(DV) Nevins: Rethinking Security in the US-Mexico Borderlands

Speech given at the Border Issues Fair of the Santa Cruz Valley Border Issues Coalition, January 13, 2007, Valley Presbyterian Church, Green Valley, Arizona

The last time I was in Arizona was late July. About the same time that I was leaving Tucson and driving toward El Paso, 13-year-old Julio Hernandez was found in Sunland Park, New Mexico. He had dragged his dead mother's body through the desert after she collapsed. Adela Hernandez was 46-years-old. According to the one newspaper report I found on her death, she appeared to have died of dehydration or exposure to heat. She and her son were from somewhere in central Mexico, and were on their way to Florida where her husband and Julio's father worked. [1]

Adela Hernandez died from a lack of security, and, simultaneously, from too much of it. That she died from both a lack and an overabundance of security is not a play on words. Rather, it highlights that there are different types of security, and that depending on how it is defined -- geographically and socially -- that security for some can and often does lead to profound insecurity for others -- and that's what I want to discuss with you.

Security here in the United States is what some have referred to as a "God-word" -- something universally embraced, and insufficiently questioned -- at least among supporters of the status quo. "Security" is of concern to us because it is at the center of present-day debates surrounding immigration and the US-Mexico boundary. And with the November elections and the Democrats gaining majorities in both the House and the Senate, there are some new openings to make changes in these areas.

Debate and polling within the country as a whole regarding the US-Mexico boundary -- especially since the September 11, 2001 Al Qaeda attacks -- shows that the vast majority of the US population sees the international divide as a protector, and a necessary one, against external threats. In a world of growing "flows" of people, goods, and ideas across boundaries, the potential for threatening forces to enter national territory is greater than ever. Thus we have people like Congressman Tom Tancredo of Colorado, who stated last February that "Yes, many who come across the [US-Mexico] border are workers. But among them are people coming to kill you and me and your children." [2]

At a recent conference in Chicago, the Chief Administrator of the Department of Homeland Security's Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) -- Julie Myers -- said, "In order to have a better America," ICE was busy catching unauthorized migrants before they could commit "criminal and in some cases even terrorist acts." [3]

What flows from such analyses is the assumption that the United States needs strong, heavily policed territorial boundaries to protect us from these alleged threats. Underlying this assumption is a fear of "foreigners" -- especially those from low-income and non-white parts of the world -- and a particular notion of society and territory, one that is preoccupied with security for "us," the citizens, and those who are deemed as rightfully belonging to this particular territory and its associated political community.

What I want to do today is, instead of focusing on "us" and our supposed need for security, concentrate on the effects of security measures on those outside of the social and geographical boundaries of concern -- in other words, those whose wellbeing is not the preoccupation of those championing national security, but rather whose very presence is often seen as (at least potentially) threatening -- people like Adela and Julio Hernandez.

Since the very founding of the United States, "security" has been invoked vis-à-vis migrants and typically non-white outsiders for all sorts of reasons, ranging from political stability, to racial purity, the protection of native-born workers, public health, violent attacks by foreign powers or terrorists groups, the sustainability of the social safety net, and simple law and order. Not all of these justifications have involved the US-Mexico boundary and migrants from Mexico and elsewhere in the so-called Third World, but almost all of them have. Given the overlap between race, class, and nation, they typically focus on the non-white and the poor as the objects of concern.

The race/ethnicity/national origins of the targeted groups have changed over time. Sometimes they're been from within the United States, and at others from without. At various points it has involved Native peoples, and peoples of African, Chinese, German, Japanese, or (in the aftermath of 9/11) Arab and South Asian descent -- among others. And it has also, of course, involved people of Mexican origin. Indeed, over the last several decades -- given the scale of Mexican migration and the growing importance of the US-Mexico boundary in the national imagination -- "threats" from abroad, and "security" along the US-Mexico boundary have become almost synonymous. But regardless of the particular group, all of them have been characterized as threatening, as populations that need to guarded against, as the mirror image of Americans.

All of us here, I'm assuming for the purposes of this talk, are concerned about the suffering that migrants -- specifically unauthorized or "illegal" ones -- have to endure in order to cross the boundary and realize a life of dignity in the United States. Some of us even want those who make the extremely difficult decision to cross the boundary without authorization to succeed and, once they are here, to live free of fear of arrest and deportation, and to access the resources they need to achieve a healthy livelihood.

