Image this, your job is to help dying people, then you're forced to send them back across the Border . Are you "good" or "bad"? What about if you are being paid to bring illegal immigrants over the Border , then halfway it's too hard to bear so you are forced to abandon them. Are you "good" or "bad"? Now imagine you live in Mexico and the economy is completely shot, in desperation to help your family you illegal cross the American Border . Are you "good" or "bad"? Immigration policy has been a topic of profound debate throughout the American political system for many years. Like all arguments there are different sides and beliefs on who the “good guys” are and who the “bad guys” are. Luis Alberto Urrea’s book The Devil’s Highway describes the journey of the Yuma-14, immigrants who illegally crossed the Border in 2001 through the Arizona desert; also know as the devils highway. Urrea presents different perspectives on who the “good guys” and “bad guys” are in illegal immigration. The many groups in The Devils Highway support and complicate the debate about illegal immigration. There are not always clear “good guys” and “bad guys” but I have concurred who they are. There are clear “good guys” in the Border Control and clear “bad guys” in the Coyote gangs. Then there are also those who could go either way, good or bad, those people would be the illegal immigrants themselves. In the novel the Border Control are seen to have a bad reputation. All throughout the west stories are told about the patrol officers. They are said to beat, handcuff, break ribs, use tear gas, rape and tie up illegals once they find them. All of these things are just accusations there is no real truth to them. These stories and rumors are passed from town to town along the border. It is thought that the rumors are continuously told just to keep people from trying to illegally cross
Ruben Martinez was fascinated with the tragedy of three brothers who were killed when the truck carrying them and 23 other undocumented migrants across the Mexico – United States border turned over in a high-speed chase with the U.S. Border Patrol. “Crossing Over: A Mexican Family on the Migrant Trail” is a story about crossing and life in the United States.
A leading American historian on race, policing, immigration, and incarceration in the United States, Kelly Lytle Hernandez’s Migra! A History of the U.S. Border Patrol tells the story of how Mexican immigrant workers emerged as the primary target of the United States Border Patrol and how, in the process, the United States Border Patrol shaped the history of race in the United States. Migra! also explores social history, including the dynamics of Anglo-American nativism, the power of national security, and labor-control interests of capitalistic development in the American southwest. In short, Migra! explains
In Jason de León's eye opening and heartbreaking book The Land of Open Graves, we get an indepth ethnological account of the many people who's lives have been shaped in one way or another by the Mexican-American border, and the weaponization of the inhospitable Sonoran desert. In this section of border crossing, 4 million undocumented migrants have been arrested (more than one third of all immigration arrests), and countless others have tried, failed, succeeded or died (1). De León also frames Border Patrol as a tool of state-sponsored structural violence and highlights the horrendous after effects of free trade policies for tens of millions of immigrants seeking to regain what they had lost. The author also details the ethical and moral
The primary function of the Border Patrol Agency is "Line Watch"(web), which involves the apprehension of terrorists, smugglers and illegal people at the border. The book ‘Border Patrol nation’ by Tod Miller is a classic example of the Border patrol agency day to day activities and work culture. Tod Miller has researched and written about US-Mexican border issues for last 15 years. The book contains eleven chapters, which are well structured and inter related in respect to the arguments, evident and stories. This makes the book well
The United States is facing illegal complexities that are affecting the people. “Immigration Problem Is about Us, Not Them,” by Jo-Ann Pilardi poses some powerful arguments that get readers thinking about who the culprits actually are behind the illegal immigrants coming across the southwestern border. First she declares that citizens in the United States use the word “illegal” in a “narrow” way, therefore causing americans to oversee other “illegal” activities. Then she goes on to explain that it is the “INE’s” (illegal native employers) that are truly responsible for the illegal immigrants sneaking through in the first place and elaborates that these buisness owners aren’t getting proper surveillance for these illegal activities. She closes by unfolding the United States’s problem of demanding cheap labor that results in relying on illegal immigrants. The opening argument is ironically a stereotype in itself, but it is logically correct. However, the fault comes in the
...r (Ellingwood, 2004). Even after more and more cases like this one contienued to happen the U.S. government did not to try and reduce the number of migrants dying. Instead it intensified its border security consciously knowing what the outcome could be. Mexican Senate passed a resolution zeroing in on Gatekeeper and the American government: “The anti-immigration strategy implemented by the U.S. government to seal its border becomes more aggressive every day, raising the cost in human lives of those who attempt to obtain better living conditions,” the resolution stated (Ellingwood, 2004). It noted that “migrants must make their way through heavy vegetation, deep and rocky canyons, and high mountains that make the crossing difficult, slow, and dangerous. Add to this the lack of food and water and the bad climate… and the high number of deaths that the undocumented suf
It was typical for the men to travel to the north first in order to find a job and set up the life for his family. In the town of San Geronimo, 85% of all men over the age of 15 had left the village in search of work in other parts of Mexico and in the United States. The men would make the trip alone and would send the money that they had made to their wives and children back in the village. The trip to the North was long and very dangerous. For the men who entered the country illegally, the trip could even be deadly. For the men who did have some money, they would hire a “coyote,” a man who would help them cross the border for a price. Sometimes coyotes were legitimate people who sought to help others, while...
