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Summary GY100 MT8 Readings
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- GY100 (GY100)
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- London School Of Economics (LSE)
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Immigration Geopolitics Beyond the Mexico–US BorderAuthor: Mathew Coleman
Antipode
Volume 39, Issue 1
p. 54-76
Introduction
After 9/11, US government workers tried to present undocumented migration to the US as a national
security threat. This is because immigrants, like terrorists make secret use of the US borders. Reforms
were made to put defences at borders to fight against terrorism.
Coleman’s study ‘Immigration Geopolitics Beyond the Mexico-US Border’ examines the extent and
intensity of US immigration practices and border controls that have developed as a result of growing
territorial values.
Immigration law reform and border enforcement in the US was mostly seen as necessary following
the 9/11 attacks. Though there was no crossing of land borders involved in the attack, the worry over
such natural security threats led to a call for change in order to prevent terrorist entry.
“After 9/11, US lawmakers and administration officials scrambled to present undocumented migration as a
possible national security threat. The reasoning, as Malkin (2002:8) echoed… “The September 11 hijackers all
came through the front door, but illegal immigration … is the passageway of countless terrorist brethren”. As
such, in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, immigration law reform and border enforcement were quickly
positioned as frontline defenses against terrorism, as they had following the 1993 World Trade Center and
1995 Oklahoma City bombings.”
The Mexico border had similar reforms made because it was reported that al Qaeda were working
with Mexican smugglers to illegally migrate to the US southwest border. US immigration policies were
always written based off race and nationalist threats.
“the Congressional Immigration Reform Caucus—whose website tells of al Qaeda cells working with Mexican
smugglers to sneak across the US southwest border between official ports of entry… For example, pre- and
post-9/11 US immigration policing strategies are underwritten by a comparably racialized and nationalist
discourse of threat which typifies the Mexico–US border as a site where masses of immigrants from the global
south are poised to overthrow the ethno-cultural and economic “territorial sanctity” of the US (Purcell and
Nevins 2005).”
Coleman argues that the increase in immigration policing, particularly along the south-west border,
following 9/11 was not entirely as a result of the attack – and can be understood in terms of a
‘longstanding politics of anxiety’ in the US concerning Mexican undocumented migration.
This ‘politics of anxiety’ can be seen as the continuation of territorial values – with the global south
seen as overthrowing the ethnocultural and economic ‘territorial sanctity’ of the US.
Such territorial logic overtime has led to a huge growth in US immigration border strategies, including
the employment of immigration agents, building of fences and addition of surveillance technologies.
The Criminalization of Immigration Law
The US Congress passed laws in the mid 1990s to stop undocumented migrants from immigrating to
the US. The laws were created due to the panic of urban crime, terrorism and the growth of
undocumented migrations in the US. The laws change the immigrations laws by disrupting judicial
practises that discuss immigration enforcement.
“Congress passed a bevy of laws in the mid-1990s intended to obstruct undocumented migration to the
US.3 These laws resulted from widespread bipartisan panic concerning the professed links between urban
crime, welfare abuse, terrorism, inner city drug addiction, the failure of the melting pot citizenship model and
the growth of undocumented migration. The legislation in question can be considered a complex of
, instrumental, expressive and symbolic statutes which sought to revise immigration law by disrupting existing
judicial practices concerning immigration enforcement.”
The laws amended the 1952 INA and created lots of military enforcement at borders, it also made
adjustments that made deportation requirements have more variety.
“Together the laws treated an overwhelming volume of amendments to the 1952 Immigration and Nationality
Act (INA) (Gimpel and Edwards 1999).. resulted in a significant militarization of the Mexico–US border…
expanded the criminal grounds for deportation from the US.”
The measures taken were created to make more immigration enforcements and to reduced
undocuments immigration.
“Although as a whole the laws were concerned to increase immigration enforcement directly at the Mexico–
US border, these measures were intended explicitly to bolster immigration enforcement efforts in the interior
and thereby reduce undocumented migration, primarily across the Mexico–US border, by heightening
disincentives to migrate.”
Coleman continues to identify two recent shifts in US immigration policing – firstly the criminalization
of immigration law, and secondly the use of local proxy officers to enforce immigration law. These
shifts are used to reveal the spatiality of state governance, with enforcement shown as being far more
complicated and wide scale than territoriality at the edges of the state.
“The result of these provisions was an increasingly deep convergence between the criminal and
immigration justice systems, such that a criminal conviction was likely to trigger detention, deportation and
permanent exclusion from the US”.
The first shift – the criminalization of immigration law – refers to the tie between immigration control
and criminal law enforcement, created by lawmakers in the 1990s. This allowed a criminal conviction
to be used as grounds for deportation from the US. Generally, offenses with an imposed sentence of
one year or more could now provoke deportation from the US. Examples of such crimes include
prostitution, car theft, forgery, drug possession, tax evasion.
Laws allowed convictions that had been postponed and suspended by the courts to still warrant
deportation, provided that the US immigration authorities could find sufficient evidence that a crime
had been committed.
Laws also allowed convictions to entail a permanent bar on re-entry to the US.
Laws legislated mandatory and indefinite incarceration for those charged and awaiting deportation.
Those caught re-entering the US following deportation would also face length jail time.
The result of these provisions, Coleman therefore finds, was an increasingly deep convergence
between the criminal and immigration justice systems, such that a criminal conviction was likely to
trigger detention, deportation and permanent exclusion from the US
Laws moreover stripped the courts of many powers of review over criminal cases, refusing access to
many legal procedures or petitions that could delay removal from the US. Aggravated felons could
petition against their removal from the US through applying for a stay of deportation or for political
asylum. To prevent such stalling of the deportation process, laws placed restrictions preventing those
convicted from contesting the deportation process.
Interior Enforcement and the Devolution of Immigration Power
Increase in immigration policing operations operating in the interior, away from the borders.
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