Content area
Full Text
Timothy J. Dunn
University of Texas Press , Austin, TX, USA, 2009 , hardback , 297pp .,
ISBN: 978-0292719019
"[The border fence] is not gonna solve the problem the way they're putting it right now."1 This is one of the arguments used by border residents in South Texas who oppose the "2006 Secure Border Initiative." Although most residents in the US-Mexico border areas have a direct experience with undocumented migration literally in their backyards, many are against this project to extend the border fence. However, as this quote reveals, it is not completely clear whether they are opposing it in principle or just in its current design as it affects their property. This complex relationship between local communities and border enforcement - like the framing of responses to the expansion of border controls based on how it affects US citizens whereas broader humanitarian concerns are frequently absent - are among the main issues Timothy J. Dunn explores in Blockading the Border and Human Rights: The El Paso Operation That Remade Immigration Enforcement.
The departing point for Dunn's analysis is a detailed history of the context in which Operation Hold the Line (formerly Blockade -a name that he considers more accurately reflects the operation's rationale and effects) began in El Paso, Texas in 1993. Although the literature on US border enforcement is vast, this is the first in-depth study of this particular operation in a full-length book. Through years of ethnographic fieldwork in El Paso, including formal and informal interviews with local population, activist groups, border patrol agents and Silvestre Reyes - the first Latino sector chief of the El Paso Border Patrol and the architect of Operation Blockade - Dunn provides a comprehensive and insightful look into both the communities affected by the strengthening of border controls and their reasons for supporting or opposing these policies at different times, as well as the El Paso Border Patrol's rationale and interests.
Paradoxically, the story begins...