Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Deported to Death: How Drug Violence Is Changing Migration on the US–Mexico Border
    Deported to Death: How Drug Violence Is Changing Migration on the US–Mexico Border
    Deported to Death: How Drug Violence Is Changing Migration on the US–Mexico Border
    Ebook358 pages5 hours

    Deported to Death: How Drug Violence Is Changing Migration on the US–Mexico Border

    By Jeremy Slack

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    What happens to migrants after they are deported from the United States and dropped off at the Mexican border, often hundreds if not thousands of miles from their hometowns? In this eye-opening work, Jeremy Slack foregrounds the voices and experiences of Mexican deportees, who frequently become targets of extreme forms of violence, including migrant massacres, upon their return to Mexico.

    Navigating the complex world of the border, Slack investigates how the high-profile drug war has led to more than two hundred thousand deaths in Mexico, and how many deportees, stranded and vulnerable in unfamiliar cities, have become fodder for drug cartel struggles. Like no other book before it, Deported to Death reshapes debates on the long-term impact of border enforcement and illustrates the complex decisions migrants must make about whether to attempt the return to an often dangerous life in Mexico or face increasingly harsh punishment in the United States.
     
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherUniversity of California Press
    Release dateJul 30, 2019
    ISBN9780520969711
    Deported to Death: How Drug Violence Is Changing Migration on the US–Mexico Border
    Author

    Jeremy Slack

    Jeremy Slack is Assistant Professor of Geography at the University of Texas at El Paso. He is editor of The Shadow of the Wall: Violence and Migration on the U.S.-Mexico Border.

    Related to Deported to Death

    Titles in the series (44)

    View More
    View More

    Related ebooks

    Anthropology For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Talking Dirty, Talking Feminism

      May 31, 2019

      Dear feminist men screaming #NotAllMen, and women of the sisterhood' calling Sonakshi Sinha moti, feminism is more than a hashtag or a clever quote on a T-shirt. Two books published earlier this yearone a personal account of growing up as a woman in

      1 min read

    • Article

      The Women

      Jul 29, 2021

      The Women
      2 min read

    • Article

      Gentrification and Inequality

      Jun 23, 2020

      Gentrification and Inequality
      3 min read

    • Article

      80 Years On, Dominicans And Haitians Revisit Painful Memories Of Parsley Massacre'

      Oct 7, 2017

      This week marks the anniversary of the 1937 massacre, in which Dominican soldiers targeted Haitians living near the Dominican-Haitian border. A team from NPR's Latino USA gathered survivors' memories.

      5 min read

    • Article

      Why We Write

      Feb 7, 2018

      STEPHANIE STOKES OLIVER has spent her career in magazine and book publishing. Formerly the fashion and beauty merchandising editor at Glamour, founding editor in chief of Heart & Soul, and editor in chief of Essence.com, she most recently served as v

      7 min read

    • Article

      The Facts on Mental Illness and Mass Shootings

      Oct 18, 2019

      Q: Do people with serious mental health disorders pose a greater risk of becoming mass shooters? A: People with mental illnesses are somewhat more likely to be violent than those without a diagnosis. But a majority are never violent, and very little

      10 min read

    • Article

      Barcelona Elected A Feminist Government. Here’s What Happened Next.

      May 3, 2019

      Barcelona has been taking a feminist approach to governance by bringing a female perspective to urban planning.

      5 min read

    • Article

      Not the Perfect Victim

      Aug 30, 2019

      Not the Perfect Victim
      21 min read

    • Article

      We Tell These Lies When Looking For Love Online

      May 1, 2018

      Lying about availability is a common deception online dating users tell potential partners, according to a new paper. “Communication technologies connect us now more than ever,” says Jeffrey Hancock, a professor of communication in Stanford Universit

      3 min read

    • Article

      American Nostalgia On A Bun

      Apr 24, 2018

      American Nostalgia On A Bun
      6 min read

    • Article

      Reflections on Black History Month—and the Present for Black Scientists

      Feb 6, 2023

      Are Black scientists welcome and included in STEM fields and institutions? Senior Outreach Coordinator Tosin Fadeyi reflects on those who cleared the way for her to become a scientist, and what changes still need to happen for true equity and inclusi

