Demilitarization Towards Border Abolition
By Hastin Crosby
The US-Mexico border kills more than 700 people a year, a figure that has been steadily growing as the border becomes more militarized. How did the border become so lethal, and what can be done to halt the expansion of this mass grave where Mexico meets the United States? I explore these questions through a brief look at history of militarization as well as a few of the myths that the border operates on, an analysis of border abolition as a solution to the problems created by the US-Mexico border, and finally a look at how short-term demilitarization is a pathway towards border abolition while reducing casualties and not precluding future abolition. It is important that efforts to reform the border do not support the system, as providing more legitimacy to the border as an institution would make future abolition more difficult. For example, when United States President Joseph Biden gave more money to domestic law enforcement agencies and, better training of police officers, the root causes were not addressed. Thus, these funding increases only further legitimized the U.S.’s broken criminal justice system. I argue that demilitarization is an abolitionist step that would both not support the U.S. border regime and affect positive short-term change. The mitigation of the border's lethality can also lead us to question the supposed necessity of the border by revealing the paradoxical nature of the border's self-justifying actions. As the border, in truth, is unnatural.
Borders have not always been a fact of life for humanity. Indigenous Americans operated for much of their existence without borders, and still encounter issues with borderlines drawn by colonial forces. In addition, when people in power first aimed to restrict people's movement, they intended to keep people inside of nations and not exclude people from entering. The original design of borders was to keep vulnerable populations within a nation as a usable workforce, but as societies evolved borders did as well. Now populations are rendered vulnerable, in many cases as usable workforce, by their exclusion. Irregular migrants may have tenuous or no legal status and are often subject to deportation, detention, or death. Employers use this liminal status to entrap workers: paying them astoundingly low wages, forcing them into debt, and preventing them from seeking help by threatening their residency in the country. The US-Mexico border in particular can be seen as the grimy residue of the 1970s war on drugs. Political discourse concocted the idea that an excess of dangerous drugs was flowing into the United States through our southern border. Fearmongering about drugs helped to create and exacerbate the ‘Latino Threat Narrative,’ the idea that Latinos are unlike previous immigrants into the U.S., such as the Irish or Jewish peoples, and are part of an invading force from the south of the border. Borders generally exclude negatively based on racial, class, and gendered lines, but Latinos are presented as a unique threat to the sovereignty of the United States, the jobs of working-class Americans, and American culture at large. This can explain why the US-Mexico border is much more militarized and politicized than the US-Canada border. Moreover, the September 11, 2001, attacks provided the federal government with more bargaining power for national security even at the cost of individual rights. National security, in essence, provides a justification for the growing militarization of the border. This is why since 2003 the U.S. federal government has spent over an estimated $333 billion on immigration agencies, why Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) owns a “fleet of drones,” and has intense ground surveillance through Integrated Fixed Towers (IFT). This extreme growth of the border has resulted in the rate of mortality at the border in 2020 being five times more than what it was in 2000.
This myth of border naturality is not the only myth perpetuated to justify the militarization of the border. The border finds itself embroiled in two more falsehoods: that it is effective in stopping people from entering the country, and that it prevents harm to migrants and local laborers. On the former, despite ever-increasing restrictions on individuals’ rights to movement, there are more people crossing the borders of nations than ever before. The United Nations Population Division currently estimates that there are now about 200 million international migrants each year. Even when considering general population increases, we can see that migration continues despite growing restrictions on movement. No set of border controls has ever worked to fully contain people’s desire and need to move. In this sense, it can be argued that an everyday practice of refusing the border has existed as long as borders have. People will find ways to move, and the border will not stop these trends, rather the border exploits and renders vulnerable people seeking improved circumstances for themselves and their families. Internationally humans throughout history have migrated for the same reasons they do today. On the latter, there has been much exploration of how the border harms both migrants and laborers. The border, in its militarized state, has increased the cost of migration through higher smuggling fees and increasing risks of death as migrants must traverse more dangerous terrain. Moreover, immigration restriction and punishment function as a “multigenerational punishment”. Immigration arrest imposes a substantial financial burden on the migrant, and often leads to the loss of property and means of production. This further condemns the migrant to poverty and encourages another attempt to cross and to seek better opportunities for life.
