By Jeremy Slack and Daniel E. Martınez

What happens after deportation? What contexts must Mexican deportees navigate and contend with after removal from the United States? This article explores the challenges for people post-removal in Mexico, particularly by drawing on fieldwork conducted in Tamaulipas, which is home to the Zetas drug trafficking organization and the infamous massacre of seventy-two migrants. We argue that incidental exposure to violence and crime began as an implicit aspect of immigration enforcement and has grown into one of the central tenets of current policy. We take a feminist geopolitical approach to connect the post-deportation experiences of migrants to the policies of deportation, incarceration, and punishment levied against them by the U.S. government. Migrants, particularly those apprehended through the Criminal Alien Program, have been returned to Tamaulipas in concentrated numbers despite its violent reputation. The processes of criminalization have led to a system that prioritizes punishment for migrants, meaning that we cannot extricate experiences that occur after removal from enforcement measures that create those situations. These practices are directly connected to the current wave of policies aimed at stopping asylum seekers, including “metering,” where people are made to wait at the border to apply for asylum at the port of entry, and the Remain in Mexico program (otherwise known as the Migrant Protection Protocols). We argue that enforcement is more complex than “prevention through deterrence” narratives and exposure to nonstate violence in Mexico has slowly become a more integral part of enforcement plans.

Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 2020

By Josiah Heyman

US political discourse characterizes the US-Mexico border as a site of threat and, of necessity, exclusion. This frame ignores the importance of borders to economies, families, and culture in our increasingly interconnected world. Moreover, it leads to policies that place people at risk of victimization and death. In conceiving of the border solely in terms of exclusion, nations forego the opportunity to strengthen relationships across borders. This paper argues that the politics of humane migration require a vision of borders as sites of encounter, engagement, and relationship, rather than solely exclusion. This reconceptualization of the US-Mexico border, in particular, would strengthen relationships across borders, and prioritize cooperation between Latin America/the Caribbean and the United States, starting with regulated legal flows. It would also respond to the shared contexts of migration, including contraband in arms and drugs, criminal violence, and climate change. It articulates an alternative vision of borders as a “commons” in which mutual needs can be addressed (a commons is an issue or resource in which every one has access and involvement). Migration itself provides a perfect example of such a need. It takes place in a political climate partially but powerfully shaped by racism and classism. Thus, it has become a polarized “issue” that appears insolvable. In fact, it may not be a problem at all. Rather, in our current demographic-economic situation, as well as for our cultural well-being, migration should be treated as an asset. Insofar as it needs to be addressed, this paper delineates many possibilities. The options are not perfect and magical — the challenges are hard and diverse — but they an advance a vision of a shared cross-border space on migration. That might be a crucial move, not only for migration, but along a path that recognizes relationships and commitments of many kinds across the hemisphere and world. Recognition is not enough; real change in resources and power needs to follow. But a vision of connection rather than exclusion provides the political starting point needed for change to happen. In every political instance in which borders are used to frame migration in terms of who, how, and how much to exclude, connectedness loses ground. A politics of humane migration can only emerge if rooted in a positive vision of borders as sites of engagement and encounter.

Journal on Migration and Human SecurityVolume 12, Issue 3, September 2024, Pages 321-331

By Stephanie Leutert

For the past 25 years, the Border Patrol has tracked migrant deaths along the US-Mexico border. For nearly the same amount of time, it has also faced criticisms that it failed to capture the true number of migrant deaths in its tally. This article focuses on these undercounting criticisms and asks two questions: (1) How many documented migrant death cases are left out of Border Patrol’s official data? And (2) what factors lead to the Border Patrol’s migrant death undercounting? In particular, the article focuses on three South Texas counties: Brooks County, Kenedy County, and Maverick County. To answer the research questions, this article relies on comparative data analysis. In particular, it compares two person-level datasets: the Border Patrol’s dataset on migrant deaths from 2009 to 2017 and county-level records from the Brooks County Sheriff’s Office, the Kenedy County Sheriff’s Office, and Maverick County Justices of the Peace over the same period. It then attempts to match each county-level record to a recorded death in the Border Patrol’s dataset. Using this process, the article quantifies migrant death undercounting in South Texas, highlights geographic and temporal trends, and tracks the uncounted cases’ specific characteristics. From 2009 to 2017, this comparative data analysis confirmed that the Border Patrol was undercounting migrant deaths across the three South Texas counties. Specifically, the article finds that the Border Patrol failed to include 139 cases, which totaled 19 percent of the counties’ 749 recorded migrant deaths during the study period. This undercounting ranged from 16 percent in Brooks County to 24 percent in Maverick County and 29 percent in Kenedy County, with fluctuating rates over time. The uncounted cases also had specific characteristics. In particular, they were more likely to be skeletal remains, lack an identification, and be discovered by an external entity. These characteristics highlight the various factors behind the Border Patrol’s undercounting, such as issues with the Border Patrol’s migrant death definition, inconsistent data collection from external entities, and the agency’s low prioritization of migrant death tracking. To address and remedy the Border Patrol’s migrant death undercounting requires tackling each underlying factor. First and foremost, this article recommends that the Border Patrol fully train its agents on the agency’s migrant death definition and ensure consistent and standardized outreach to external entities. Further, it recommends that the Border Patrol improve its migrant death count’s accuracy through additional operational changes. These proposed changes include making “accurate migrant death counts” an official objective for the Border Patrol’s Missing Migrant Program, prioritizing a two-way information-sharing process with county-level officials, retroactively including missed migrant deaths in the official count, and publishing more detailed person-level data on migrant deaths.

Journal on Migration and Human SecurityVolume 12, Issue 3, September 2024, Pages 277-289