      6 min read

    • Article

      Ingenious: Dalton Conley

      Jun 1, 2017

      When Dalton Conley, a professor of sociology at Princeton University, talks about race, his authority is based on more than academic research. Every day he straddled the lines of race in the New York City housing project where he grew up in 1970s, a

      19 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Deported to Death

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Deported to Death - Jeremy Slack

      Deported to Death

      CALIFORNIA SERIES IN PUBLIC ANTHROPOLOGY

      The California Series in Public Anthropology emphasizes the anthropologist’s role as an engaged intellectual. It continues anthropology’s commitment to being an ethnographic witness, to describing, in human terms, how life is lived beyond the borders of many readers’ experiences. But it also adds a commitment, through ethnography, to reframing the terms of public debate—transforming received, accepted understandings of social issues with new insights, new framings.

      Series Editor: Robert Borofsky (Hawaii Pacific University)

      Contributing Editors: Philippe Bourgois (University of Pennsylvania), Paul Farmer (Partners In Health), Alex Hinton (Rutgers University), Carolyn Nordstrom (University of Notre Dame), and Nancy Scheper-Hughes (UC Berkeley)

      University of California Press Editor: Naomi Schneider

      Deported to Death

      How Drug Violence Is Changing Migration on the US-Mexico Border

      Jeremy Slack

      UC Logo

      UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

      University of California Press, one of the most distinguished university presses in the United States, enriches lives around the world by advancing scholarship in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Its activities are supported by the UC Press Foundation and by philanthropic contributions from individuals and institutions. For more information, visit www.ucpress.edu.

      University of California Press

      Oakland, California

      © 2019 by Jeremy Slack

      Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

      Names: Slack, Jeremy, author.

      Title: Deported to death : how drug violence is changing migration on the US-Mexico border / Jeremy Slack.

      Description: Oakland, California : University of California Press, [2019] | Series: California series in public anthropology | Includes bibliographical references and index. |

      Identifiers: LCCN 2018058267 (print) | LCCN 2019000207 (ebook) | ISBN 9780520969711 (ebook) | ISBN 9780520297326 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780520297333 (pbk. : alk. paper)

      Subjects: LCSH: Immigrants—Violence against—Mexico. | Violence—Mexican-American Border Region. | Immigration enforcement—Mexican-American Border Region. | Deportation—United States—21st century.

      Classification: LCC HV6250.4.E75 (ebook) | LCC HV6250.4.E75 S54 2019 (print) | DDC 303.60972/1—dc23

      LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018058267

      Manufactured in the United States of America

      28  27  26  25  24  23  22  21  20  19

      10  9  8  7  6  5  4  3  2  1

      For Carla, for everything you have lost and for accompanying me on this journey.