It is this latter perspective -- a human rights one -- one preoccupied with the ability of all peoples to realize a right to life, a right to be free from inhuman or degrading treatment, a right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of oneself and one's family, and a right to work and just and favorable conditions for such, that I want to argue must be at the center of efforts to achieve security -- for "us" and "them."

That said, both types of security -- whether we simply don't want to see migrants dying while trying to cross, or we want migrants to be able to realize their human rights -- are antithetical to a national security that, as currently envisioned, involves building up the boundary or internal enforcement. It is antithetical because of what national security has long meant and involved in the making of US boundary and immigration enforcement, and because of the very nature of the contemporary global political economy. Regarding human rights, national boundaries create insecurity to the extent they deny people the ability to access the geographical spaces and resources needed to realize those rights.

* * * * *

Whenever there's deep socio-economic inequality and those parties on the more privileged side are calling for security, one can almost always be sure that the efforts to achieve that security will hurt those who are already less privileged. In this regard, the very language of security is a loaded one.

One sees this in the history of US immigration and boundary enforcement, which goes back to the very first piece of immigration control legislation in the United States. Passed by the Federalists, the Alien Friends Act of 1798 grew out of worries that the radical emancipatory promises of the French Revolution might infect the US body politic via foreigners. It thus empowered the president to deport any non-citizen living in the country deemed to be "dangerous to the peace and safety of the United States."

While the Act expired after only two years, a whole slew of immigration legislation came into existence in the second half of the nineteenth century that barred the entry of those perceived as threatening the socio-political fabric of the country.

Thus, in 1875, legislation excluded convicts and prostitutes, and an 1882 law barred "idiots, lunatics, convicts, and persons likely to become public charges." The year 1882 also marked the passing of the Chinese Exclusion Act, the first piece of legislation that restricted immigration on the basis of "race" or ethno-national origins. The next several decades saw a widening of such restrictions.

The Mexican Revolution and World War I led to dramatic changes along the boundary. World War I led to deep fears among the populace with a focus on Germans. It was during this time that highly nationalistic types began calling frankfurters "hot dogs," and sauerkraut "liberty cabbage." Many in the United States were afraid that Germany would try to attack the country via the Mexican boundary.

The same year the US entered the war saw the passage of the Immigration Act of 1917. This led to a formalization of immigration control procedures and an increase in the number of US authorities and immigration inspection sites along the boundary with Mexico.

The perceived need for security was not only military-based but also informed by notions of public health and racial purity as this was a time when eugenics, or racial science, was ascendant. Thus, also in 1917, the US Public Health Service published the Manual for the Physical Inspection of Aliens, which listed the classes of people to be blocked from entering the country. These were: imbeciles, idiots, feeble-minded persons, persons of constitutional psychopathic inferiority -- a category that included pathological liars and persons with abnormal sexual instincts (homosexuals) -- vagrants, physical defectives, chronic alcoholics, polygamists, anarchists, persons afflicted with loathsome or dangerous diseases, prostitutes, contract laborers, and all aliens over 16 years old who could not read. [4]

The new practices applied to Mexican migrants attempting to cross the boundary included (depending on the assessment and dictates of individual US immigrant inspectors) vaccination, bathing, and delousing. In El Paso in 1917 alone, 127,173 Mexicans were bathed and deloused at the bridge that joined the United States with Ciudad Juarez. There, all immigrants from the Mexican interior, and those whom US officials deemed "second-class" residents of Juarez, had to, according to David Romo, "strip completely, turn in their clothes to be sterilized in a steam dryer and fumigated with hydrocyanic acid, and stand naked before a Customs inspector who would check his or her 'hairy parts' -- scalp, armpits, chest, genital area -- for lice. Those found to have lice would be required to shave their heads and body hair with clippers and apply a mix of kerosene and vinegar on his body." Such measures were supposedly in response to the threat of typhus from Mexico. Yet, even though the typhus scare soon disappeared, delousings and sprayings continued in many US border towns until the late 1950s. [5]

