President Trump has thus far failed to fulfill his campaign promise to build a wall on the border that the United States shares with Mexico. That has not stopped his administration, however, from trying to bring migration across the southern border to a halt. The President’s “zero tolerance” policy tears families apart and subjects migrants of all ages to squalid detention centers that many have compared to cages. Federal officials have separated more than 900 children from their families since Trump supposedly ended such a policy in June 2018. Former Attorney General Jeff Sessions and current Attorney General William Barr have implemented policies that make victims of gang violence and domestic violence, along with the family members of individuals who face persecution, ineligible for asylum. And, in July 2019, the administration announced a new policy that would make it all but impossible for Central American migrants (and potentially even those coming from African nations, Cuba, and Haiti) to apply for asylum in the United States.
The inhumane actions taken against migrants at the border seem to become only more frequent and more severe by the day. The costs of the U.S. government’s myriad efforts to deter migration have been devastating. At the time of this writing, the International Office for Migration’s Missing Migrants Project reports that at least 221 migrants have died in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands in 2019 alone. At least 24 migrants have died in ICE custody during the Trump Administration and at least six children between two-and-a-half and sixteen years of age have died in U.S. custody since September 2018.
These acts of violence at the border have occurred alongside a range of disturbing incidents within the United States in which the president has condoned and effectively encouraged racism and racist acts of violence – including the mass shooting near the border in El Paso on August 3, 2019, where the gunman invoked President Trump’s repeated descriptions of Latin American migration to the U.S. as an “invasion.”
Two and a half years into his presidency, Trump’s vision for the country is clear. When he says “a country without borders is not a country at all,” Trump is not speaking broadly about the relationship of borders to nations. Rather, he is reinforcing what his policies, his statements, and his participation in racist rhetoric make all too clear — that his vision of the United States is one that uses immigration enforcement to perpetuate xenophobia, at the border and beyond.
The histories of marginalization that inform the current situation along the border are manifold. The authors of this #microsyllabus have focused on the intersection of border enforcement and immigration law specifically at the U.S.-Mexico border, a place that differs markedly from the country’s northern border with Canada, which has generally been subjected to less severe policies. In particular, we wish to highlight three areas of history that we believe shed important light on the ongoing mistreatment of migrants: 1) the early history of the U.S.-Mexico border; 2) Central American migration and refugee policy; and 3) deportation and detention. Though each of these sections could easily comprise its own microsyllabus, the authors hope to provide readers with a broad introduction to the humanitarian crisis at the border and the role that immigration policy has played in facilitating it.