      CONTENTS

      List of Illustrations

      Acknowledgments

      1. The Violence of Mobility

      2. I Want to Cross with a Backpack

      3. Te Van a Levantar —They Will Kidnap You: Deportation and Mobility on the Border

      4. They Torture You to Make You Lose Feeling

      5. Guarding the River: Migrant Recruitment into Organized Crime

      6. The Disappeared, the Dead, and the Forgotten

      7. Resistance, Resilience, and Love: The Limits of Violence and Fear

      8. Who Can I Deport?: Asylum and the Limits of Protection against Persecution

      Conclusions: Requiem for the Removed

      Appendix: A Note on Researching in Violent Environments

      Notes

      References

      Index

      ILLUSTRATIONS

      MAPS

      1. MBCS survey locations

      2. Percentage of deportations processed through the Criminal Alien Program

      FIGURES

      1. Man being deported to Nogales, Sonora, at night

      2. Homeless deportees sleep in an underpass on top of the canal known as el Bordo, Tijuana, Baja California, Mexico

      3. The small town of Sásabe, Sonora, Mexico

      4. Altar to the Santa Muerte in Nogales, Sonora, Mexico

      5. The church in Altar, Sonora, Mexico

      6. Man bent over near el Bordo, Tijuana, Baja California

      7. A couple walks up the bank of the canal known as el Bordo, Tijuana, Baja California

      8. A man sleeps in an alley next to a busy street in the Zona Norte of Tijuana, Baja California, Mexico

      TABLES

      1. Kidnapping

      2. Comparison between People Kidnapped by Their Coyote or Guide and Those Kidnapped by Gangs

      ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

      First and foremost, I want to acknowledge the invisible labor that goes into my fortunate life circumstances that allow me to have a job, a family, and a productive research agenda. My wife, Carla Soto, has accompanied me on hundreds of my research-related experiences: trips to visit people at the shelters; touching base after a long hiatus; attending marches, protests, and organizing meetings for the immigrant rights community; or simply enduring excruciatingly boring, endless conversations about research, academia, and the politics of migration over a meal or drinks (Sorry, amor. I’ll try not to, but I would be lying if I said I could stop). You have been a companion on so much of this difficult journey, and your support has made all the difference. I look around at my friends and colleagues, realizing in starkly personal and often embarrassing terms how the work you do makes it possible to me to have everything. You do so much of the work of life, the work of a family, raising our newborn son, and keeping our household from falling down as I abscond to write, give talks, testify, and teach classes. I could not do what I do and still have a functional, happy, healthy life without you.

      I also want to thank Daniel E. Martínez for being my collaborator and friend throughout this work and beyond. It feels somewhat disconcerting not to co-author our work this time around, as our different perspectives and approaches to social science create a tension that I feel elevates this research beyond what I am capable of alone. I really could not have written this book without your support, insight, and collaboration. I can’t wait to see all the new research and publications that we accomplish in the future, although, as always, there will be little time to stop and appreciate it with so much more to do!

      I also owe a special gratitude to Scott Whiteford for supporting me throughout this journey. From the time I was an MA student until my first job, he always encouraged me to push the envelope and dream big. He provided the contacts and framework to make this research possible and taught me a lot about navigating the often unpredictable academic world.

      I am also lucky to find myself employed by a university where my interests and approaches do not sit in isolation. I would like to thank all of my colleagues in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, but particularly Josiah Heyman and Howard Campbell for their support, encouragement, and uncanny ability to push me harder. It is tempting to stay in a safe zone and publish relatively easy work with recycled or somewhat obvious conclusions, but being around such accomplished border scholars has helped me to think deeper and work harder. Dr. Heyman is the model of an applied scholar that I aspire to follow, successfully balancing the production of academic knowledge with contributions to the never-ending activist struggles for change in our border community. Dr. Campbell provides my steady reminder to let go of the baggage of academia and focus on what matters: the people, the streets, and the unique world that is Ciudad Juárez and the border. Fidelity to place and love of a region is what has kept me going in this research and it is what I hope to hold dear for the rest of my career.

      I want to thank Diane Austin, who had a formative influence on my knowledge of research methods and on my ability to conduct projects that push me beyond my boundaries. She drove me harder than anyone else, held my feet to the fire to get my notes written and reports finished, and I emerged the better for it. I will be eternally grateful for that education.

      This project would not have been possible without the generous support of the Ford Foundation, Mexico and Central America Office. I must thank them not only for their financial support but also their logistical support in connecting our project with others working diligently on issues of migration and drug violence in Mexico. This network has proven invaluable for increasing the impact of our work by getting it into the hands of people who can use it to complement their own efforts. Of particular importance is the work of Kimberley Krasevac and her support but also her critiques, which helped push this research into new areas and answer important, relevant questions that expand beyond the boundaries of academia.

      I also need to thank the Drugs Security and Democracy Fellowship funded by the Social Science Research Council and the Open Society Foundation for their support of my ethnographic research. This funding, as well as the network of scholars, has been invaluable to the improvement and development of this project. In addition, a special thanks to the National Institutes of Health BUILDing Scholars program for summer sabbatical funding to write this book and Dr. Luis Zayas for his comments and suggestions on early drafts of the proposal.

