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Review by Matthew Jardine

On April 6, 1996, a truck loaded with undocumented immigrants from Mexico lost control and careened off the road while fleeing the United States Border Patrol in Temecula, California. The crash resulted in the death of seven men, including three brothers, and the injuring of 18 others.

Unauthorized crossing of the border is a matter fraught with increasing danger for would-be immigrants. Apart from vehicular crashes, hundreds die each year from causes ranging from violent assaults to railway accidents and dehydration. Upwards of 300 people perish annually while trying to cross Texas's southern border alone, the vast majority from drowning in the Rio Grande, according to a recently released report from the Center for Immigration Research at the University of Houston.

Timothy Dunn's outstanding book, The Militarization of the U.S.-Mexico Border, 1978-1992, provides the much-needed analytical framework and extensive documentation to enable us to begin to understand the growing difficulties facing unauthorized migrants entering the U.S. from Mexico. By providing an in-depth description and a provocative analysis of the intensification of border enforcement that has taken place since the late 1970s, Dunn's book fills a huge gap in the literature on the U.S.-Mexico boundary. Dunn contends that creeping militarization has been taking place over almost the last two decades along the U.S. side of the country's southern border, resulting in a deteriorating civil and human rights situation.

According to the author, "border control" emerged as an important topic in U.S. politics in the mid-1970s in the context of an economic downturn, rising numbers of apprehensions of undocumented immigrants, and an aggressive Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) media campaign highlighting the severity of the "illegal alien problem." Since that time, the federal government has increasingly employed a variety of enhanced security measures along the border.

While all such measures do not constitute militarization, per se, many replicate or resemble specific aspects of military doctrine. Dunn defines militarization as measures associated with the specific U.S. military doctrine of low-intensity conflict (LIC), the essence of which is "the establishment and maintenance of social control over targeted civilian populations through the implementation of a broad range of sophisticated measures via the coordinated and integrated efforts of police, paramilitary, and military forces."

LIC doctrine emerged in the 1980s during the Reagan administration as part of its efforts to maintain and enhance U.S. global dominance while sustaining little cost to U.S. forces. Its origins, however, date at least as far back as the Kennedy administration, Dunn asserts.

Dunn's explicit concern for civil and human rights is central to the book. As the employment of LIC and other forms of militarization in Latin America has demonstrated, the process of militarization is a slippery slope that almost inevitably leads to human rights violations on a systematic and widespread basis. While LIC doctrine is intended for third world settings, Dunn convincingly argues that low intensity militarization has "come home" under the guise of "beefing up" the border.

In the book's concise, yet comprehensive, overview of the evolution of the U.S-Mexico boundary, Dunn illustrates that there is a long history of periodic militaristic border enforcement, such as the infamous "Operation Wetback" in 1954. The uniqueness of the period of militarization examined by the book, however, is not entirely clear. But Dunn seems to be suggesting that the current militarization has become institutionalized, rather than periodic.

The roots of contemporary border militarization, Dunn maintains, are to be found in the Carter administration. As early as August 1977, President Carter proposed a doubling of the size of the Border Patrol. Some aspects of the Carter program coincided with those of the LIC doctrine. Uses of equipment ranging from increased construction of fences to the employment of helicopters and improved ground sensors, for example, grew noticeably.

The Reagan years saw the INS expand to unprecedented levels. The administration framed the issue of undocumented immigration as one of national security proportions to a far greater extent than had the Carter presidency. And the media was largely cooperative in presenting the concomitant alarmist images and messages, thus helping to galvanize public opinion for "regaining control of our borders."

The INS increases during the Reagan administration included high-tech air support such as OH-6 spotter-observation helicopters from the US Army, night-vision and infrared scopes, and low-light television surveillance systems. The number and size of Border Patrol stations and checkpoints and INS detention centers also grew.

The 1986 passage of the Immigration and Reform and Control Act (IRCA) represented the legislative culmination of this border buildup. In IRCA's aftermath, the Border Patrol took an important strategic turn as it became increasingly involved with the "War on Drugs" along the border. But the anti-drug trafficking efforts (a specific mission area of LIC doctrine) also aided immigration enforcement activities. (Chapter 4 has an extensive discussion of the "war" in the borderlands, its relation to LIC doctrine, and the implications for civil and human rights.)

The Bush administration continued and intensified the trends set by the Reagan administration. Border Patrol funding increased significantly and immigration enforcement became more severe. In addition, greater emphasis was placed on drug enforcement, resulting in the purchase and employment of many more helicopters and additional electronic surveillance equipment. Growing evidence of civil and human rights abuses by Border Patrol and other INS agents emerged during this period.

