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ABSTRACT
Transborder commuters are a heterogeneous population that includes U.S. citizens, lawful permanent residents, and Mexican nationals who have the legal documentation to cross the Mexico–U.S. border regularly for a variety of reasons. However, in order to engage in transborder mobility, transborder commuters must navigate land ports of entry and undergo extensive scrutiny from U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers, who are afforded ample discretion to conduct their day-to-day policing operations. What factors explain the variation in transborder commuter's perceptions of border policing and border crossing experiences? How do negative border crossing experiences impact transborder commuters overall political engagement and feelings of exclusion from U.S. society? Drawing from an original face-to-face survey administered to pedestrian transborder commuters at the Tijuana-San Ysidro and the Ciudad Juarez-El Paso ports of entry, I find that individuals with the highest social status are more likely to report more negative perceptions of border policing practices. Second, individuals who hold the most negative views of their border-crossing experiences become incentivized to become politically engaged, but report feeling greater exclusion from U.S. society.
Acknowledgements
I thank Matt Barreto for his unconditional support and guidance in this study. I also want to thank: Araceli Pérez Velázquez, Margaret Peters, Cecilia Menjívar, Roger Waldinger, Isaac Felix Machado, Cesar Castañeda Pérez, Maria de Jesus Velázquez Delgado, José Guadalupe Pérez Rivas, Enoch Montaño Raygoza, Héctor Padilla, Tyler Reny, Aaron Rudkin, Chiara Galli, Jose Manuel Valenzuela Arce, Jeremy Slack, Josefina Flores, the UCLA Migration Working Group, the UCLA Psychology Lab, the University of Texas, El Paso,and the anonymous reviewers and co-editors of PGI. This study would not have been possible without the time and dedication of my research assistants. Finally, I am grateful to every transborder commuter who gave me the time of their day to participate in my survey and entrusted me with their testimonies.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 U.S. General Services Administration. San Ysidro LPOE Facts. (2018, April 19). Retrieved from: https://www.gsa.gov/about-us/regions/welcome-to-the-pacific-rim-region-9/land-ports-of-entry/san-ysidro-land-port-of-entry/san-ysidro-lpoe-project-facts
2 There are also transborder commuters who reside in the U.S. but cross into Mexico. This paper exclusively focuses on the experiences of transborder commuters who reside in Mexico but regularly cross into the United States.
3 U.S. Customs and Border Protection, “Immigration Inspection Program.” Last Modified February 21, 2014. Retrieved from: https://www.cbp.gov/border-security/ports-entry/overview
4 To be sure, this study does not measure which groups among the transborder population are most often targeted by CBP officers. Rather, this study examines self-reported discrimination at the border and which groups among the transborder population are more likely to hold more negative views of border enforcement practices.
5 In this study, educational attainment measures overall social and economic position within the transborder population, not as an indicator the relative wealth of a transborder commuter.
6 Micah M, “ACLU Urges Investigation into Abuse Treatment at CBP Ports of Entry” American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico, last modified May 17, 2016. https://www.aclutx.org/en/press-releases/aclu-urges-investigation-abusive-treatment-cbp-ports-entry
7 U.S. Department of Justice. (2014). Guidance for Federal Law Enforcement Agencies Regarding The Use of Race, Ethnicity, Gender, National Origin, Religion, Sexual Orientation, or Gender Identity. Retrieved from: https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/use-of-race-policy_0.pdf
8 Another reason why it is hard to interview individuals as they are waiting in line to cross the border on the Mexican side is that generally there is limited time due to moving lanes and processing wait times from CBP differ. According to my data, on average pedestrian commuters wait anywhere between 15 and 30 minutes during non-peak hours, or 30 minutes to over an hour during peak hours (see Figure 5 in the appendix).
9 Table 5 in the appendix demonstrates the descriptive statistics of these two samples.
10 My research team and I approached all passengers one-by-one, and inquired whether they had just crossed the San Ysidro pedestrian port of entry. If they said yes, we introduced our project and asked for their consent. Once we received their informed and voluntary consent, we handed participants a paper-pen survey which they would self-administer while riding the trolley. In the case the participant needed assistance, we would administer the survey orally.
11 Participants took around 10 minutes to complete the survey. On average, each team member passed out between 5–7 surveys per trolley ride, and remained inside the trolley until all participants had finished. After the team had gathered all of the surveys, we boarded the southbound trolley to San Ysidro and repeated the same process for three hours each day.
12 Shifts varied between 5:00 am and 3:30 pm during workdays (Monday-Friday) to have as much variation in our sample including workers, students, shoppers, and visitors.
13 We conducted the surveys between 6:00-8:00am and 11:00am-1:00pm and approached individuals one-by-one who were waiting by the bus stations and were willing to take the survey
14 All relevant survey questions and the close-ended answers are included in the appendix.
15 On the survey, I had separate columns where individuals could check-off political engagement in Mexico and in the U.S. For this paper, I am only examining the impact of negative perceptions of CBP’s practices on political behavior in the U.S.
16 In the Tijuana study, the response was an ordinal variable, ranging from “yes many times” to “never,” while in the Ciudad Juárez study, I listed types of discrimination as responses. For the purposes of this paper, I am examining general experience with discrimination in the U.S. To maintain consistency in the coefficient results, I coded the responses in both surveys as a 1 if the participant reported experiencing discrimination at all, regardless of type or frequency, and 0 if they wrote “never.” In the appendix, I include a separate table (Table 6) including model 5 with the original ordinal response for Tijuana-San Ysidro port of entry. The results remain statistically significant.
17 Lawful Permanent Residents and Mexican nationals that hold tourist visas were treated the same under the non-U.S. citizen category.
18 There were less than 10 individuals that indicated graduate education, so they were merged into college education.
19 I clustered those that have “fluent” and “good” English speaking skills since I am primarily interested in those that have a high English proficiency relative to those that speak poor or no English at all.
20 Ready Lanes are semi-expedited lanes for individuals who carry a border crossing card that has a Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) chip implanted inside it, while SENTRI is the most expedited lane in card holders pay a fee and undergo an extensive background check before being approved for the program. This reflects a class-based separation at the border.