      The Center for Latin American Studies, the Center for Mexican American Studies, the Department of Sociology, the School of Geography and Development, and the College of Social and Behavioral Studies at the University of Arizona also provided support and funding throughout this research. The supportive atmosphere of the University of Arizona made it possible to conduct this unique work and blend the academic and policy aspects, making its impact far greater than it otherwise would have been.

      I also owe a particular debt of gratitude to all of the people who conducted surveys throughout the U. S.-Mexico border region. This project would not have been possible without their commitment and hard work in sensitive and often uncomfortable environments.

      Wave I

      Kraig Beyerlein

      Prescott Vandervoet

      Kristin Klingman

      Paola Molina

      Shiras Manning

      Melissa Burham

      Kylie Walzak

      Kristen Valencia

      Lorenzo Gamboa

      Wave II

      Tijuana: Ramona Pérez (SDSU), Alaina Gallegos (SDSU)

      Mexicali: Alfonso Cortez-Lara (COLEF)

      Ciudad Juárez: Sonia Bass Zavala (UACJ), Tony Payan (UTEP), Consuelo Pequeño (UACJ), Martha Estela Pérez (UACJ), Raúl Holguín (UACJ)

      Nuevo Laredo: Blanca Vázquez (COLEF), Soledad Tolentino (COLEF)

      Ciudad de México: Paola Velasco (UNAM)

      Interviewers

      Patricia Hohl (UA)

      Murphy Woodhouse (UA)

      Richard Casillas (UA)

      Ana Julieta González (UA)

      Cynthia Rodríguez (SDSU)

      Karla Elisa Méndez Delgado (COLEF, Mexicali)

      Diana Correa (COLEF, Mexicali)

      Cecilia Martínez (UACJ), Adrian Valenzuela (UACJ)

      Alejandra Payán (UACJ)

      Luis Isaac Rocha (UACJ)

      Jorge Leyva (UACJ)

      Yadira Cortés (UACJ)

      Mayra González (UACJ)

      Yaneth Cossio (UACJ)

      Armando Taunton Rodríguez (COLEF, Nuevo Laredo)

      Carlos Gerardo Cruz Jacobo (COLEF, Nuevo Laredo)

      Jose Ignacio Aguinaga Medina (COLEF, Nuevo Laredo)

      Adriana Guillermina Wagner Perales (COLEF, Nuevo Laredo)

      Armando Orta Pérez (COLEF, Nuevo Laredo)

      Naomi Ramírez (SDSU)

      Sean Tengco (SDSU)

      Charles Whitney (SDSU)

      Jose Huizar (SDSU)

      Oscar Hernández (UNAM)

      Andrea Bautista (UNAM)

      Uriel Melchor (UNAM)

      Janett Vallejo (UNAM)

      Monserrat Luna (UNAM)

      Adriana Acle (COLEF, Tijuana)

      Diana Peláez (COLEF, Tijuana)

      Gabriel Pérez Duperou (COLEF, Tijuana)

      Sandra Albicker (COLEF, Tijuana)

      I also owe special thanks to my thesis committee: Elizabeth Oglesby, Jeffrey Banister, Sallie Marston, and Scott Whiteford. Their invaluable comments and support made graduate school a happy and productive experience that differs from so many of my peers. You were the model of a civilized and thoughtful committee. I also need to thank the dedication of Francisco Loureiro Herrera and Gilda Irene de Loureiro from the San Juan Bosco shelter for working on this issue as long as I have been alive.

      A special thanks goes to Murphy Woodhouse for his amazing photography that helps to bring this work to life. In addition, he and I worked on chapter 4 together. The difficulty of spending time with Juanito’s horrific story should not be understated, and I owe a debt of gratitude to Murphy for the care and insight that is reflected in this chapter. Also, thanks to Raquel Rubio-Goldsmith, Kraig Beyerlein, Prescott Vandervoet, Kathryn Rodríguez, Celeste González de Bustamante, Anna Ochoa O’Leary, Margaret Bellini, Mario Vasquez-Leon, Ricardo Martínez-Schuldt, Lindsay Rojas, Michael Bonilla, Alyssa Borrego, Guillermo Yrizar Barbosa, and Christine Scheer. Also, my heartfelt thanks to the hosts at COLEF–Matamoros, Cirila Quintero and Oscar Misael Hernandez, and the hosts at COLEF–Tijuana, Laura Velasco, Dolores Paris Pomba, Rafael Alarcon, and Alonso Meneses. Special thanks to Edith Tapia for her collaboration on work with asylum seekers in El Paso and to Taylor Levy for reviewing chapter 8.

