil society and

the state on groups deemed peripheral. Leaders in El Cenizo are forging

community, advancing participatory democracy, and asserting their status

as equal members of society in the United States both in recognition of and

despite their differences from dominant society, and these lessons speak loudly

at the local level and beyond. We have much to learn from such activism

from below, as it has the potential to positively effect social change, not

only in the lives of El Cenizo residents, but throughout the country and the

world.
Stuesse

42 r 2010 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 1476-3435 Latino Studies Vol. 8, 1, 23–47

A c k n o w l e d g e m e n t s

I am indebted to the people of El Cenizo for allowing me to participate in and

document their struggles for rights and respect, and to UCLA’s Institute for

Research on Labor and Employment and OSU’s Kirwan Institute for the Study

of Race and Ethnicity for their support as I prepared this article for publication.

Richard R. Flores, Charles R. Hale, Israel Reyna, and the anonymous

reviewers for Latino Studies provided critical feedback on earlier drafts, for

which I am especially grateful. I am responsible for all translations herein, as

well as any errors. I use pseudonyms throughout, except in cases of public

officials who granted me permission to publish their names.

A b o u t t h e A u t h o r

Angela C. Stuesse currently holds a postdoctoral fellowship at the Ohio State

University’s Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity. Her academic

areas of interest include activist research, neoliberal globalization, migration,

race, labor and human rights. She received her PhD in Anthropology from the

University of Texas in 2008. Her dissertation, Globalization ‘‘Southern Style’’:

Transnational Migration, the Poultry Industry, and Implications for Organizing

Workers across Difference, is based on research carried out in rural Mississippi

from 2002 to 2008. Previously, she conducted politically engaged research in

the borderlands community of El Cenizo, Texas. Her work has been supported

by the Ford Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, the Woodrow

Wilson Foundation, and the School for Advanced Research (SAR), among

others. Her publications include articles in Human Organization, Estudios

Migratorios Latinoamericanos and Text, Practice, Performance, and a chapter

in the 2009 edited volume, Latino Immigrants and the Transformation of the

US South.

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THE BEST LITTLE CHECKPOINT IN TEXAS.

REINERT, AL

Texas Monthly. Aug2013, Vol. 41 Issue 8, p102-164. 7p.

Article

*BORDER security
*BORDER patrols

SIERRA Blanca (Tex.)

U.S. Customs & Border Protection

WEST, Arvin

The article offers information on the U.S. Customs and Border
Protection inspection station located in Sierra Blanca, Texas and also
mentions patrolling inspector Arvin West. It mentions that the main aim
of the Sierra Blanca station to keep smugglers and criminals away from
the county and states that it is the only federal agency that arrest
suspects and transfers them to higher agencies.

3413

0148-7736

89570911

Academic Search Complete

THE BEST LITTLE CHECKPOINT IN TEXAS

GETTING BUSTED AT THE INFAMOUS SIERRA BLANCA INSPECTION STATION PLUNGED ME INTO A
STRANGE AND TWISTED REALITY

Hudspeth County sheriff Arvin West, photographed near his office in May 2013

The Sierra Blanca inspection station.

The dog’s name was Blackie, and I knew right away she was trouble. I had two beautiful marijuana buds in a
plastic vial in my shaving kit inside a suitcase in the trunk of the car — and the nosey mutt sniffed them out from
ten feet away. She promptly squatted, the signal to her handler that the vehicle smelled suspicious. He nodded
to the Border Patrol agent standing beside my car, a stern young man in crisp green fatigues, who put his hand
on his sidearm, opened my door, and said the words you never want to hear: “Please get out of the car, sir.”

I sighed and got out. Several agents surrounded my car and popped the trunk. I watched helplessly as Blackie
jumped in and ferreted out my little stash faster than I could have gotten to it myself. One of the agents held up
the plastic vial, and another made a gesture like a football referee signaling a personal foul. The agent beside
me tapped my elbow and said, “Come with me, sir.”

It was your basic pothead screwup. I was at the U.S. Customs and Border Protection inspection station on
Interstate 10 near Sierra Blanca, a nearly invisible town about two thirds of the way from El Paso to Van Horn.
The station has been there since 1974, stopping everyone traveling east on the transcontinental highway. I had
passed through it many times over the years without any problems, and that made me careless last summer. I
should have known better.

