The U.S. Border Patrol was created after the 1924 Immigration Act. Their primary purpose was to enforce immigration law on the southern border. As noted in the book Migra!: A History of the US Border Patrol by Kelly Lytle-Hernandez the officers often engaged in coordinated acts of vengeful violence by indiscriminately targeting Mexican border crossers as an act of retribution for harm or death to one of their own officers.  As Lytle-Hernandez writes about the formation of the Texas Rangers "Whatever the task, however, raw physical violence was the Rangers' principal strategy."(1)  This type of anti-Mexican violence was often based on the history of violence that had continued since the occupation by U.S. settlers starting in the 1830s in Texas. Since it was formed with violence it is important to understand the roots of enforcing the Southern U.S. border as one which continues to the violence of war from the U.S. War on Mexico in the middle of 19th century.

The U.S. Border Patrol is significant to the historical development of oppression today because they represent the continual white-supremacist violence used against Mexicans during this period as a form of social control and Anglo dominance in the region. Today there continues to be abuses by U.S. border patrol including acts of brutality, sexual violence, and murder. Today, we can see this in contemporary examples of how migrants at the border are met with violence when just trying to come to the U.S. for asylum. And just the historical examples of the border patrol encroaching into Mexican and other communities outside of the border. For example, the United States under the George W. Bush administration created Secure Communities to place ICE officers in County jails throughout the US from 2009-2021.(2)

This continues to transport the terror of border violence into our communities through criminalization, violence, and incarceration. In my community in Pasadena, the organization the National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON) works to support the lives of undocumented workers through advocacy, mutual aid, and legal support when facing deportation or harassment by law enforcement.(3)

CITATIONS

1)Kelly Lytle Hernandez Migra!: A History of the U.S. Border Patrol, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010), p20

2)Aarti Kohli, Peter L. Markowitz, and Lisa Chavez, "Secure Communities by the Numbers: An Analysis of Demographics and Due Process" Berkeley Research Report, October 2011, https://www.law.berkeley.edu/files/Secure_Communities_by_the_Numbers.pdf 

3)NDLON, https://ndlon.org/