      Of particular importance to this research is the hard work being conducted at the shelters along the U. S.-Mexico border, which feed and provide shelter for thousands of people every day. They are the front lines of mass removal from the United States and must deal with grueling schedules as people are dropped off at all hours of the night, often overflowing into the kitchens and dining rooms. While I have interacted with far too many volunteers and employees to thank by name, I must thank Polo, Fernando, Erik, and Jose, and Constantino Velasquez, Izolda, Lupita, and Manuel uno and Manuel dos. These two teams have spent years giving their all to the day-to-day needs of migrants as they arrive confused and scared at the border. This unappreciated and hard work needs to be more widely recognized.

      I would also be remiss if I did not acknowledge the gratitude that I feel toward the thousands of migrants who shared their lives and stories with me over the years. The tenacity of people struggling to improve their lives or return to family in the United States despite the dangers of the desert and penalties they face if they are caught is always awe inspiring. To talk to people day after day who risk their lives for the chance at a happy life demonstrates the cruelty and misguided nature of our current approach to immigration and border enforcement.

      CHAPTER ONE

      The Violence of Mobility

      Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas

      "He stuck his hand in between the door when I turned my back. I didn’t see them coming. Before I knew it they were inside with their guns pointed at us, threatening to do something to my wife, or to me or burn down the institution (a migrant shelter). It was a very serious threat . . . One of the Zetas, because he identified himself as a member of the Zetas cartel, spoke to me very calmly, in a certain way. ‘We want to take these two people. There is a patero (human smuggler) who is not reporting to us. We want to know who crossed them. We will ask them for code words. If they have the codes we will leave them alone and not bother them anymore. If they don’t give us the codes, well, it’s because someone crossed them and they are not with us.’ The longtime staff member Lázaro froze: I immediately contacted the priest (in charge of the shelter) and told him, ‘Padre, we have a situation here.’ ‘Lázaro, let them go. We can’t do anything else,’ the priest replied, so I said, ‘You have to leave, muchachos, la Casa (del migrante) can’t do anything for you.’ The migrants started to scream and plead not to let them be taken. I let them take them (the deportees) and I never saw them again. What else could I have done?"¹

      These incursions into migrant shelters have become common in northeastern Mexico. I still hear their screams, Lázaro said as we sat in a restaurant in D. F. shortly after the event. I had just ended my fieldwork along the border and we got the chance to catch up at a workshop held by the ACLU in Mexico City to discuss migrant possessions. This incident happened shortly after I left the shelter, but similar events had happened throughout the Northeast. The two young men who were taken were originally from Michoacán, a central Mexican state and also an area controlled by one of the mortal enemies of the Zetas cartel: La Familia Michoacana. Being deported to Tamaulipas placed them in danger because the Zetas are always suspicious of deportees coming from territories controlled by rival gangs. When the Michoacanos were walking to the shelter, two young lookouts, known as halcones, who monitored the people coming and going from the shelter, stopped to interrogate them, a common practice. They were big guys, as tall as you, Lázaro explained, and did not pay attention to the halcones, who were little kids. The deportees pushed past the lookouts, shoving one hard against a fence. The other (lookout) went and called on his radio and the reinforcements arrived. The trucks came with armed men. Simple missteps like this one may have cost these two young men their lives. Being a deportee along the border is a dangerous world, one with complex rules and a shifting terrain that has put immigration squarely in the sights of drug cartels.