Willie Nelson put the Sierra Blanca checkpoint on the map when he was busted there in November 2010, and
touring musicians have been following his lead ever since. Snoop Dogg (a.k.a. Snoop Lion), Fiona Apple,
Nelly, Armie Hammer (the actor who plays the new Lone Ranger) — all made news after their vehicles were
searched at the checkpoint and dope was discovered. Last year the Hollywood Reporter called it “the
checkpoint of no return.” The Internet is full of dire warnings about the place, directions to back roads that
avoid it, and videos showing the real-time experience of passing through the checkpoint successfully, which is
best achieved by not having pot in the trunk of your car.

But those buds had been so pretty — dense yet fluffy, with the tiny purple hairs that promise perfect ripeness. A
green-thumb friend in Southern California had graciously given them to me before my trip to Texas. Which is
how, one day last August, I ended up driving right into the most famous dope-busting trap in the whole United
States, holding. Classic.

The agent led me to the checkpoint office, a modest little vinyl-sided prefab structure (the Sierra Blanca station
predates the whopping budgets that national security commands these days). The main room had tan walls
with bright fluorescent lights and a narrow bench with a rail behind it, to which I was handcuffed. A middle-aged
couple was cuffed to the rail a few feet down from me. They wore jeans and scruffy T-shirts and didn’t appear
to be celebrities. “What did they get you for?” I asked.

The woman blinked back tears. “I had two joints in my purse.”

My kind of criminal. The Sierra Blanca checkpoint, which is located in the Border Patrol’s Big Bend sector,
busts around 2,500 people per year, and most of them are hapless potheads like myself. According to a recent
study by the Center for Investigative Reporting, American citizens accounted for 80 percent of the arrests
made in the sector between 2005 and 2011, and 88 percent of the drug seizures were for small amounts well
below what qualifies as “trafficking,” which is what the agents are really looking for. While I sat on the perp
bench, they dutifully searched my car and its contents, hoping to find more-incriminating evidence. This was
extremely time-consuming, because the agents were not only rigorous but considerate as well. They refolded
my clothes and underwear neater than I’ve ever done and even put most of my CDs back in their correct cases
for the first time in years.

Sheriff West at his desk.

Meanwhile, my fingerprints were recorded on an inkless electronic touch pad such as I’d never seen on a
television cop show, and my picture was taken with one of those egg-shaped digital cameras that nobody
would use but a government agency with no interest in flattering you. Then I sat there in handcuffs for hours

while my prints and mug shot were circulated to cop databases around the nation. This is a worrisome process
for anyone. Who among us can ever be sure we haven’t pissed off a government computer somewhere?

The rationale for all this effort was later explained to me by Carry Huffman, the deputy chief patrol agent of the
Big Bend sector. “Every pothead isn’t a bad guy,” he said. “But every bad guy is a pothead.” By detaining
people for a couple of joints, the Border Patrol, which since 2003 has been part of the Department of
Homeland Security, is able to investigate everything about them, and this can occasionally lead to catching
some genuinely bad guys. Car thieves and fugitives and completely clueless big-time smugglers — not to
mention terrorists — all can be snared in the follow-up to the canine alarm. Of course, that happens only rarely;
nationally, the Border Patrol has caught just one so-called terrorist, a University of Houston student practicing
paramilitary operations in the Big Bend. But it’s not backing off.

“Our mission is to keep bad people and bad things out of the country,” Huffman told me. “We’re the only federal
agency that does interdictions; we make the arrests and build the cases, then we turn them over to the various
agencies that have jurisdiction for those particular crimes.”

He was speaking here of the FBI, DEA, ATF, ICE-the vast federal alphabet of bad-guy hunters who might lay
claim to an evildoer who has landed on the perp bench in Sierra Blanca. As I sat there, a pair of DEA guys
arrived, having driven the ninety miles from El Paso to take charge of a truck driver caught with several large
cardboard boxes of weed. The DEA agents wore Dockers and sneakers and looked like frat brothers
compared with the sober, smartly uniformed Border Patrol agents.

I had lots of time to observe these agents and can testify that they are a humorless crew. Homeland security is
a critical mission, and a certain zeal is apparently pressed into the troops like collar starch. Of the 650 agents
assigned to the Big Bend sector, which is geographically the largest along the U.S.-Mexico border, perhaps 40
were on duty at the checkpoint during my stay on the bench. I never saw a single one of them crack a smile.
They were relentlessly courteous to me and the other hangdog perps, but it felt merely dutiful, like part of the
job. They are federal workers, after all, a caste never known for its winsome nature.

