The INS on the Line: Making Immigration Law on the US-Mexico Border,

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1 Oxford Scholarship Online You are looking at 1-9 of 9 items for: keywords : palliation history hisamtw The INS on the Line: Making Immigration Law on the US-Mexico Border, Item type: book acprof:oso/ For much of the twentieth century, Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) officials recognized that the US-Mexico border region was different, confronting a set of political, social, and environmental obstacles that prevented them from replicating their achievements on Angel Island and Ellis Island, the most restrictive immigration stations in the nation. In response to these challenges local INS officials resorted to the law, nullifying, modifying, and even inventing immigration laws and policies for the borderlands. The INS on the Line traces the ways in which the INS on the US-Mexico border made and remade the nation's immigration laws over the course of the twentieth century. While popular and scholarly accounts describe the INS primarily as a law enforcement agency, the author demonstrates that the agency defined itself not only as a law enforcement unit but also as a lawmaking body. Through a nuanced examination of the agency's legal innovations in the Southwest, the author reveals how local immigration officials constructed a complex approach to border control, an approach that closed the line in the name of nativism and national security; opened it for the benefit of transnational economic and social concerns; and redefined it as a vast legal jurisdiction for the policing of undocumented immigrants. Despite its contingent and local origins, this composite approach to border control continues to inform the daily operations of the nation's immigration agencies, American immigration law and policy, and our very conceptions of the US-Mexico border today. Page 1 of 6

2 Introduction acprof:oso/ The introduction presents the book s main argument that the INS on the US Mexico border made and remade the nation s immigration laws over the course of the twentieth century. This claim challenges popular and scholarly notions that the INS functioned primarily as a law enforcement agency, administering laws issued by Congress and the courts, and, instead, underscores the multiple ways in which the local branches of one federal agency defined American immigration law and policy. While the INS in the Southwest often created these measures in a highly haphazard and reactive fashion, they ultimately came to shape the capacities of the American state on the US-Mexico border. The introduction further discusses the implications of this argument for the study of the American administrative state, immigration law and policy history, and borderlands history. It closes with chapter summaries of the book. A Sectional Immigration Policy acprof:oso/ In the early twentieth century, the Bureau of Immigration adopted a lax approach to the enforcement of the federal immigration laws along the US-Mexico border. Yet the Mexican Revolution and World War I transformed the nation s orientation toward the southern line, raising concerns about the entry of alien enemies and unwanted immigrants. In response, the federal government drew upon the Immigration Act of 1917 and the Passport Act of 1918 to strengthen its border enforcement capacities. The efforts of local Bureau of Immigration officials to enforce the letter of these new laws met with fierce resistance from border residents who had grown accustomed to crossing and recrossing the Page 2 of 6

3 border at will. So as to satisfy locals demands, southwestern immigration officials created a series of legal innovations that diluted the restrictive impact of the immigration and passport laws, and sustained the transnational economy and society of the border region. The Battle for the Border acprof:oso/ The multiple challenges faced by the early Border Patrol and its efforts to overcome them are the themes of Chapter 2. It first focuses on how local residents and immigration inspectors pursued open border policies so as to sustain Prohibition era economic growth. Their vision of the border as an economic zone fueled local opposition to the emergence of the Border Patrol. The second part of the chapter describes how federal ambivalence regarding the Border Patrol left it without the resources necessary to carry out its mandate. In an effort to compensate for all of these weaknesses, the unit, as described in the third part of the chapter, resorted to the law, devising a broad vision of border enforcement. Yet, as the final part of the chapter explains, the Patrol s efforts only generated more debates about the nature of immigration law enforcement and the very meaning of the border. Repatriation and Reform acprof:oso/ Chapter 3 traces the immigration agency s internal reform efforts during the Great Depression. In the early years of the economic crisis, the revival of nativism led states, localities, and the federal government to undertake repatriation and deportation drives. Through its participation in these deportation drives, the INS developed a highly aggressive approach to border enforcement. The election of Franklin Delano Page 3 of 6

4 Roosevelt and his appointment of progressive-minded leaders to the Department of Labor and the INS led the agency to conduct an internal review of its deportation procedures and institute a series of reforms. In this endeavor, southwestern INS officials were active, albeit reluctant, participants. Yet in spite of their ambivalence, their contributions to the reform movement illustrate how local INS officials made and remade the nation s immigration laws. An Agency in Crisis acprof:oso/ Chapter 4 supplies a history of the Bracero Program and its implementation by the INS. Upon its inception in 1942, the United States and Mexico described the program in highly aspirational terms as an expression of the Good Neighbor policy. Yet it presented federal agencies such as the INS with the complex realities of implementing a binational agricultural employment program that led to the hiring of 4.5 million guest workers over the course of twenty-two years. Faced with an enduring shortage of money, manpower, and materiel to implement the Bracero Program, the INS in the 1940s was in a state of disarray. Local agency officials found themselves buffeted by competing pressures to carry out the agricultural employment, as well as immigration, duties surrounding the Bracero Program, and to simultaneously open the line to bracero workers and close it to undocumented immigrants. Making the Local National acprof:oso/ Chapter 5 recounts how one local immigration official, Grover C. Wilmoth, El Paso district director of the INS, played a pivotal role in defining and advancing the enforcement priorities of the INS among politicians and Page 4 of 6

5 policymakers in Washington, DC. In an effort to create a semblance of order out of the disorder of the Bracero Program, Wilmoth lobbied Congress for legislation that would bolster the agency s ability to pursue and apprehend undocumented immigrants in public and private spaces far north of the border. In addition, he was an active participant in President Truman s Commission on Migratory Labor. Best known as an expose of the humanitarian crises facing migrant workers in the United States, the commission, thanks to Wilmoth s contributions, also presented one of the first national expositions of a strong immigration enforcement policy for the US Mexico border. The Federal Regulation of the US Mexico Border acprof:oso/ Chapter 6 is a history of Operation Wetback, a massive deportation drive conducted by the federal government in While it is remembered as an apex in the history of the INS, a sign of the agency s strength, and a moment in which it had achieved control over the US Mexico border, this chapter argues that the campaign bore the hallmarks of a decadeslong struggle by the INS to define a strong immigration law enforcement policy. Facing an ongoing shortage of money, manpower, and material, the new INS Commissioner, General Joseph Swing, devised a border enforcement strategy that drew upon old legal innovations devised by local agency officials in the Southwest. Moreover, Swing s plan ultimately regulated, rather than closed, the line. It specifically opened the border to guest workers through a revamped Bracero Program, and closed it to undocumented immigrants by means of removal operations such as Operation Wetback. Conclusion acprof:oso/ Page 5 of 6

6 The conclusion provides an overview of developments in contemporary American immigration policy from 1954 to the present. Faced with the same dilemmas how to open the borders to the free flow of trade, travelers, and commerce while closing it to the entry of undocumented immigrants and security threats immigration policymakers have relied on old solutions. Border Patrol raids, legalization programs, guest worker agreements, and border crossing cards have been and continue to be central features of American immigration policy today. Yet by adopting the once ad hoc practices created by local immigration inspectors and Border Patrol officers, national policymakers also inherited their costs and consequences, the most serious of which included the arbitrariness, corruption, and even violence surrounding Border Patrol operations. Page 6 of 6