      Events like this are rarely publicized—the organizations that run shelters do not want the negative publicity and potential closure, nor do the police and organized criminal groups from the area want these activities known. But what precisely is going on here? What would drug traffickers, once famous for their gaudy lifestyles and excessive wealth, want with relatively poor deportees and migrants? These hidden horrors are the backdrop for the high-profile massacres in the region, particularly the killing of 72 Central and South American migrants in San Fernando, Tamaulipas, in August of 2010.² This massacre has become yet another gruesome footnote in the drug war that has wrecked havoc on Mexico during the first two decades of the twenty-first century.

      This book explores a fundamental problem with the U. S. immigration system. Deportation is not considered a punishment but rather an administrative action because people are simply being sent home.³ And yet, people like these two young deportees from Michoacán are routinely placed in danger, many becoming the victims of torture or death. The mass deportation of people from the United States to Mexico has exacerbated an already hyperviolent situation whereupon organized criminal groups and corrupt authorities prey upon deportees. With the conflict over control of the drug trade raging between drug cartels and the authorities, criminal activities and the pervasiveness of violence into more and more aspects of daily life along the border have led to a concentration on migrants and deportees that is largely new. Long a staple of border cities, the small groups of individuals waiting on street corners, dressed in black and exhausted after days of walking through the desert, were once pitied or simply ignored by residents,⁴ but now they are interrogated, extorted, kidnapped, forcibly recruited by organized crime, and even killed.

      This violence can be attributed to two major social processes. First, the figure of the migrant, or deportee for that matter, someone defined by his or her movement and always belonging to someplace else, is uniquely exposed to violence. The limited protections afforded to migrants because they are in transit make them easy targets for being abducted, brutalized, or simply made to disappear without anyone searching for them for long periods of time. While, in theory, international conventions protect migrants and refugees, at the local level the ambiguity of belonging, of being in transit, neither from the space where they live nor at their final destination, means there is no one to answer for crimes committed against them. Second, the increasing presence of death, both in terms of the danger of the journey itself but also its social and emotional counterparts, has become an important aspect of the journey. This is highlighted by the blurring of boundaries between deaths caused by the sprawling conflict over the control of drug trafficking and those that are the result of migration. As more and more people pass through these zones of conflict, either while traveling through Mexico from Central America or upon deportation to Mexico’s northern border, they are placed in extreme danger and have become the unlikely targets of organized crime.

      SAN FERNANDO: VIOLENCE AND MIGRATION COLLIDE

      The massacre of 72 migrants, the 72 as they came to be known, marked a sea change in the conflict. For the first time it became impossible to contend that this conflict was confined to the ranks of drug traffickers and criminals; clearly many others were also exposed to this violence. Therefore, it became one of the events that caused the greatest problem for the Mexican government. The discourse of criminals killing each other, the "ajuste de cuentas" best translated as the settling of scores, had been the most common refrain for the Mexican government to fall back on when addressing the violence. These people were simply killing each other, and therefore it was not a matter of concern for those who were not involved in such activities.⁵ With 72 migrants from Central and South America murdered execution style, their bodies lined up against the wall of an abandoned, half-finished building, there was no way to spin it as some sort of internal gang dispute. This was something much more sinister.

      Rumors swirled. The initial discovery of the bodies was due to a survivor, a young man from Ecuador, shot in the head and left for dead. He was able to escape and flag down a military convoy that reported the massacre. Questions about whether he was left alive on purpose, or a member of the cartel working in collaboration, caused heated debates (sources say that his survival was neither intentional nor was he a member of the Zetas). Certainly, the fact that no steps were taken to dispose of the bodies, as had become customary in the region, raised further suspicions. Those suspicions grew as almost two hundred bodies were found buried in mass graves in the same area the following year, many of them having been dissolved in acid and burned beyond recognition. Why leave such a devastating trail of violence? For Juanito, a young man who was kidnapped and held in San Fernando two years after the massacre, the answer lay in the complicated relationship between organized crime and the Mexican government. He believed it was a cynical action by organized crime to embarrass the beleaguered Mexican government and destabilize their legitimacy by questioning their ability to protect foreigners on national soil, thereby exacerbating the international debate about whether or not Mexico was becoming a failed state.⁶ By selecting only foreign migrants to murder, it applied international pressure on the administration as the governments of Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Ecuador, and Brazil all joined to denounce Mexico’s failure to protect migrants. In this way the Zetas hoped to force cooperation from the government, and specifically its enforcement apparatus, to turn a blind eye to the drug trafficking, extortion, and kidnapping that has plagued Mexico’s Northeast.