After several hours they grew bored with me. Like the vast majority of the people who land on the checkpoint
bench, I wasn’t wanted by any of the cop computers and my crime was too minor for the feds to care about. I’d
been caught with 1.7 ounces of pot, which is technically a federal misdemeanor punishable by a $1,000 fine
and one year in prison, but the Department of Justice almost never prosecutes a case so small. Instead, I was
turned over to the State of Texas. A Hudspeth County deputy arrived on the scene wearing rumpled khakis and
a big Texas grin, the very picture of a jolly policeman. That’s when things got interesting.

EVEN BY THE LONESOME STANDARDS OF WEST Texas, Hudspeth County is a bleak and windy expanse.
It stretches more than 120 miles from corner to corner, yet just 3,500 humans reside in it, and probably less
than half that number of trees. The county seat, Sierra Blanca, is a wan relic of better times, with two gas
stations and no stoplights, and the last surviving adobe courthouse in Texas, a visible reminder that this was
the frontier not so long ago.

Arvin West grew up in that courthouse. His mother, Pilar Ramirez West, was the longtime county treasurer, and
little Arvin dreamed of someday being the sheriff. He became a deputy in 1983, achieved his dream in 2000,
and today he’s a throwback lawman right out of a Cormac McCarthy novel, or maybe Zane Grey. When he
went to Washington in 2006 to testify on border conditions before the U.S. House of Representatives
Homeland Security Committee, he told the solemn members that they were “dumbasses” if they accepted
everything the Border Patrol told them.

West has fairly alarmist notions about border conditions. He believes the drug cartels across the river are a
clear and present danger to our national security and advocates amore muscular response than Washington is
willing to contemplate. His men have engaged in furious gun battles with cartelistas, and he thinks the feds are
a bunch of wimps for not letting the lead fly with more gusto. Not surprisingly, West is a regular on right wing
talk radio and a Fox News favorite. And yet despite his hard-ass theories about border security, he takes an
extremely dim view of the so-called drug war.

Increasingly over the past ten years, West and his dozen deputies have been overwhelmed by a steady flow of
small-time potheads arrested at the checkpoint. In the state of Texas, anything over four ounces is a felony;
between two and four ounces is a Class A misdemeanor; and less than two ounces is a Class B misdemeanor.
Both misdemeanor charges can result in jail time and the suspension of one’s driver’s license. But that little
adobe courthouse couldn’t begin to handle the caseload if the law were truly enforced. Hudspeth County
doesn’t even have a full-time prosecutor; it has to bring one over from El Paso twice a month.

West’s solution is to write tickets for possession of “drug paraphernalia,” a Class C misdemeanor that doesn’t
require a court appearance and imposes a fine of $500 (plus $27in “court costs”). The fact that you were
caught red-handed with actual pot is conveniently ignored. This paraphernalia ticket is offered to you by a
smiling deputy who can get you out of those handcuffs and on your way again if you simply sign for it. After five
or six hours on the perp bench, it’s an easy decision. Like most everyone in that position, including Snoop
Dogg, who was found to be in possession of three containers of marijuana weighing just over two ounces, I
signed my ticket and put Sierra Blanca behind me as fast as the speed limit allowed, mailing in the fine from
someplace mellower later on. I never made it to the courthouse.

I never met the sheriff either, so I arranged a visit the next time I was passing through. West’s office adjoins
the Hudspeth County jail, which during his tenure has been expanded to house some two hundred prisoners,
the majority of them felons caught up the road by the Border Patrol.

“When I took office in 2000,” he told me, “we had less than a thousand federally initiated cases a year to deal
with, and most of them were felonies. Now we get three times that many, and eighty percent are
misdemeanors. It’s just gotten ridiculous.”

It’s because of the dogs, of course. According to Carry Huffman there are fifty K-9 units — a dog and handler —
assigned to the Big Bend sector, enough for several to be nosing around the checkpoint every day and night.
Most are Belgian Malinois, a shepherd cousin with strong plebeian genes. They make indifferent pets but
tremendous work dogs, with phenomenal powers of scent recognition. The Border Patrol trains them to alert on
various different chemical formulations of cannabis, cocaine, methamphetamines, and opiates — the whole
troublesome rainbow of uppers and downers.

