Border vigilante/Militia activity, the National Security State, and the Migrant “Threat”

ABSTRACT

The relationship between border security and immigration has always been contentious and politically divisive. Using the cases of the War on Drugs (WoD), the War on Terror (WoT) and then the Migrant “Caravan” of 2018, I show that border security and enforcement have followed a historical pattern of racialised and gendered hierarchies using the prominent language frames of crime, war and invasion to negatively construct the migrant as “other” and the national security state as protector. These policies have shaped an environment by which state violence and state-sanctioned violence of non-state actors, such as vigilante/militia groups, become an acceptable response to protect the “Homeland” from vilified “others”. Racialised and gendered hierarchies are deeply entrenched in the US national security state, have (re)produced through time and thus, historically, the system has been designed to promote an environment by which practices of exclusion and expulsion become justified by both state and non-state actors. This calls into question definitions of terrorism, which do not adequately address the violence perpetrated by government forces and/or those non-state actors who are explicitly and implicitly supported by the nation-state.

KEYWORDS:

• national security
• borders
• vigilantes
• militias
• migrants
• U.S.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. This rhetoric can be found in media coverage (ie. Fox News, Breitbart News) from October to December 2018 and tweets by President Trump during the same time period.

2. Throughout this article, (White) vigilante/militia border groups, vigilante/militia groups, vigilante groups, are used interchangeably to refer to civilians who organise along the US-Mexico border to perform similar duties as border enforcement officials.

3. During the Cold War, the US supported counter-insurgency wars in many countries in Latin America to combat the spread of communism. These wars included the funding and training of paramilitary groups, the political backing of right-wing military juntas, and resulted in human rights violations, extra-judicial executions, and forced disappearances of thousands of people throughout Latin America.

Additional information

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Carla Angulo-Pasel

Dr. Carla Angulo-Pasel is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Texas, Rio Grande Valley (UTRGV). She holds a Ph.D. in Global Governance from Wilfrid Laurier University (Balsillie School of International Affairs) in Canada. Her research critically examines the intersections of border security, bordering, human rights, and gender. She is currently an executive board member of the Association for Borderlands Studies (2021-2024) and her publications include journal articles in Mobilities, Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power, and the Journal of Politics in Latin America.