I would like the critics of immigration to think of the coyotes while you read this paper. The coyote has the easiest job pertaining to illegal immigration. They are paid well and once they have done there job, they can go on there way with a fat wallet and no worries. The immigrants who pay these people their loot of cash that they most likely saved for who knows how long, are now the new victims of these coyotes. These illegal immigrants now must find shelter and jobs to start their new lives in the United States. I would like to show both stories of these two types of people on different paths. The coyote that transports the immigrants across the border and the immigrant who now has to start a new life from scratch.
The increase of border security in general the flow of immigration was redirected to the most remote areas of Arizona. Here in southern Arizona is where the “Devil’s Highway” is found. The devil’s highway is a remote desert with an extensive history of deaths. Many immigrants walk for days in the dessert with little water and no food making it a very dangerous place to loose their lives. In his book: “The Devil’s Highway: A True Story”, Luis Alberto Urrea provides us with a background and the events happening such desert. Urrea mentions that: “The first white known man to die in the desert heat here did it on January 18, 1541” (Urrea 5). This shows that the deaths of immigrants here is nothing new. “Most assuredly, others had died before. As long as...
It is important to look at the history of border patrol before judgment. Border patrol has been around since the early 1900s. Their motto of professionalism, honor, and integrity for human life has been a motivation for them through the years. It initiated when mounted watchmen were set up, to prevent illegal immigrants for entering, for the U.S. Immigration Service. Over several decades they gained funds, strategy, coordination and most importantly organization. After the 18th Amendment prohibited the import and export of alcohol, the watchmen had bigger goals and higher expectations. Many limitations were brought also brought upon by the Immigration Acts of 1921 and 1924. The first border patrol academy opened in 1934. In 1940 Immigration service became part of the Department of Justice. Later, Border Patrol Agents gained permission to search illegal immigrants anywhere in the United States. This was very significant because it made immigrants subject to arrest for the first time in history. They could, however, only b...
Under what circumstances would you go through to better and provide for your family? Would you embark on these six deadly sins above to just get a simple loaf of bread on the table? There is no solid blame or black and white definite answer throughout this novel, The Devil’s Highway. The author Luis Alberto Urrea takes his readers to different perspectives and offers different points of view whether you appear to be a walker, coyote, or the border control on the topic of illegal immigration. Being that Urrea puts the reader in each person shoe’s and truly sees what immense, harsh, conditions for example these immigrants had to go through. Again there is no solid blame or black and white answers, both sides are at fault and in need of a solution to the problem.
“Together with other law enforcement officers, the Border Patrol helps maintain borders that work—facilitating the flow of legal immigration and goods while preventing the illegal trafficking of people and contraband” (Overview). Or so their official website states, but evidence would suggest that they are part of a corrupt and violent system; they have dehumanized themselves due to their existence as an extension of government regulations; they have been placed at the border to guard it from the illegals who try to break through to the American side and some abuse that power. The government pays extremely generous sums for their operations, but their effectiveness and moral practices have been questionable. The victims—those apprehended during their journey across the border and the families of those killed by the officers (among many others)—claim that the BP exists outside of the law, but it is also true that not all officers violate human rights, not all go rogue. What determines who becomes the conductor of power is the hiring process as well as the honesty and diligence of the administrative personnel. The qualifications to become a border patrol officer (as listed on the official PB website) are
“I do not believe that many American citizens . . . really wanted to create such immense human suffering . . . in the name of battling illegal immigration” (Carr 70). For hundreds of years, there has been illegal immigration starting from slavery, voluntary taking others from different countries to work in different parts of the world, to one of the most popular- Mexican immigration to the United States. Mexican immigration has been said to be one of the most common immigration acts in the world. Although the high demand to keep immigrants away from crossing the border, Mexicans that have immigrated to the U.S have made an impact on the American culture because of their self sacrifices on the aspiration to cross over. Then conditions
There are a variety of push and pull factors that bring these migrant farmworkers into the fields. Those fields are, to them, overflowing with freedom and gleaming opportunities, welcoming them and their hungry families. To farm owners and large corporations, they are nothing but disposable units of cheap labor who are easily exploited out of their desperation and a lack of say amidst their situation. Millions of Mexican men, women and even children, for example, choose the life-or-death decision of crossing the border every year, risking everything they have and throwing themselves into the unknown: what they do not foresee will be the biggest Hunger Games of their lives. They leave their families behind, trekking across the deserts of Arizona for days at a time without food or water, or swimming through the Rio Grande with the treacherous risk of getting caught by U.S. officials and, more common than most may think, the odds of meeting death along the way (Bauer 2010). These unfortunate fallen remain anonymous as they are reduced to bones in the desert, and their fate
One of the major issues surrounding border security is illegal immigration, “For the past two decades the United States, a country with a strong tradition of limited government, has been pursuing a widely popular initiative that requires one of the most ambitious expansions of government power in modern history: securing the nation’s borders against illegal immigration” (Alden, 2012). Many people are trying to enter the United States without the proper documentation and everyday they risk their lives and others just to make it across these borders. To avoid this law enforcement and other border security has threatened these illegal immigrants with detainment and arrest and different forms of punishment. In the efforts to deter the problem, it has been far beyond feasible because they still manage to get across and it does not change their intention...