On my return visit to the checkpoint I asked to meet one of these canine heroes and was introduced to a
seven-year-old Malinois named Spike and his supervisor, Jorge Limon. They’d been together four years and
had dozens of busts to their credit. When I asked Limon what he considered their finest moment, he smiled at
Spike and said, “The car battery.”

The story was that Spike had once squatted by a car only to have a search turn up nothing. This is not an
uncommon occurrence, since the dogs can smell the residual odor of drugs, and the officers were about to
declare a false alert. But Spike refused to budge; he kept sniffing the car’s battery. Limon insisted they crack it
open, whereupon they found half a pound of pot that Spike had smelled through the battery acid.

There are scores of similar stories, like the dog that sniffed marijuana packed in plastic and hidden inside
factory-sealed number-ten cans of jalapeno peppers. The drug-detecting abilities of trained dogs are so
reliable that the Supreme Court has blessed them time and again as sufficient for probable cause. They are
also “efficient and cost-effective,” Huffman told me, a near foolproof means of identifying just about every
smuggler, no matter how small-time, trying to make it through the checkpoint.

The number of drug-sniffing dogs has increased by 40 percent since 2006, when the George W. Bush
administration began to pour resources into border security during the country’s last big push for immigration
reform. Despite Bush’s efforts, the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2007 failed, but border security
has only continued to tighten since then. Between 2006 and 2011, the Border Patrol’s budget grew by 67
percent, and the number of agents in the field skyrocketed, from 12,000 to 21,000 (and the immigration bill
recently passed by the Senate includes a plan to double the number of agents). The surge in border security
has been an effective deterrent to illegal immigration (in 2011 the number of apprehensions of undocumented
immigrants was lower than in any year since 1972), but it’s also accounted for a jump in the number of drug
seizures.

Most of the increase comes from misdemeanor busts like mine, but felony arrests for pot possession have also
risen dramatically, and that has resulted in a different problem for Hudspeth County. Unless one of the federal
agencies takes custody of the offender, nearly everyone charged with a felony at the checkpoint is transferred
to the county jail in Sierra Blanca, to be fed, housed, and supervised for extended periods, often many months.

The federal government is responsible for paying to keep these felons in custody, since they were arrested by
federal agents, but in recent years the funding for this purpose has been drastically cut by Congress. The very
same Congress that has hired more agents to make more arrests has reduced or eliminated the money
necessary to keep the criminals in jail. And that doesn’t sit well with West, who gets stuck with the bill.

“We’re lucky to get fifty cents on the dollar,” he told me. “That’s what they gave us last year, and we had to fight
like hell to get it.”

This year threatens to be even worse. According to the Center for Investigative Reporting’s study, the four
states along the U. S.-Mexico border, all of which receive federal reimbursements for processing and
prosecuting offenders, will get less than $5 million in 2013. That’s down from $31 million in 2010.

This helps explain why West is so lenient on small-time potheads like me. Those paraphernalia tickets do bring
in more than $1 million a year, but that’s nowhere near enough to cover the expenses of running a two-
hundred-inmate jail Adding another two thousand misdemeanor cases would bring the whole system crashing
down. It’s a situation that requires a sheriff to get a little creative.

Take the Willie Nelson case. Willie’s stash of excellent weed tipped the checkpoint scales at nearly seven
ounces, felony weight, and that meant Willie was going to jail. West drove over in person to collect the
prisoner.

“I sat him down in my office,” recalled West. “There were two other fellows with him — I think they drove the
bus. I told them if one of those other guys said the dope was his, then Willie could walk. Willie said nope, it was
his.

“I took a deep breath and let him sit there a minute to think about it. I looked at him real hard, then I asked
again whose dope was it.’ Are you sure it’s yours?’ Willie said yep, it was all his.”

The word spread quickly that Willie Nelson was in the county jail. West’s brother, Wayne, the Precinct 1 county
commissioner, rushed over with his guitar as soon as he heard. Apart-time singer-songwriter himself, Wayne
played what he thought was his best composition, “Bull-Hauling Man,” for Willie, who told him it was pretty darn
good.

The octogenarian county attorney, Kit Bramblett, who has no jurisdiction in federally initiated criminal cases,
suggested Willie pay for his crime by singing “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain” in the old adobe courthouse. This
was gleefully reported by news media across the country but soon overruled by the county judge, Becky Dean-
Walker, who reckoned it shameless favoritism. It turned out she had no authority in the case either, but by then
the Willie Nelson bust was the biggest thing to ever happen in Sierra Blanca, and everyone in town had
something to say about it.