      This leads us to one of the main questions driving this research: How does enforcement shape the types of activities carried out by criminal organizations? For one, the overreliance on the military, following the arrest and elimination of local police as occurred in cities such as Nuevo Laredo during my fieldwork, led to an increase in violence targeted at local residents. Militaries are not designed to police civilian populations, especially not their own nationals. They are trained to kill enemies, not to investigate crimes, not to make arrests and get convictions in court. They are trained to confront and engage. This has caused a great deal of institutional confusion as the army and navy begin to receive training in police tactics and the police receive more and more training in military tactics and materials such as the Black Hawk helicopters provided by the United States. Life on the ground, however, shows that this has resulted in nothing but chaos and confusion.

      On one of my first trips to Nuevo Laredo, I headed to the convenience store with my hosts to buy some beer for the carne asada. We walked into the ubiquitous OXXO, similar to the one on nearly every corner in Mexico. The young woman behind the counter was shaking. I can’t sell you anything. I have no change. They just came in here and robbed me, she said. They put a knife to my throat. My host Fernando⁷ pulled out his wallet to check. That’s okay. We have correct change for the beer. We paid and walked out as if it were the most normal thing in the world.⁸ The banality of violence and turmoil caused by efforts to root out corruption was itself shocking and completely unremarkable as people averted their attention and normalized the things that were out of their control.

      This is just one example of how national-level policy changes influence the nature and character of violence. But what about international policies such as border and immigration enforcement? How do the policies and even the individual decisions made by immigration officers at the U. S.-Mexico border influence the nature of violence along the border? I argue that immigration enforcement practices have been one of the major drivers of kidnapping and violence against migrants in Mexico. This occurs through the complicated geography of detention and repatriation that shuffles people all along the two-thousand-mile border, as well as the steady process of criminalization that has produced a stigma that transcends borders and has permeated Mexican society as well.

      With more and more immigrants being arrested, incarcerated for greater periods of time, and sentenced for crimes that for decades were generally treated as administrative violations and not criminal acts, it has promoted higher levels of violence around undocumented migration and deportation.⁹ The costs to cross, the stakes of getting caught, and the intermingling of migrants and drug traffickers in prison have all converged along the border. This, along with the uniquely situated vulnerability and exposure of clandestine migrants, has led to the complex and shifting exploitation, abuse, and even massacres of migrants in Mexico such as in San Fernando but also in Cadereyta, Nuevo León. The lack of understanding and questions about the true scope of this violence present a unique challenge for research, advocacy, and especially for asylum seekers in their quest to stay in the United States. Neither I nor anyone else can answer seemingly simple questions about what happens to people whose asylum applications are rejected. How many are killed? Where do they go? Do they hide or run? How many are conscripted into organized crime? How many are kidnapped, tortured, and exploited? This book addresses some of these questions, but arriving at a definitive answer to such hidden and violent processes will require additional research and perhaps decades of diligent work by scholars, advocates, and activists.

      Furthermore, no other place along the border has generated as many unanswered questions as the northeastern state of Tamaulipas. With so little information coming out of this area, it is difficult to know for sure the levels of violence. How frequent are killings like the massacre in San Fernando? What has driven the explosion of drug cartel–related violence against migrants and deportees in recent years? One thing is for sure; this violence has drastically reshaped migration, adding new layers of violence to what was already a treacherous and often deadly journey.

      The severity of the situation has left migrant rights advocates and service providers desperately unprepared and without the necessary resources. Across the Northeast, migrant rights centers were forced to close, often sending those running these programs into hiding, leaving the region or country as a whole. This lack of services correlates to the diminishing power of the press to report on crime or operate freely. In Nuevo Laredo where I worked, one could not buy a national newspaper or Proceso (a renowned news magazine published in Mexico City) at the local OXXO. Even the man who delivered papers from Laredo,

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1