Employers use immigration policy to construct the stereotype of the hardworking Latino migrant which is sketched against the lazy local worker. However, local workers are no less productive than migrants, but unauthorized status allows employers to use fear and vulnerability to subject immigrants to jobs, hours, wages, and working conditions that most US citizens would not tolerate. The border operates to benefit a few at the expense of many through the control of mobility and the denial of resources and rights to people who have been deemed illegal.
The border also acts as a testing ground for increased surveillance systems that eventually find their way to being used on citizens within the walls of a nation. As Anderson, Sharma, and Wright note “The loss of civil liberties for citizens thus is often foretold by the treatment of non-citizens.” When the United Kingdom (UK) developed Control Orders in response to a growing anxiety about terror, they created a system for the indefinite detainment of noncitizens. When this practice was found to be clearly discriminatory, they simply expanded it to include in-definite detainment of citizens as well. It is only a matter of time before the security industry demands the expansion of various security technologies beyond the realm of border patrol.
Restrictions on the rights of movement of citizens within a particular nation is characterized as a human rights violation by the U.S. State Department. The border constantly violates the rights of migrants, and slowly eats away at the rights of both migrants and citizens. Border abolition is the ideal way to address these issues. Abolition would reduce the potential for human exploitation, minimize violence inflicted upon migrants, and slow the monstrous growth of the security industry. Abolition questions the growing trend of nationalism and the inequalities enforced by capitalism. The border sees migration as a short-term issue, thus neglecting migration as a historical trend. Abolition recognizes the historical patterns of migration, and instead of disrupting or exposing migrants to danger, it facilitates safety. Abolition of the US-Mexico border means mending relationships with our neighbor, ensuring the safety of people from the US and Mexico on both sides of the border, and rejecting abuse and exploitation. Freedom of movement should be upheld as a strong right that requires substantial necessity from the federal government to violate. In addition, free movement of people is often associated with economic and social benefits. The border is also heavily involved with generating and reinforcing inequalities between people. States are often interested in constructing and maintaining borders that exclude migrants from countries with relatively worse-off economies. “Rights to free movement have been granted to some at the exclusion of others.” Abolition would demand an end to the generation and reproduction of inequalities imposed by the border and strengthen people's right to move on their own terms.
However, border abolition is not a policy being considered by most policymakers or average citizens. Many regard border abolition as a radical policy that would move the U.S. into an unexplored borderless world. The idea that borders actually effectively prevent movement has convinced many that the removal of borders would lead to a flood of people into the United States. These negative thoughts about border abolition can be explained by three main things: bi-partisan support for the border, funding from the security industry, and the inability to think that living in a borderless world is possible. These three factors are tightly intertwined. The funding from the security industry has lined the pockets of American politicians from both sides of the political aisle, which explains their continued investment in the border. This general assumption that the border needs to exist reinforces the myth of border naturality— that the border is natural and inevitable. Lastly the myth of border naturality allows the security industry to profit surveillance and control systems of increasing complexity. Northrop Grumman, for example, is one of the highest contributors to congressmen and women on the Homeland Security Committee. The security mega-corporation donates to Democrats and Republicans equally and encourages politicians to support higher budgets for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Corporations like Northrop Grumman are the true winners in border politics. Between 2008 and 2022 private corporations secured around $55.1 billion in contracts with ICE and Customs and Border Patrol agencies. Moreover, around 80% of people detained by ICE are held within facilities controlled by private prison corporations. This amount of money and support constitutes a huge obstacle for border abolition. In addition, this normalization of the border has excluded abolition from discourse about border alternatives. Limited, reforming proposals prevent activists from contributing to larger forms of justice. Even solutions proposed to solve extreme abuses at the border, for example ending of family separation at the border, continue to legitimize the border writ large. The border is considered a neutral body that is only unjust when it is functioning improperly. This is untrue, and a reframing and reconstruction of the character of the border is needed to combat this image. We must “imagine a world without borders.”