Three miles west of town, at the checkpoint where the bust had actually occurred, the Border Patrol was
unfazed and tight-lipped. They referred all media inquiries to the sheriff, who was happy to field them. As an
elected official, West has a politician’s knack for the spotlight. He also has the good-ol’-boy streak that all
successful Texas sheriffs must possess to some degree. And this had a curious result.

At some point in the continuing investigation of Willie’s crime, it was discovered that the very same stash that
had weighed almost seven ounces at the checkpoint weighed less than half that on the jailhouse scales. This
reduced the charge against him to a misdemeanor and made Willie eligible for one of those $527
paraphernalia tickets, which is how the case was eventually disposed.

Two years later, when I asked West about this discrepancy between his scales and the feds’, he shrugged.
“They don’t always get things right at that checkpoint,” he said. “They probably weighed the container along
with the dope.” This sounded just plausible enough to make me smile, and West smiled back. Then he offered
to show me the evidence room.

The evidence room of the Hudspeth County jail is a pothead’s treasure trove. There are stacks and stacks of
bags and sacks and big cartons and small white boxes, all full of marijuana and crammed to the ceiling of a
cinder-block vault the size of a four-car garage. Eachbag and sack and carton and box is stamped with a case
number and sealed with evidence tape, but the skunky aroma of all that pot is irrepressible, overwhelming,
positively intoxicating. According to West, when he showed this room to Willie, the pot-head king exclaimed,
“Whoa! Y’all got a lotta shit here. You don’t need mine, give it back.”

I laughed because I knew exactly how Willie had felt. Somewhere in that room were my own perfect buds. Up
near the top of one stack I noticed a box with case number 10-2034 stenciled on the side, next to which
someone had scrawled “Willy.” I couldn’t help wondering what the contents might weigh.

When I asked West how he felt about his celebrated decision to release Willie, he shook his head. “The last
thing in this world I want to be is a pothead hero,” he said. “But the laws we’ve got now don’t work. Something’s
gotta change.”

PHOTO (COLOR)