The characterization of Mexicans as public health menaces overlapped heavily with the racialization and the associated mistreatment of Mexican migrants. While agricultural interests initially welcomed Mexican migrant workers in the late 1800s-early 1900s, seeing them as hardworking and docile, nativists in the Southwest often perceived them as a threat. During the 1913-1914 depression, nativists in Los Angeles, for example, made Mexicans their primary scapegoat, linking them to Communism and other radical causes. And as Mexican workers became increasingly involved in militant unions and frequently participated in strikes (ones typically violently repressed), growers and government authorities began to characterize them similarly, often colluding to deport union and political activists as a way of maintaining a status quo highly favorable to capital.

With the Great Depression of 1929, restrictionist sentiment further intensified, with organizations ranging from the American Federation of Labor to the American Legion and the Veterans of Foreign Wars leading the charge. In this context, Mexicans became a convenient scapegoat once again, blamed for a variety of social ills. Such sentiment led to the deportation of hundreds of thousands of Mexican migrants -- including many US citizens of Mexican descent.

During this time, characterizations arose of Mexicans as prone to tuberculosis, because of supposed biological propensity, and as especially reliant on welfare programs. In response, the Los Angeles County Department of Charities established a "Transportation Section" (also known as the "Deportation Section") charged with finding unauthorized Mexican migrants who were receiving county-sponsored medical aid. From 1931 to 1933, the department deported over 13,000 Mexicans back to Mexico. It is likely that many of the deportees were authorized migrants or citizens. [6]

Due to labor shortages brought about by World War II, Mexican workers were soon welcomed back -- especially unauthorized ones given that agricultural interests appreciated the flexibility they afforded over authorized contract workers, known as braceros. As a result, unauthorized immigration grew. But as their numbers grew, various government officials soon began to argue that uncontrolled immigration was presenting a threat to the stability of the agricultural economy and the larger society more generally. Many blamed "illegal" immigration for depressing wage rates in the Southwest, associated them with crime, and warned of its implications for public health and housing standards.

Such critiques resonated with large segments of the public, especially given the severe recession of the early 1950s. Furthermore, the Cold War and the prevailing anti-communism played a role in facilitating the rise of anti-"wetback" sentiment with some suggesting that "Communists," other subversives, and spies were among those entering the country from Mexico. Others, while stressing the national security dimensions of the perceived crisis, also emphasized law and order. One US immigration official, for example, proclaimed the increasing number of extralegal entrants from Mexico to be "the greatest peacetime invasion ever complacently suffered by another country under open, flagrant, contemptuous violations of its laws." [7]

In response to such pressure, the Eisenhower administration launched in June 1954 a large-scale deportation strategy called as "Operation Wetback," involving the deportation of hundreds of thousands of people of Mexican descent.

Despite such events, and the long-existing manipulation of Mexican migrant labor to benefit capital, the fact is that the US southern boundary and migration from Mexico were of relatively little concern to American officials and the public as a whole through most of the twentieth century. It was not until the 1970s that the border and Mexican migration truly became a topic of sustained national discussion and concern.

There are a number of reasons why this is the case. The early 1970s was a time of recession, of a significant increase in the number of unauthorized migrants entering the United States from Mexico (an outgrowth of the end of the Bracero program and the formally legal migratory labor ties going underground), and of the presence of a strong Chicano movement that led some to believe that separatism might emerge in the Southwest. In addition, a few people in Congress began raising the issue of the border and Mexican migration through hearings. But perhaps the most important factor was that there was a new head of the US Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS): ex-Marine general Leonard Chapman. Chapman greatly contributed to the perception of a crisis through his outspokenness about unauthorized migration and the problems allegedly associated with it, and his effective use of the media.

