The Deadly Consequences of America's "Prevention through Deterrence" Border Policy
Last Monday, 51 migrants were found dead in a truck in Texas many miles from the border in the largest loss of migrant life in a single event in recent memory. Although the details of the event itself are important, equally important is the question: How should we think about this tragedy?
I initially wrote about the “precarious life of the migrant” in a post intended to draw our attention to the underlying systemic conditions that produce this loss of life. Since then, several important articles have come out that have placed the blame for these deaths at the feet of the US policy of “prevention through deterrence”.
First, a moment of digression about prevention through deterrence policy. Deterrence policy aims to reduce immigration by making immigration more difficult and deadly, thereby discouraging migrants from coming. But as the research has shown over the past 30 years, deterrence has done more to contribute to violence and death along the border and remarkably little to actually reduce migration to the US. Migrants either take riskier trips through the desert or they agree to increasingly dangerous cross-border smuggling arrangements.
My colleagues Geoff Boyce and Sam Chambers recently published an article examining the effects of prevention through deterrence. They use geospatial modeling to show that the “tactical infrastructure like walls, checkpoints and surveillance towers” are is designed to “combine with environmental conditions of climate and terrain to narrow the paths of travel available to unauthorized migrants, driving them toward increasingly isolated, difficult and dangerous desert corridors.” The refer to this specifically as a “corralling effect”.
As one officer says in the Netflix series, “Once [immigrants] get out here they are literally, physically beat by the environment.”
With that context in mind, let’s look at recent remarks about the migrant deaths in Texas.
In an op-ed for CNN, Krish O'Mara Vignarajah, president and chief executive of the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, described this loss of life as “another horrific, preventable loss of life driven by our nation's failure to establish a humane asylum system or an efficient immigration framework.” Krish lays the blame specifically (and in my view, correctly) against the “deterrence-based framework” that currently guides US immigration policy.
Pedro Rios of the American Friends Service Committee also joined the conversation in an op-ed titled “In the United States, disdain for migrants is as American as baseball and apple pie” for the San Diego Union Tribune. Pedro points out that even though Biden issued a sympathetic statement about the tragedy, Biden himself has “callously continued using Title 42 … to allow Border Patrol agents to expel migrants without respecting their right to seek asylum.”
Rios describes deterrence strategy clearly: “[The tactics of deterrence strategy] — saturating urban border communities with agents, building physical barriers and increasing interior checkpoints — ensured that migrants would be forced to seek out dangerous crossing methods, thereby increasing the likelihood of injury and death.”
Enrique Acevedo, writing for the Washington Post, also puts these migrant deaths in the context of 30 years of deterrence strategy while also highlighting the many incidents of migrant death that have happened over the years—a stark reminder that this tragedy is not unique but part of a pattern. I want to quote Acevedo’s key paragraph in full here, because I think it is thorough and powerful:
“The script and the protagonists are always similar. That's why this week's tragedy demands a reassessment of the actions the United States and Mexico have undertaken at the border over the past 30 years. We need comprehensive immigration reform, more work visas, fair treatment for refugees and asylum seekers and fewer walls. Policies to seal the border, the lack of coordination between the countries involved, and the inflammatory rhetoric against migrants that has escalated during the past decade, have had lethal consequences for those seeking to enter the United States without documents. These vulnerable groups are easy prey for human-trafficking organizations, mostly run by Mexican drug cartels.”
The takeaway from all this is that the US’s policy of prevention through deterrence does not appear to have been particularly successful at accomplishing its goal of reducing or discouraging immigration, but it has led to migration to the US becoming more dangerous over time. To answer the initial question, “How should we think about this tragedy?” We should see it as a symptom of our border policy rather than an isolated incident.
Of course, the legal system does not have a meaningful way to address systemic violence at this scale, so of course the mechanisms of accountability will likely not extend further than prosecuting the people who were involved in these deaths. But as Krish, Pedro, and Enrique write above, this tragedy should also prompt us to ask what role border enforcement policy itself plays in this tragedy.
Postscript
The Bexar County Medical Examiner announced that they have identified 47 of the victims who passed away in the truck-trailer found on Quintana Road in San Antonio, TX, on June 27, 2022. Ages range from 13-55. Thanks to Camilo Montoya-Galvez for tweeting this out. The press release from the Bexar County can be found here.
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The deaths at the border are definitely terrible. I understand the criticism of the current system. But what is the alternative? I would be interested to know what the alternative is. I have some thoughts but I don't consider myself a subject matter expert on the border.
Also, a question - not meant to be snarky - but sometimes when we talk about people coming to the border, we don't credit the migrants with any 'agency' -- I mean, I suspect that migrants know much better than us what the risks are to cross. They must hear these stories of terrible deaths in trucks or the desert. They must hear about sexual assaults of their wives and daughters. And yet they still come. They are making a calculation and ultimately a key part of that calculation is whether at least some people are getting into the United States and staying. The same is true in Europe and UK.