PHOTO (COLOR)

~~~~~~~~
By AL REINERT

PHOTOGRAPHS BY JENNIFER BOOMER

AL REINERT IS A CONTRIBUTING EDITOR TO TEXAS MONTHLY AND A DOCUMENTARY FILM MAKER
WHOSE MOST RECENT MOVIE IS AN UNREAL DREAM: THE MICHAEL MORTON STORY.

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1

On the Boundary of Abuse and Accountability.

Nevins, Joseph

NACLA Report on the Americas. Summer2012, Vol. 45 Issue 2, p64-66.
3p.

Article

*TRAVELERS
*PORTS of entry

UNITED States

U.S. Customs & Border Protection
AMERICAN Civil Liberties Union

813311 Human Rights Organizations
721199 All Other Traveler Accommodation

HERNANDEZ-Rojas, Anastasio

The article focuses on the alleged abuse of travelers by U.S. Customs
and Border Protection (CBP) at ports of entry along the U.S.-Mexico
border. It provides information on the complaint filed by the American
Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) with the Department of Homeland Security
(DHS) regarding the abuses by CBP officers that include excessive
force and humiliating personal searches. It also highlights the case of
Anastasio Hernández Rojas who was killed by federal agents in May
2010.

Vasar College, Poughkeepsie, New York

1751

1071-4839

10.1080/10714839.2012.11722096

77693018

Academic Search Complete

On the Boundary of Abuse and Accountability

ON MAY 10, THE AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES Union filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of
Homeland Security (DHS), the cabinet-level department that includes U.S. Customs and Border Protection
(CBP), the target of the grievance. The 17-page complaint focuses on what the ACLU characterizes as
“widespread abuse of travelers” by CBP officers at ports of entry along the U.S.-Mexico boundary.1

The alleged abuses–a number of which are graphically detailed in the complaint–include “excessive force;
unwarranted, invasive and humiliating personal searches; unjustified and repeated detentions based on
misidentification; and the use of coercion to force individuals to surrender their legal rights, citizenship
documents, and property.”

Because the victims of these abuses typically “find themselves without effective means of seeking redress,”
asserts the ACLU, the cases are not thoroughly and independently investigated–despite “repeated bilateral

1
1

commitments between the governments of the United States and Mexico throughout the past three
administrations to treat all migrants in a manner that respects their human rights and dignity.”

For such reasons, the ACLU takes DHS to task for its lack of “commitment to investigating abuse of power, and
the resulting civil and human rights abuses, by CBP officers.” The ACLU calls for immediate investigations of
the cases detailed in the complaint and demands “a comprehensive investigation of whether CBP Office of
Field Operations officers are complying with their obligations under the U.S. Constitution, international law, and
agency guidelines.” The ACLU hopes the investigation will generate recommendations for institutional changes
to border officer training, as well as oversight and accountability mechanisms with the goal of preventing
further abuses.

What does accountability mean in such a case, and what should the parameters of the process be–that is, if a
key goal is to prevent future instances of brutality? These are among the questions raised by the ACLU’s
intervention.

INSTRUCTIVE IN THIS REGARD IS one of the most atrocious, I high-profile cases highlighted by the ACLU
complaint–the killing of Anastasio Hernández Rojas. The complaint comes on the heels of the PBS
documentary Grossing the Line at the Border, which provides shocking evidence, including witness accounts
and new video footage, that U.S. federal agents brutally beat, tased, and ultimately killed Hernández Rojas in
May 2010–while he lay on the ground with his arms handcuffed behind his back.2 The revelations provide a
compelling counter to the official tale of what transpired.3

Born in Mexico, Hernández Rojas arrived in the United States at the age of 16. For more than 27 years, he
lived and labored in el norte, where he married and had five children. In May 2010, after losing his construction
job, he was arrested for shoplifting. When a background check showed that he was in the country without
official sanction, the police turned him over to federal authorities, who deported him to Mexico. Not willing to
accept exile from his wife and children, Hernández Rojas quickly crossed back into the United States, but
Border Patrol agents intercepted him in a remote area in southern California as he tried to head home.

At the detention facility, an agent allegedly assaulted and injured Hernández Rojas, which led him to express a
desire to file a complaint. That same agent reportedly was one of two who drove him back-alone-to the official
port of entry in San Ysidro (the southernmost portion of San Diego) to deport him again. It was there, just a few
feet from the actual boundary with Mexico, where the nighttime, deadly assault took place, involving over a
dozen agents.

A San Diego County Medical Examiner’s report concluded that Hernández Rojas died of a heart attack
triggered by the Taser and ruled his death a homicide. (According to an Amnesty International report, 334
people died in the United States between June 2001 and August 2008 after being shocked with a conducted-
energy weapon, such as a Taser–a supposedly nonlethal device.4) Hernández Rojas also had broken ribs,
several loosened teeth, bruises all over his body and head, and an injury to his spine.

What allowed the beating and electrocution to go legally unchallenged was the uncritical acceptance of the
CBP account of events by authorities at various levels. According to the agency’s official story, agents did what
they did because an unhandcuffed Hernández Rojas “became combative,” and the use of batons and the
Taser was necessary to “subdue the individual and maintain officer safety.”5

The blatant nature of the brutality, the cover-up, and what appear to be clear violations of the law have helped
to provoke widespread outcry From press conferences, to an online petition, demonstrations, and myriad news

reports, a national campaign has emerged, with pressure mounting on federal authorities to conduct a far-
reaching investigation into Hernández Rojas’s death.6

