BORDER SECURITYBeefing Up Border Patrol Is a Bipartisan Goal, but the Agency Has a Troubled History of Violence and Impunity
On border policy, Trump and Harris have remarkably similar positions: They want to send more money, Border Patrol agents and technology to the U.S.-Mexico border. Yet, as my research on the history of border enforcement reveals, flooding the zone with funding, law enforcement and technology will not necessarily make the border safer.
With U.S. voters across the political spectrum strongly concerned about border security, presidential candidates Kamala Harris and Donald Trump have been trying to one-up each other on who can reduce migration at the nation’s southern border fastest and most effectively.
Trump’s rhetoric is more extreme: He’s called the U.S. a “dumping ground” and promises to order mass deportations of 11 million undocumented immigrants if elected.
But on border policy, Trump and Harris have remarkably similar positions: They want to send more money, Border Patrol agents and technology to the U.S.-Mexico border.
These ideas may sound reasonable enough. Yet, as my research on the history of border enforcement reveals, flooding the zone with funding, law enforcement and technology will not necessarily make the border safer.
Since 2010, over 300 immigrants have died in interactions with U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the parent agency of the Border Patrol, echoing the agency’s troubling strain of violence and cruelty that dates back to its origins a century ago.
‘Rough but Effective’
Congress created the Border Patrol in 1924 to enforce a new law severely restricting immigration along racial lines. Under the National Origins Quota, Congress sought to permanently limit the entry of immigrants from Asia, Eastern Europe and Africa.
Some early Border Patrol agents had military backgrounds or experience in law enforcement. Others were agricultural workers unhappy with the importation of Mexican labor.
But many of the first Border Patrol agents were recruited from the Texas Rangers, a militia group known for committing lynchings and mass killings of Mexicans and Mexican Americans – crimes that went unpunished.
The rangers brought their culture of violence and impunity with them into the Border Patrol.
Clifford Perkins, a Border Patrol supervisor in El Paso in the 1920s, called his agents’ methods “rough but effective.” Border Patrol agents regularly submitted Mexicans entering lawfully to humiliating health exams that included strip searches and sexual assault.
Migrants attempting to evade his agents got worse treatment. Perkins recalled two former Texas Rangers tying the feet of one migrant and dragging him in and out of a river until he confessed to having entered the country illegally.
Ninety years later, in 2014, James Tomsheck, a former head of internal affairs for the agency, told the investigative news site Reveal that the Border Patrol continued to commit violence without accountability.
A ‘Paramilitary Border Security Force’
These incidents also hint at another long-standing struggle within the Border Patrol – the struggle to recruit and retain qualified personnel.