One of the more infamous cases was the 1989-1990 INS crackdown on Central American political asylum applicants in the Lower Rio Grande Valley in Texas. According to Dunn, the operation resulted in the detention, often under harsh conditions, of thousands of men, women, and children for months at a time and extensive deportations of asylum seekers whose claims were denied at "hastily held, often ill-prepared initial adjudication hearings." The INS even cooperated with various federal intelligence agencies during the operation, a potentially very dangerous set of liaisons given the ties between many of these agencies and their counterparts in Central America.

The Bush administration also helped to establish an ongoing relationship between the INS and the U.S. military. The military and the National Guard, for example, assisted in a number of border security-related construction projects, including a seven mile wall of corrugated steel between San Diego and Tijuana. (There are now several such walls along the border. And the Clinton administration has doubled the length of the San Diego wall.)

The Clinton administration, Dunn argues, has increasingly framed the issue of undocumented immigration as one of crime to be resolved through progressively more punitive measures. Along the boundary, immigration enforcement efforts have escalated sharply, most notably in the form of the high profile blockade-style Border Patrol operations in and near urban areas along the border. It was within this context that the April 6, 1996 tragedy in Temecula unfolded.

The official story, as reported by the Los Angeles Times, is that the Border Patrol was trailing the truck at a safe speed, but not chasing it. The Border Patrol has had a stated policy of not engaging in high-speed chases since 1992 when a similar pursuit ended with the death of six people close to a Temecula school.

But human rights activists report that the agency frequently violates its own policy. Indeed, survivors of the April 6 crash report that a Border Patrol unit was pursuing the truck at very high speed and was so close to the truck that the fearful migrants inside were trying to wave the Border Patrol off.

Smugglers of undocumented migrants have been increasingly utilizing the back roads of eastern San Diego County in the face of increased Border Patrol presence in the San Diego area, the home of the agency's much-touted "Operation Gatekeeper."

Gatekeeper, begun on October 1, 1994, is a military-inspired, "territorial denial" strategy that attempts to prevent migrants from entering the U.S. (as opposed to the old strategy of apprehending migrants after they cross) through the forward deployment of Border Patrol agents, and increased use of surveillance technologies and support infrastructure.

As a result of increased difficulty in crossing in relatively urbanized areas where such operations are employed, potential immigrants and smugglers have felt compelled to attempt crossings in more isolated areas along the border (entailing arduous journeys) and/or to employ more dangerous methods such as trying to drive through Border Patrol checkpoints.

Some readers might feel disappointed that Dunn focuses almost exclusively on the material characteristics of militarization and generally ignores the ideological and rhetorical aspects (while acknowledging their importance, though). In addition, Dunn never explicitly puts forth his own vision of the border, and, until the conclusion (perhaps the most interesting and provocative section of the book), does not explore broader explanatory frameworks for the intensification of border policing in the context of a rapidly growing, trans-boundary, economically integrated zone, heavily dependent on low-wage labor.

That said, Dunn's explicit intent in writing the book is to sound an alarm, to bring to light a disturbing, dangerous, and, until now, a largely-ignored trend along the U.S.-Mexico boundary. In this regard, the book is quite an accomplishment.

Dunn does not think that the border militarization has been part of a conscious, calculated project. Rather, it seems to have arisen in piecemeal fashion, the cumulative result being a de facto militarization of the U.S.-Mexico border. Recent events suggest that this trend is intensifying.

National Guard units, for example, now assist the Border Patrol with logistical matters such as the transportation of apprehended migrants. And in October, Bill Clinton signed legislation mandating the construction of 14 mile, triple steel wall between San Diego and Tijuana (despite objections by the Border Patrol) and a doubling of the number of Border Patrol agents over the next five years. Meanwhile, many politicians continue to call for the deployment of the National Guard and/or the military along the border to apprehend undocumented crossers.

Timothy Dunn's ultimate goal is to provoke much-needed deliberation and further research on border militarization. For those of us interested in an immigration policy that is both generous and sensitive to human rights, we can only hope that The Militarization of the U.S.-Mexico Border, 1978-1992 is widely-read and discussed.

Matthew Jardine is a researcher and writer on human rights and international affairs. His latest book, co-authored with Constancio Pinto, is entitled East Timor's Unfinished Struggle: Inside the Timorese Resistance and was just released by South End Press.