Chapman fanned the flames by frequently putting forth wildly-exaggerated and inconsistent estimates of the number of unauthorized immigrants in the US Chapman also effectively linked unauthorized immigration to a whole host of social ills in the minds of the US public. In arguing for increased resources for the INS and employer sanctions in 1974, for instance, the commissioner claimed that he could open up one million jobs "virtually overnight" for unemployed Americans. As he wrote in The Reader's Digest, "[I]f we could locate and deport three to four million illegals who currently hold jobs in the United States, replacing them with citizens and legal residents, we could reduce our own unemployment dramatically -- as much as 50 percent." [8]

Increasingly US politicians and public officials began putting forth dire warnings of the security "threat" represented by unauthorized migration, often employing metaphors suggesting an invasion. President Ford, for instance, tried to blame the country's economic problems on unauthorized migrants, stating in 1976 that "The main problem is how to get rid of those 6 to 8 million aliens who are interfering with our economic prosperity." William Saxbe, Ford's Attorney General called the presence of unauthorized immigrants "a severe national crisis." Citing jobs, crime, and welfare costs, Saxbe called for the deportation of one million "illegal aliens" whom he described as mostly Mexicans. And CIA director William Colby warned of a future emergence of a "Spanish-speaking Quebec in the US Southwest" and stated that unauthorized Mexican immigration was a greater future threat to the United States than the Soviet Union. "The most obvious threat," Colby said, "is the fact that . . . there are going to be 120 million Mexicans by the end of the century. . . . [The Border Patrol] will not have enough bullets to stop them." [9]

The problem of unauthorized migration from Mexico even appeared in television entertainment programs. The press played a key role in legitimating the perception of a "Mexican invasion" by uncritically discussing INS reports alleging that unauthorized migrants were producers of poverty, crime, and joblessness in the US The cover of the December 1974 issue of The American Legion Magazine, for example, contained a cartoon image of US territory being overrun by an influx of migrants for an article entitled "Our Illegal Alien Problem." The cover depicted the vast majority of the immigrants by means of a throng of cartoon-like Mexicans with sombreros smashing through US boundary blockades, overrunning boundary inspectors, and flooding into buildings with descriptive signs such as "schools," "welfare department," "medical aid," and "jobs." [10]

As a result of all this, non-state and state actors began agitating for increased resources for the INS and, especially, boundary policing in the 1970s, resulting in a dramatic growth in funding, personnel, and equipment beginning in the second half of the Carter Administration. [11]

These are the decisive medium-term roots of the unprecedented levels of enforcement that we see today along the boundary. While Mexican migrants are no longer deloused and sprayed with gas, and overtly racist language is no longer acceptable, many of the same themes used to characterize migrants in the past as threats to security -- to the social safety net, and to our very way of life -- are still very much present.

The result of all this in terms of what have presented to us as border-related security threats (i.e. drugs, crime, and "terrorism") is highly questionable. Despite a massive build-up in enforcement, illicit drugs still come across the boundary in plentiful supply, unauthorized immigrants continue to cross: indeed, while a recent study found that it is much more difficult to cross now than in the early 1990s (about one-third get caught on any given trip), it also established that 92-97 percent of Mexican migrants continue to try to cross until they succeed. As for fighting terrorism, what the Border Patrol now says is one of its primary functions, as in the case of the broader "war on terror," political actors have grossly exaggerated the threat as the lack of any attacks since 2001 -- despite a still permeable boundary -- demonstrates. In response to those who would say that this "proves" that the security measures along the boundary are working, John Mueller wrote in the September/October 2006 issue of Foreign Affairs, "Americans are told -- often by the same people who had once predicted imminent attacks -- that the absence of international terrorist strikes in the United States is owed to the protective measures so hastily and expensively put in place after 9/11. But there is a problem with this argument. True, there have been no terrorist incidents in the United States in the last five years. But nor were there any in the five years before the 9/11 attacks, at a time when the United States was doing much less to protect itself."

What the boundary build-up has accomplished is the diversion of billions of dollars, while distracting our attention from internal menaces: a below-poverty-level minimum wage, rampant corporate malfeasance, dangerous environmental degradation, a profit-driven heath-care system that leaves tens of millions without insurance, and an out-of-control prison-industrial complex that imprisons 25 percent of the world's prisoners (while the United States only has five percent of the world's population).

It has also led to migrants -- authorized and unauthorized -- present in the US experiencing increased harassment by police and immigration officials, increased detentions, and a massive growth in deportations (1.5. million since 1996), and, with it, divided families.

