Geoff Boyce
Geoff Boyce is Assistant Professor and Ad Astra Fellow in the School of Geography at University College Dublin. Geoff’s research and publications attend to the transnational dimensions of immigration and border policing in North America, and their uneven dissemination of vulnerability across scale.
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We found that migrant deaths rose from an annual mean of 133 during the Localized Funnel Effect (LFE) Era to 198 in the Title 42 (T42) Era, representing a 48percent increase. Compared to the earlier era, remains recovered during the T42 Era clustered closer to the border and near the cities of Nogales and Agua Prieta, Sonora, having shifted from west to east in southern Arizona. Additionally, we found that Title 42 disproportionately affected Mexican and Guatemalan nationals both in terms of expulsions as well as deaths. We propose several policy recommendations based on our study’s findings intended to reduce
unnecessary suffering and increase human security:
• The US federal government should not impede or limit migrants’ access to the asylum system. Policymakers should instead create clear pathways and procedures that obviate the need for migrants to undertake dangerous journeys and overcome barriers to fair consideration of their claims.
• The US government must expand its ability to address these claims, as continued attempts to block asylum seekers will result in additional loss of life and increased violence. It should increase its capacity to screen asylum seekers at the US-México border. We propose an increase in USCIS Asylum Officers to carry out this duty. US Customs and Border Protection agents should not screen asylum seekers, nor should they assume the responsibility of serving as asylum officers, given the agency’s extensively documented record of persistently dehumanizing and mistreating migrants.
• The US federal government must take measures to eliminate the backlog of asylum cases in the immigration courts. These measures need to include reforms in the underlying immigration system and in the removal adjudication system, such as greater access to legal counsel and changes to the law that offer legal pathways to imperiled migrants who do not meet the narrow definition of asylum. Absent these reforms, the asylum case backlog will grow, and many asylum seekers with strong claims to remain will be removed after living for years in the United States.
We found that migrant deaths rose from an annual mean of 133 during the Localized Funnel Effect (LFE) Era to 198 in the Title 42 (T42) Era, representing a 48percent increase. Compared to the earlier era, remains recovered during the T42 Era clustered closer to the border and near the cities of Nogales and Agua Prieta, Sonora, having shifted from west to east in southern Arizona. Additionally, we found that Title 42 disproportionately affected Mexican and Guatemalan nationals both in terms of expulsions as well as deaths. We propose several policy recommendations based on our study’s findings intended to reduce
unnecessary suffering and increase human security:
• The US federal government should not impede or limit migrants’ access to the asylum system. Policymakers should instead create clear pathways and procedures that obviate the need for migrants to undertake dangerous journeys and overcome barriers to fair consideration of their claims.
• The US government must expand its ability to address these claims, as continued attempts to block asylum seekers will result in additional loss of life and increased violence. It should increase its capacity to screen asylum seekers at the US-México border. We propose an increase in USCIS Asylum Officers to carry out this duty. US Customs and Border Protection agents should not screen asylum seekers, nor should they assume the responsibility of serving as asylum officers, given the agency’s extensively documented record of persistently dehumanizing and mistreating migrants.
• The US federal government must take measures to eliminate the backlog of asylum cases in the immigration courts. These measures need to include reforms in the underlying immigration system and in the removal adjudication system, such as greater access to legal counsel and changes to the law that offer legal pathways to imperiled migrants who do not meet the narrow definition of asylum. Absent these reforms, the asylum case backlog will grow, and many asylum seekers with strong claims to remain will be removed after living for years in the United States.
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On January 20, 2021, his first day in office, US President Biden issued an executive order pausing the remaining construction of the southern border wall initiated during the Trump administration. Soon after, the White House sent a bill to Congress, the US Citizenship Act of 2021, calling for the deployment of “smart technology” to “manage and secure the southern border.” Under Biden’s blueprint, $1.2 billion would be allocated for border infrastructure including “modernization of land ports of entry, investments in modern border security technology and assets, and efforts to ensure the safe and humane treatment of migrants in CBP custody.”
Our new report shows that whether “smart” or not, all border policing shares a common goal: to control human beings and to deny entry to those deemed undesirable or undeserving. It highlight five harms caused by border policing:
-A boom in the border and surveillance industrial complex
-The growing policing of immigrants and their communities, the borderlands, and society on a global scale.
-Separation and undermining of families and communities.
-The maiming and killing of large numbers of border crossers.
-Exacerbation of socioeconomic inequality.
(FOIA) request to CBP to obtain records related to Border Patrol’s interior enforcement operations in Michigan. CBP, a division of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS),
the largest law enforcement agency in the United States and one of the
most secretive agencies in the federal government, refused to provide the information. It took years of litigation, culminating in numerous federal court orders, to compel CBP to produce the sought-after documents and data. CBP finished producing all documents in March 2020.
A sweeping analysis of those records, spanning the years 2012 to 2019, reveals that the agency produces few tangible results related to its officially mandated mission in Michigan: apprehending people attempting to cross into the United States from Canada without authorization. Instead, the data show that Border Patrol agents routinely spend their time and resources targeting people of Latin American origin who are long-term Michigan residents. Moreover, because of Border Patrol’s expansive view of what has been dubbed the “100-mile zone” (described in greater detail later), the agency claims it has the authority to conduct certain warrantless searches anywhere and everywhere in Michigan — every city and every county, every road and every highway. As a result, people of Latin American origin throughout the state are subjected to the constant fear that Border Patrol will single them out for harassment and arrest based on their appearance. Border Patrol agents are, in this way, terrorizing Michigan communities.