NOBODY IS PROTECTED

A geography professor examines how the U.S. Border Patrol developed into an organization with powers that supersede the Fourth Amendment right to freedom from unreasonable search and seizure.

Officially established as a federal agency in 1924, the Border Patrol has its roots in the Texas Rangers. “Ostensibly, [the Rangers’] purpose was to protect citizens from attack by Mexican or Native American raids,” writes Jones, “but in practice they often harassed and displaced Native Americans and Mexicans who lived in the region”—not to mention peaceful non-White residents and runaway slaves traveling on the Underground Railroad to Mexico. Jefferson Davis Milton, a former Ranger who was named after the president of the Confederacy, later became the first man hired as a federal officer to patrol the U.S. border, in 1904. But the background history of the Border Patrol accounts for only part of how it evolved from a tiny, underfunded agency with “loosely defined regulations” regarding how far from the border it could operate into a “sophisticated paramilitary force” that surreptitiously made its lethal presence felt during the mass demonstrations that followed the murder of George Floyd in 2020. Jones argues that the agency's unprecedented expansion in the late 20th century was driven by two Supreme Court decisions in the mid-1970s. The first, United States v. Brignoni-Ponce (1975), made racial profiling a legal factor for federal agents roving the border to consider when stopping drivers. The second, United States vs. Martinez-Fuerte, approved the use of interior checkpoints “on highways and interstates within one hundred miles of borders and coastlines.” This well-researched account is disturbing in its demonstration of the unwitting complicity between the American justice system and an organization born of racist violence. Jones also clearly shows the specter of increased—and sanctioned—police power to transform all places within the U.S. into anti-democratic borderlands.

A provocative, necessary book about an ongoing hot-button topic.