Beyond  the  Border  Buildup  Security  and  Migrants  Along  the  U.S.-­‐Mexico  Border  April  2012    

Executive  Summary  In  Washington  and  some  U.S.  border-­‐state  capitals,  political  leaders  and  pundits  have  dire  views  about  the  2,000-­‐mile  border  that  the  United  States  shares  with  Mexico.  It  is  common  to  hear  the  whole  area  referred  to  as  a  “war  zone,”  with  violent  criminals,  drugs,  migrants  and  even  terrorists  streaming  northward  onto  U.S.  soil.  The  crisis,  border  hawks  say,  requires  the  Obama  administration  to  crack  down  harder,  build  more  and  higher  fences,  

and  even  use  the  military  to  keep  Americans  safe.  

These  voices  are  forceful—especially  in  the  current  U.S.  election  season—but  they  are  wrong.  In  fact,  a  closer  look  at  the  border  reveals  that  after  a  historic  buildup  of  the  U.S.  security  presence  there,  further  increases  in  money,  barriers  and  manpower  are  unnecessary.  The  threats  that  actually  exist  don’t  justify  them,  and  the  side  effects—among  them  a  severe  humanitarian  toll  on  migrants—are  mounting.  It  

is  urgent  that  Washington  view  the  border  security  buildup  as  a  past  policy,  not  a  direction  for  the  present  or  future.  

That  is  a  main  finding  of  Beyond  the  Border  Buildup,  a  new  report  based  on  a  year-­‐long  investigation  by  two  veteran  research  organizations,  the  U.S.-­‐based  Washington  Office  on  Latin  America  (WOLA)  and  Mexico’s  College  of  the  Northern  Border  (COLEF).    Beyond  the  Border  Buildup  details  the  complex,  overlapping  edifice  of  law-­‐enforcement,  military  and  intelligence  agencies,  plus  fences  and  aid  programs  for  Mexico,  that  the  United  States  has  built  over  the  past  20  years.  This  time  period  has  seen  a  fivefold  increase  in  the  size  of  the  U.S.  Border  Patrol,  an  unusual  new  domestic  role  for  the  U.S.  military,  deployments  of  drones  and  other  sophisticated  technology,  and  the  building  of  hundreds  of  miles  of  fencing.  

Dire  views  of  the  border:  “Americans  living  anywhere,  but  especially  along  the  border,  must  feel  safe  and  secure  in  their  homes  and  on  their  property.  They  cannot  while  close  to  a  million  illegal  border  crossers,  

many  with  criminal  records,  enter  through  the  southwest  each  year.”—Sen.  John  

McCain  (R-­‐Arizona),  April  2011  

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Today,  the  report  finds,  while  Mexico  has  suffered  over  50,000  organized  crime-­‐related  murders  since  2007,  this  violence  is  not  spilling  over  the  border.  Ranchers  in  very  remote  areas  say  they  are  more  threatened,  in  part  because  the  security  buildup  has  not  deterred  drug  smuggling  through  their  lands.  But  except  for  a  few  notorious  incidents,  the  U.S.  side  of  the  border  region  suffers  less  violent  crime  than  the  U.S.  average,  or  even  the  averages  of  the  four  border  states.  One  of  the  most  crime-­‐ridden  cities  in  the  world,  Ciudad  Juárez,  Mexico,  sits  across  the  borderline  from  one  of  the  safest  cities  in  the  United  States,  El  Paso,  Texas.    

One  reason  violence  is  not  spilling  over,  we  found,  is  the  behavior  of  Mexican  trafficking  organizations  themselves:  they  act  to  avoid  any  incident  on  the  U.S.  side  that  might  trigger  a  closure  of  official  border  crossings,  through  which  most  drugs  pass.  

The  report  also  notes  a  sharp  drop  in  migration.  While  we  cannot  know  how  many  migrants  attempt  to  cross  into  the  United  States  each  year,  we  do  know  how  many  the  Border  Patrol  apprehends.  Since  2005,  this  number  has  plummeted  by  61  percent,  to  levels  not  seen  since  Richard  Nixon  was  president.  We  found  that  the  drop  has  three  main  causes.  The  U.S.  security  buildup  is  a  factor,  but  the  U.S.  economic  crisis  is  at  least,  if  not  more  important.  Also,  the  dangerous  gauntlet  of  abuses  at  the  hands  of  criminal  organizations—and  certain  Mexican  officials—through  which  migrants  must  pass  on  the  way  to  Mexico’s  northern  border  causes  some  to  reconsider  the  journey.    

Despite  these  dissuasive  factors,  though,  hundreds  of  thousands  of  people  per  year  continue  to  attempt  the  trip.  The  risks  are  still  worth  it,  many  conclude,  if  the  United  States  still  offers  economic  opportunity,  if  violence  at  home  (in  Central  America,  for  instance)  is  as  certain  as  it  is  in  northern  Mexico,  and  especially  if—as  is  the  case  for  a  growing  portion  of  deported  

migrants—one’s  spouse  or  children  remain  on  the  U.S.  side.  

