Defining the Border during the Pandemic: A Perspective from the Douglas and Agua Prieta Border Community

Border walls are generally defined as barriers that serve to control the international border by limiting migration, human trafficking, and smuggling. At the US-Mexico border, security also entails situational awareness of the borderlands, which the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and the United States Border Patrol (USBP) contend is by making communities aware of what side they are on through their outreach programs, the side of drug and human trafficking or on the side of the “guardians of our nation's borders” as mentioned by a USBP officer in their interview for my project. Additionally, they stated border natives and residents like myself only know half of what their work involves as we “...get all their information out of the news”. I also had to attend these outreach programs since I was in elementary school with officers showing off their canines and reminding me and the rest of the students how much time we would serve by crossing drugs. There is some truth to the agent’s statement, I do believe there is much to learn from the militarization of the borderlands even when you live and experience border security daily for years. However, based on my thesis and my experience as a border native the issue is not if people believe the Department of Homeland Security agencies (DHS) is the nation’s protectors, but if people, news media, and organizations are questioning enough the roles of DHS agencies at the border as shown by their treatment and vilification of migrants and their ability to protect border communities while preserving nature in a time of climate crisis. My thesis brings into question pandemic-era border protocols, such as the Migrant Protection Protocol, and Title 42, as well as CBP and the USBP public messaging and community interactions in the US-Mexico border community in Douglas, Arizona, and Agua Prieta, Sonora. My paper focuses on border history from 1993 impacts and defines present policies, and communities living along the border. As a border resident of Douglas and a previous border resident of Agua Prieta, my thesis is one of few studies to focus on the stories of the border community in both towns, from a Latinx border native of this border community. As will be addressed later in this paper, research in my community is limited, especially in the development of border security that also centers on the communities’ shift in attitudes and perspectives on securitization. Moreso, the documentation and analysis of the researcher are native to the Sonoran borderlands. During my study, I volunteered at the Centro de Recursos de Migrantes next to the Agua Prieta border entry, and conducted interviews with stakeholders in present policies from border residents, non-profit organizations, and government agencies in Agua Prieta and Douglas. My thesis is also meant to discuss the perception and shifts of border securitization along the US-Mexico border according to border residents and non-profit organizations leaders that belong to the border community. During my interview, there was inconsistency about people’s perception of border security and the implementation of protocols at the Douglas border port of entry. My data collection, the extensions of Title 42 and the Supreme Court’s decision on Egbert v. Boule indicate its application was not meant to protect American citizens from Covid-19 by limiting migration but to further extend the power of DHS agencies at the border, while maintaining surveillance and unlimited power over migrants and the border community that is forced to contend with the shifts of the borderlands and the increase of mass migration. I therefore argue that the carceral state enforced and re-produced by state and non-state actors at a local, state, and federal level as shown historically at the border and presently in public health crises shows the continuation of colonial projects by the United States that remain integral to its national sovereignty, capital gain, and legitimacy. During my research, I found that there are multiple academic papers and articles that focus on border fieldwork from the perspectives of researchers who have never actually lived or experienced life at the border, nor have their families been defined by the borderlands. Additionally, the limited border narratives that exist are insufficient in portraying the diversity that exists within the border community and emphasizes a need to decentralize narratives from privileged spaces in the community. Re-conceptualizing the border through the lens of diverse border narratives and re-centering Indigenous and Latinx feminist thinkers that identify, especially queer, trans, and disabled bodies can enable more dialect regarding the effects of border policies that have not only contributed to the militarization and warfare of the border, but the erasure of border history and the disregard to inform the public of current border protocols. Border security confines border communities to normalize militarization and forget its rich and painful history. Migrants and their modes of transportation are portrayed by DHS agencies and government institutions as a large threat to border security as emphasized through outreach programs, DHS agency reports, and political propaganda by government officials that portrays migrants as national threats. A threat that has united white people, who remain tied to the past- believing that Latinx people do not deserve to have rights to seek a better life. Meanwhile these individuals ignore the threat of the current government in the United States that continues to grow in unrestrained power. Despite a desire to portray migrants as “terrorists” at their entrance or attempts to cross to the United States that are not considered “lawful,” migrants are the ones dying at rapid speeds along the border with or without their bodies recovered while DHS agents’ power increases (CBP a,d). We, in my border community, are taught that the direct racial, ethnic, gendered profiling at the border we might face, the tactics applied by officers to slow border crossing, and their cruel treatment, is as an outcome of where we are born. The limit of our rights is a direct consequence of where we chose to live, while the power of CBP and USBP officers only continues to increase. The anger that should be directed to DHS agencies and government officials but is given to vulnerable migrants instead.