As a result of the 1996 Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act and the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, both signed into law by Bill Clinton, non-citizen "aggravated felons" are subject to deportation, regardless of how long ago their crimes occurred. The 1996 laws greatly expanded the list of crimes for which "resident aliens" can lose their residency. The standard for what constitutes an aggravated felony for permanent residents is much lower than that for citizens. Prior to 1996, the list was limited to crimes of violence and drug-related crimes that received sentences of at least five years. The list now includes selling marijuana, domestic violence, some cases of drunk driving, and any conviction that carries a sentence of one year or more. [12]

Undoubtedly, many of those deported as a result of the law have committed violent crimes. But assuming that the "criminal alien" population is similar to that which finds itself languishing in state and federal prisons in the United States, a large share of the deportees are most probably non-violent drug law offenders. Often they are married and have US-born (thus citizen) children. The deportations thus typically take a large toll on the socio-economic security of the deportees' families and, paradoxically, most likely increase the demand immigrant families place on the social security net.

Gerardo Antonio Mosquera Sr. was one of the early victims of this madness. Convicted in 1989 for selling $10 worth of marijuana, the INS stripped Mosquera of his permanent residency and deported the 29-year legal resident of the US back to his native Colombia in December 1997. As a result, his 17 year old son, Gerardo Jr., went into a deep depression. Two months later, the high school junior committed suicide. The US Embassy in Bogotá would not even permit Gerardo Sr. to return to Los Angeles to attend his son's funeral. [13]

In addition to such tragedies, there is the rapidly increasing death toll along the boundary. The deaths of migrants crossing without authorization have long occurred. We make a mistake of thinking that they only began in the 1990s. More than one hundred years ago, for example, Chinese migrants died in the desert trying to circumvent controls put in place due to the racist Chinese Exclusion laws. In the late 1980s, the number of migrant deaths nationally, according to studies undertaken by the University of Houston's Center for Immigration Research [14], averaged over 300, reaching a high of 355 in 1988. The numbers began to decline in the early 1990s, but rose again in the mid-1990s with the Clinton's administration's border build-up. Since 1995, there have been more than 4,000 documented deaths, with FY 2005 being the deadliest year on record: 460 fatalities. But because far more migrants (in both relative and absolute terms) are dying from "environmental factors" such as hyperthermia, or excessive body temperature, and are doing so in remote areas, the increase in deaths is most likely far greater than it appears. Many corpses are undoubtedly never discovered.

Here in Arizona, the average number of annual migrant deaths has grown dramatically over the last ten years or so. In 1985, 1990, and 1995, there were 64, 24, and 31 migrant deaths respectively in Arizona, according to the same University of Houston studies. In Fiscal Year 2005, there were 279.

Such deaths, and the security and insecurity they simultaneously reflect, are increasingly common in border regions between high- and low-income countries throughout the world. The September 15, 2006 issue of The First Post, an online daily magazine, shockingly demonstrated this. Images included one of an exhausted migrant -- presumably from somewhere in Africa -- crawling onto a beach of Spain's Canary Islands while three sunbathers look on from a distance. According to the photo caption, the islands' residents are increasingly worried about the influx of migrants in terms of the potential spread of disease and effects on the local tourist industry.

The photo captures brilliantly and painfully the unequal access to particular places experienced by people across the globe. For those sitting on the beach witnessing the migrant, arriving at the tropical sands was most likely a relatively easy experience -- even if they were from a country other than Spain -- because of their socio-economic status and other geographically informed privileges (one of which relates to their ability to move across global space). For the migrant, trying to reach the Canary Islands by traversing the treacherous waters of the Atlantic was literally a death-defying activity as two other photos demonstrate: one shows a group of men from the Canary Islands carrying a corpse onto shore where four other migrant bodies -- all victims of drowning -- lie; the next and final photo shows the prostrate corpse of a migrant floating off the coast of Fuerteventura, one of the islands that make up the Canaries.

According to the The First Post, an estimated 1,700 migrants died in 2005 alone while trying to make the voyage between the west coast of Africa and the Canary Islands. Another estimate (one from the Canary Islands vice-director of immigration) contends that upwards of 6,000 migrants died in 2006 trying to get to the Canary Islands -- one out of every six that successfully reached the archipelago last year (a total of 31,404). [15]

Such avoidable deaths increasingly occur in the border regions that both divide and bring together rich and poor, the safe and the insecure, the first and third worlds, the white and non-white. They are just one form of suffering and indignity that all too many people must endure simply because they were born on the less privileged side of the boundaries that make up the unjust world order in which we live.