How can we get to a “world without borders” without further reinforcing the broken system we aim to deconstruct? The answer is demilitarization. Demilitarization is a direct reduction to harms experienced at the border without strengthening the system. Demilitarization would reduce and remove security systems, lower inflated law enforcement budgets, and provide assistance to border crossers in need. Demilitarization not only aims to provide recognition and inclusion of irregular immigrants, but eventually works to deconstruct the entire system. Demilitarization removes the border from the grip of the security industry and uses the money to invest in the safety and security of irregular migrants using an invest-divest framework. An invest-divest framework would involve border crossers and people living along the border in budgeting towards programs to support people in need, diverting from existent enforcement budgets while pushing for the transformation of the border regime. Demilitarization of the border would fit within the Detention Watch Network’s framework of an abolitionist step as it “reduces the scale of detention and deterrence, chips away at the current system without creating new harms and provides relief to those suffering under the current regime.” Abolitionist steps ensure that the border is eventually eliminated and make strengthening the current system harder. In addition, demilitarization is less politically radical than abolition. During former U.S. President Donald Trump's term more attention than ever was brought to the violence at the border, and popular political weight turned to solving the more severe human rights violations. Demilitarization presents a more roots-based solution to these violations without asking that popular political discourse discard borders right away. Moreover, demilitarization of the border would allow for more effective questioning of the necessity of the border. Why do we need the border at all? There would be fewer death at the border, and fewer opportunities for smugglers or traffickers to prey upon people looking to move under extreme circumstances. Giving migrants more support and pathways to migrate while reducing the risk may reduce irregular migrants and crime in border towns. In terms of rebuttal to demilitarization, the idea does not face any new problems that abolition does not. However, demilitarization is a more politically viable path towards abolition given increasing popular attention to violence at the border even as pressures from the security industry remains. If abolition is the end state that we desire, demilitarization offers a path towards building to abolition.
However, it is extremely important that demilitarization is not seen as the end goal. Demilitarization must be conceptualized as a stepping-stone to abolition. It does not complete the necessary challenge of deconstructing the system. Ending with demilitarization would not disrupt global inequalities in the long run, and it would strengthen the myth of border naturality. To address broader problems with the border, demilitarization efforts must be undertaken with the assumption that they will move toward abolition. Victory cannot be tied to state recognition if the goal is to weaken the state's control over the lives of migrants. These steps must be undertaken with intentional pressure on law enforcement agencies on the border and within the country. Challenging the border fits within a broader challenge of white supremacy within the United States. It pushes against the carceral regime and systemic oppression that imprisons and endangers people of color. It is a vital piece of the puzzle towards racial justice and social equity in the United States.
In conclusion, the US-Mexico border constitutes a fundamentally unjust system. The border justifies itself by creating that which it claims to combat—it creates and reproduces inequality and vulnerability, and it has a direct hand in the deaths of people seeking better lives. The argument cannot be framed around whether the border is good or bad, because it is demonstrably an unjust system. The only question should be how to address this unjust system. Border abolition is the most convincing and effective answer to the problems at the border, but it is an improbable solution within our current political and social climate. As such, border demilitarization is an effective short-term solution that moves our social and political climate toward the desired end state of abolition. There are various problems that demilitarization must overcome, but it is evident that an effort to reduce the harm migrants are facing at the border is imminently necessary. We cannot continue to allow for such gross abuses of human rights. Border abolition is not unobtainable, on the contrary, it is a reconstruction of what once was. It is a reconstruction of the world before colonial exploitation and violence, it is a refutation of global inequalities, and a promise to aim toward equity and opportunity for all humans. It is the provision, protection, and remedy for essential freedom of movement.