Beyond  the  Border  Buildup  walks  the  reader  through  the  panoply  of  U.S.  police,  investigative,  intelligence,  military,  and  foreign  assistance  bodies  with  border  security  responsibilities.  All  of  them  have  grown  rapidly,  especially  in  the  post-­‐September  11,  2001  period.  Amid  this  growth,  cooperation  and  coordination  have  suffered,  not  least  because  the  federal  government  lacks  a  

Homicides  per  100,000  people  in  U.S.  and  Mexican  cities  over  100,000  population,  within  100  miles  of  the  border,  2010  

Juárez,  Chih   282.7  Nogales,  Son   103.5  Tijuana,  B.C.   80.6  Nuevo  Laredo,  Tam.   37.5  Tecate,  B.C.   34.6  Matamoros,  Tam   18.8  Piedras  Negras,  Coah   17  Mexicali,  B.C.   14  Reynosa,  Tam.   13.6  San  Luis  Río  Colorado,  Son   12.3  Tucson,  AZ   9.7  Laredo,  TX   3.9  Brownsville,  TX   3.9  McAllen,  TX   3.7  Riverside,  CA     3.0  San  Diego,  CA   2.2  Temecula,  CA   2.0  El  Paso,  TX   0.8  Carlsbad,  CA   0  Irvine,  CA   0  All  Mexican  border  cities   96  Mexico   22.9  All  U.S.  Border  Cities   3.6  United  States   4.8  

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single  comprehensive  border  security  strategy.  Meanwhile  bi-­‐national  cooperation  and  coordination  with  Mexico,  despite  reaching  historic  levels,  is  less  regular  or  established  on  border  issues  than  one  might  expect  from  two  countries  sharing  a  long  border  marked  by  so  much  commerce,  migration,  violence,  and  smuggling.  

The  buildup  accelerated  in  response  to  the  possibility  of  terrorists  crossing  the  border  to  

do  harm  in  the  United  States,  a  threat  that—while  requiring  continued  vigilance—has  remained  hypothetical.  Today,  with  migration  down  and  violent  crime  on  the  U.S.  side  at  its  lowest  levels  in  a  generation,  any  further  increases  in  the  U.S.  security  presence  will  yield  diminishing  returns.  

Instead  of  following  border  hawks’  calls  for  more  fences,  agents,  drones  and  troops,  it  is  time  to  pause  and  reconsider  what  is  and  is  not  working,  and  how  our  resources  can  be  better  spent.  One  immediate  improvement  would  be  to  focus  much  more  funding  toward  the  overwhelmed  officials  manning  the  very  busy  ports  of  entry.  

Another  urgent  priority  is  to  improve  the  humanitarian  situation  of  the  vulnerable  population  caught  in  the  middle  of  both  countries’  security  buildups:  the  hundreds  of  thousands  of  migrants  who  continue  to  seek  to  enter  the  United  States  every  year.    

Each  year,  as  many  as  20,000  migrants,  mostly  Central  Americans,  are  kidnapped—some  of  them  tortured,  raped  or  even  murdered—by  organized-­‐crime  groups  in  Mexican  territory.  Too  often,  these  crimes  are  aided  and  abetted  by  corrupt  Mexican  security  and  migration  officials.    On  the  U.S.  side,  non-­‐governmental  groups  have  documented  thousands  of  unsanctioned  cases  of  abuse  and  mistreatment  of  migrants  in  the  custody  of  U.S.  authorities.  The  badly  needed  response  here  is  greater  accountability,  both  criminally  and  administratively,  for  public  servants  in  either  government  who  are  in  any  way  involved  in  abuse.  

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The  border  security  buildup  has  also  led  more  migrants  to  use  smugglers,  who  are  charging  increased  fees  to  cross  into  the  United  States.  Our  research  also  found  more  contact  between  migrants  and  drug  traffickers.  In  some  sectors  of  the  border,  the  line  is  blurring  between  human  smugglers  and  drug  traffickers:  nothing  crosses  the  line  that  is  not  under  the  control  of  the  drug  trafficking  organization  that  dominates  the  area.    

Migrants  are  also  facing  U.S.  deportation  practices  that  do  unnecessary  harm.  Families  are  routinely  separated  by  policies  that  send  people  to  federal  prison  for  the  crime  of  being  in  the  United  States  without  permission,  or  by  policies  that  repatriate  people  to  cities  hundreds  of  miles  from  where  they  were  detained.  At  times,  these  “lateral  repatriations”  send  migrants  to  conflictive  Mexican  border  cities  where  they  can  fall  prey  to—or  be  recruited  by—the  criminal  groups  who  have  de  facto  control  over  the  area.    

The  border  buildup,  meanwhile,  has  made  migration  more  deadly.  Migrants  are  now  attempting  to  cross  in  some  of  the  most  inhospitable  and  treacherous  terrain  along  the  border,  and  the  number  of  those  who  die  of  dehydration  and  exposure  on  U.S.  soil  has  jumped  in  the  past  10  years.  Even  as  the  overall  number  of  migrants  drops,  the  number  of  human  remains  found,  in  the  Arizona  desert  and  elsewhere,  remains  shockingly  high.  Decency  demands  an  increase  in  humanitarian  measures,  like  search-­‐and-­‐rescue  capabilities  and  water  stations,  which  can  prevent  hundreds  of  needless  deaths  each  year.  

Beyond  the  Border  Buildup  goes  beyond  the  Washington  “border  hawk”  narrative  to  tell  the  whole  story  of  security  and  migration  at  the  border  today.  It  concludes  that  the  whirlwind  security  buildup  can  stop  now.  Instead,  the  U.S.  and  Mexican  governments  need  to  pause,  reconsider,  and  take  the  steps  needed  to  make  the  world’s  busiest  frontier  more  efficient,  lawful,  and  humane  for  the  rest  of  the  21st  century.