Thus, it is often the efforts of migrants to realize security of a socio-economic sort, one effectively denied to them in their homelands for various reasons (including a violent US foreign policy and Washington's championing of neoliberal policies abroad that undermine people's economic livelihoods), the perception of these migrants as sources of insecurity in their would-be countries of destination, and a related project of securitization via enhanced boundary and immigration policing that produces the deaths, in addition to many other forms of hardship. In other words, the production of security effectively entails the construction of insecurity and vulnerability. Given the socio-geographical overlap between "citizens" and "aliens" (e.g. in workplaces, households, and communities) -- one that defies the neat boundaries that these categories presume and produce -- the effect is to create an insecurity and a climate of fear that affects the society as a whole, and, hence, many of "us."

That said, there are people from abroad who come or would like to come to places like the United States and harm people within -- but these people, whoever they are, are certainly very small in number. And, just as in the case of dangerous people born and raised in the United States, there are myriad ways to bring about security in the face of would-be purveyors of violence from outside the country without denying the freedom of movement for entire groups of people on the basis of where they were born or reside on the planet. That political elites almost never discuss such alternatives illustrates the smokescreen-nature of their invocation of security. As in Iraq or in Guantanamo, security becomes a catch-all that says we can do whatever we want to do. It is a limitless project. After all, how much security is enough?

* * * * *

As I said earlier, security is a "God-word" here in the United States -- especially vis-à-vis immigration and the boundary. This highlights one of the major obstacles that those of us who want fundamentally change the nature of the US immigration and boundary enforcement regime face: that of language. A notion of security that isn't only concerned about us, but also "them" is certainly not the notion that we hear from the Border Patrol, the Bush Administration, the vast majority of elected officials -- Republicans and Democrats alike -- or the mass media. Our notion is radically different, and thus so, too, must be our politics -- in terms of what we do, and what we advocate.

When I say that our problem is one of language, I don't mean mere words. As Ludwig Wittgenstein, the Austrian philosopher once noted, "words are deeds." Language has power because it reflects and helps to shape how we live. As such, language involves words related to what we do, the world around us, and the world we want to achieve. In terms of political activism, we have to be very strategic about our language as we don't want to say anything that undermines the realization of our goals. Thus, we need to be mindful and clear about what are goals are, what's in our way, and how we articulate those things.

Right now, we're not in a position to set the terms of the debate. That's not to say that we can't influence those terms, but, for the most part, others establish the terrain on which we debate. The very words and ideas that permeate mainstream discussion are not ours. They are of a language we do not want to speak.

When someone speaks a language different from yours, and, it's the only one they know, you can't speak to them in a foreign tongue. You have to speak their language. In our case, however, if we speak the language of the mainstream and the establishment regarding security, we've already lost the debate. We can't win on their terms.

Our challenge is thus to create a new playing field, while at the same time speaking a language that makes sense to those who don't agree with us, but doesn't end up bolstering their basic assumptions.

We've been very good at getting across the message that border deaths are unacceptable. We've been so successful that many who champion ever-stronger levels of boundary and immigration enforcement now decry the deaths and use them to bolster their own political positions. In the section of the Sensenbrenner bill called "Fencing and Other Border Security Improvements," for example, the first item it mentions in listing reasons for improved barriers along the boundary is "Hundreds of people die crossing our international border with Mexico every year." [16] Representative (and now presidential candidate) Duncan Hunter, a Republican from the San Diego area and the individual most responsible for the walls and fences that increasingly litter the border landscape -- some people refer to him as the "Secretary of da fence" -- argued to Bush administration officials in May that more barriers are a good way to prevent deaths. "If you can save lives by fencing the desert, why not fence the desert?" he asked. [17]

Even the Minutemen mourn the deaths. The only place -- apart from the El Paso Times website -- that I could find the report on the death of Adela Hernandez was the Minuteman's national blog xxx, which commented that it showed the danger of "open borders" while proclaiming that "Securing the border is the humane thing to do." [18]

This shows that in addition to calling for no more deaths, we have to articulate a fundamental critique of the assumptions and practices that make deaths and other forms of suffering inevitable, and put forth a fundamentally different vision. In the case of No More Deaths, the organization, we need to couple our demand for an end to border deaths with an equally strong demand tied to our underlying principles, one of which is a basic right of mobility for all peoples. If we fail to do so, we run the risk of sometimes agreeing with, and actually helping, people and institutions that have a radically different agenda, one antithetical to a human rights perspective that I laid out earlier.