More broadly, advocates–such as John Carlos Frey, a documentary filmmaker and an investigative reporter
involved with the making of Grossing the Line at the Border–point to an institutional culture of impunity that
allows killings by Border Patrol agents to go virtually unexamined outside the agency. In an op-ed in the Los
Angeles Times, Frey emphasizes that at least eight cases have been documented since May 2010 in which the
Border Patrol’s extreme use of force has resulted in the death of unarmed and non-combative migrants. He
points to the rush to recruit ever more agents in the aftermath of 9/11 and the lower standards of recruitment
and training as contributing to the fatal violence.7

The CBP has refused to release the names of the agents involved, so it is not known whether relatively new
agents recruited and trained under less rigorous criteria are responsible for these deaths. But his argument
suggests that better-qualified agents are the answer to the problem. Rigorous applicant screening, good
training, and some sort of public oversight mechanism are no doubt preferable to the lack thereof. But in
privileging such factors, what gets obscured is the everyday violence–and death and suffering–that the federal
boundary and immigration enforcement apparatus causes through its normal practices.

Over the last couple of decades, thousands of migrants have lost their lives trying to traverse the U.S.-Mexico
borderlands and enter the United States in order to find work or rejoin loved ones. U.S. authorities have also
sent millions into exile abroad, many of them long-standing U.S. residents with almost nonexistent ties to their
countries of birth. In the process they have separated hundreds of thousands of children from their parents.8
They have also reduced the life spans of many deportees: In a particularly egregious case, one of the first
people “removed” to Haiti after the Obama administration resumed deportations to the earthquake-ravaged
country in 2011 contracted and died of cholera soon after arriving.9

The law and the institutionalized nature of the practices that produce these outcomes help to obscure the
violence they embody and the related death and suffering. But just because many do not see the violence for
what it is–death-producing–does not mean it is anything less.

Since the establishment of the U.S.-Mexico boundary, killing people and denying life has been central to the
international divide. Its very foundation necessitated a war of conquest and the dispossession of the Native
and Mexican populations in the borderlands. In the face of so many who refuse to accept the original injustice,
the maintenance of the U.S.-Mexico border has required various forms of violence on a regular basis ever
since. In a world of profound inequality–one predicated on the production of differences such as race, class,
and nationality–the boundary reflects and reproduces who gets what rights and resources. It illustrates and
shapes the very nature of life and death, and the various states in between.

ANASTASIO HERNÁNDEZ ROJAS was born on the wrong side of the boundary dividing people and places of
privilege from those of disadvantage. Like countless others in the eyes of the U.S. ruling class, he thus became
disposable. When U.S. authorities deported Hernández Rojas to Mexico and deprived him of his right to be
with his family, they effectively denied his right to live. And when they beat and tased him to death, they did so
as well.

There is no question that even within the parameters of DHS/ CBP policing something is dreadfully wrong–not
only at the U.S.-Mexico boundary but throughout the territory in which the CBP is active. As the ACLU asserts,
the cases it discusses are “consistent with a pattern of CBP abuse along the border, in detention facilities, and
in other parts of the interior.”

It is important to bring to light the parties responsible for these abuses and hold them accountable. This will
hopefully go a long way to minimizing the reoccurrence of such injustices. But achieving true justice and
accountability in cases such as Hernández Rojas’s killing requires that we go far beyond the parameters of this
particular incident.

It necessitates that we contest the very socio-territorial arrangement that made him–and makes countless
others–disposable in the first place. If we fail to do so, we will end up affirming and strengthening a boundary
that grants life to some, and consigns so many others to death.

Footnotes
1. ACLU, “Customs and Border Protection–Complaint,” May 10, 2012, available at aclu.org.

2. Elizabeth Aguilera, “New Video in 2010 Taser Border Death,” Sao Diego Union-Tribune, April 19, 2012.

3. Brian Epstein, Crossing the Line at the Border, PBS, April 20,2012, available at pbs.org.

4. Amnesty International, “Less Than Lethal”? The Use of Stun Weapons in US Law Enforcement (Amnesty
International Publications, December 16, 2008).

5. Randal C. Archibold, “San Diego Police Investigate the Death of a Mexican Man Resisting Deportation,” The
New York Times, June 1, 2010.

6. Elizabeth Aguilera, “Border-Death Documentary Helps Launch National Campaign,” San Diego Union-
Tribune, April 24, 2012.

7. John Carlos Frey, “What’s Going On With the Border Patrol?” Los Angeles Times, April 20, 2012.

8. See Seth Freed Wessler, “U.S. Deports 46K Parents With Citizen Kids in Just Six Months,” Colorlines.com,
November 3, 2011.

9. Jamilah King, “Haitian Deportee Dies After Cholera Symptoms,” Colorlines.com, February 7, 2011.

Protesters in San Diego on May 3 demand justice for Anastasio Hernández Rojas, who was killed by Customs
and Border Patrol agents in 2010 while being deported to Mexico. DAVID MAUNG/EFE/ZUMAPRESS.COM

~~~~~~~~
By Joseph Nevins

Joseph Nevins teaches geography at Vasar College in Poughkeepsie, New York. Among his hooks are Dying
to Live: A Story of U.S. Immigration in an Age of Global Apartheid (City Lights/Open Media, 2008) and
Operation Gatekeeper and Beyond: The War on “Illegals” and the Remaking of the U.S.-Mexico Boundary
(Routledge, 2010).

Copyright of NACLA Report on the Americas is the property of Taylor & Francis Ltd and its content may not be
copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder’s express written
permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.