A good example of this from elsewhere is the disastrous war in Iraq that Washington is currently waging. We know that it is not enough to decry specific atrocities committed by US troops, but more importantly the war as a whole. Our job is to make sure that individual US soldiers are not in a position to commit atrocities in the first place -- whether in Abu Ghraib or Haditha. We need to stop the war that makes such atrocities inevitable.

Similarly, we must call for an end to war on migrants -- not simply for a stop to the deaths of many of them. What this requires, first and foremost, is that we see migrants not as criminals or "illegals," but as mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, workers, neighbors, and members of our various communities -- in other words as human beings in all their complexities.

* * * * *

A few days before I left Tucson at the end of July, 11-year old Olivia Luna Noguera was found on the land of the Tohono O'odham Nation. She was wearing pink sneakers, and was unconscious. Efforts to revive her failed. She died of cardiac arrest brought about by hyperthermia. Her body temperature was 106 degrees. Accompanied by her 17-year-old sister, Marisol, she was trying to get to Atlanta, Georgia to reunite with her parents.

Proponents of the massive border build-up that unfolded since the mid-1990s, and those who advocate more of the same, often contend that heavier policing and enforcement help to reduce deaths. They point to large numbers of migrant rescues by the Border Patrol, ignoring that it is the very presence of the Border Patrol and its policing apparatus that put migrants in harm's way. After all, migrants wouldn't have to trek through the desert if they could just walk through a port of entry in a safe, dignified and legal manner.

In a world of intensifying ties that transcend international boundaries, and great instability and insecurity, one brought about to a significant degree by the violence of US foreign policy and by neoliberal trade policies that undermine people's livelihoods, many -- especially for those on the global socio-economic margins -- will no doubt continue to try to cross the US-Mexico border despite the risks. This is true regardless of the number of Border Patrol agents and the length and height of the proposed walls. As one man who was getting ready to try to cross into Arizona told a reporter just two days before Olivia perished, "Our needs are greater than our fears."

Such needs most likely brought Olivia's parents to Atlanta, so they could provide for their children. And such needs undoubtedly drove them to try to reunite with their daughters -- a basic "family value" lost in what passes for debate among those championing a further enforcement build-up on the border.

Many will no doubt point their fingers at Olivia's mother and father, asking what type of parents would expose their 11-year-old daughter to such a dangerous trip. But such blame is misplaced. Instead, we should be asking what type of people would compel the parents to make a risky choice by denying them and their children the right to be united and to work and reside where they can have access to resources needed for a life of well-being.

Such cases expose the violence inherent in immigration and boundary policing. It is violent in that it denies people some of their most basic rights -- a right to life, a right to be free from inhuman or degrading treatment, a right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of oneself and one's family, and a right to work and just and favorable conditions for such. It is violent in that the boundary as it now exists denies people the right to access the resources they need to realize those rights -- rights contained within the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

This is not unique to the United States-Mexico boundary. It's true to varying extents to all international boundaries. But the boundaries between rich and poor, the haves and have-nots, are where the violence -- and the insecurity -- are most pronounced.

We can have an illusion of security for some -- and insecurity for the rest -- or security for all. If we choose the former, migrant deaths will only grow in number as will other forms of state violence against migrants. If we want the latter, that has profound implications for how we perceive threats, how we define security and fight against insecurity, what territorial boundaries look like, and how we embrace what we share as human beings.

Joseph Nevins is an assistant professor of geography at Vassar College. He is the author of Operation Gatekeeper: The Rise of the "Illegal" Alien and the Making of the US-Mexico Boundary (New York: Routledge, 2002) and, most recently, A Not-So-Distant Horror: Mass Violence in East Timor (Cornell University Press, 2005).