Expansion and multiplication of borders

From the experience of FM4 Paso Libre in the ZMG, the expansion and multiplication of borders has occurred through the implementation of a national policy related to strengthening the national security-migration link, ratified through economic and political agreements. Proof of this is the launch of the PIFS during the summer of 2014.

It has been widely documented that since the attacks on September 11, 2001, the United States has increased the surveillance and militarization of its border with Mexico, as well as pressing other countries on the continent to do the same and prevent access by undocumented people to their respective national geographies, under the pretext of terrorist infiltration.

In 2008, as part of a strategy to combat organized crime, the Mérida Initiative was signed. To date (with its respective modifications), this program has served as a security mechanism that considers migration to be a priority. Its third pillar, “Create a 21^st century border structure,” incorporated Mexico’s southern border as an area of interest. With this program, the United States has contributed $24 million in equipment and technical assistance, including mobile kiosks operated by the National Institute of Migration (Instituto Nacional de Migración - INM), canine teams and the training-by US agents-of Mexican officers to patrol the borders (^{Ribando & Finklea, 2017}, p. 22). These types of agreements consolidated migration as a matter of national security, which has resulted in the criminalization of migrants in transit through our country.

Despite all the actions to contain migratory flows, the Mexican migration policy was greatly challenged in the summer of 2014, when the so-called migrant children crisis received significant media attention. Through July of that year, the United States had apprehended more than 50 000 undocumented persons, many of whom were unaccompanied minors, largely from Central America. In this context, Mexico’s PIFS was presented on July 7, 2014, the purpose of which, according to President Enrique Peña Nieto, was to protect the migrants who are crossing our country and ensure the security of the country’s southern region and the rail lines. This would involve the implementation of three objectives: a) prevent migrants from putting themselves at risk by using freight trains; b) develop strategies to ensure the security and protection of migrants; and c) combat and eradicate the criminal groups that beset and violate migrants’ rights.

These objectives would be accompanied, it was said, by a prevention strategy that involved monitoring the rail lines-ensuring the state’s presence in order to prevent crimes-as well as strengthening its collaboration with the Central American consulates. In accordance with the above, regional visitor cards began to be issued in June 2014 but only for Guatemalan and Belizean citizens, without considering that the largest flow of transit migration in recent years has been by Hondurans. There were also announcements regarding developing intelligence actions to dismantle the organized crime gangs that run trafficking networks, human trafficking, and migrant extortion and kidnapping networks, strengthening the prosecutor’s offices for crimes against migrants, specialized government ministries and the participation of state human rights commissions, and establishing shelters operated by civil society.

The first lines of action covered by the PIFS were focused on investment in railway infrastructure, which opted for security measures, not for migrants but for the trains and the goods they transport. Consequently, there have been constant raids by the INM, supported by the Federal Police, the Army and Navy, resulting in increased vulnerability, greater exposure to risk, a diversification of routes and migrants once again being prohibited.

In this new scenario, the raids against migrants were justified under an ambiguous discourse of defending and protecting the migrants’ human rights. Miguel Ángel Osorio Chong, the Secretary of the Interior during the previous sexennium, stated weeks after the start of the program that the plan was not to attack or hurt but, rather, to prevent Central American migrants from boarding “the beast”⁷; the aim was, therefore, to protect them. In fact, and following the logic of the authorities, the success of the PIFS was felt only a few weeks after its implementation.

As a result of the ongoing operations implemented in that context, the number of migrants on the freight rail decreased considerably. The siege by the migration authorities played out not only on the rail lines; the operations expanded even to cities and towns where migrants ordinarily gathered to wait to for the next part of their journey and were carried out in the vicinity of shelters, dining halls and humanitarian aid centers. The limits of the southern border gradually expanded to practically the center of the country, with migration checkpoints and military inspection posts along the major highways, in order to detect migrants traveling in minibuses, buses, cars and trailers, as found by the organizations in the country that work with the migrant population in transit.

According to information from these organizations, the program had such an impact that in some cases, the aid provided to migrants dropped by up to 50% since its launch. This does not mean that migrants were no longer entering the country; rather, as mentioned earlier, they began to look for new alternatives, the majority of which were more risky, due to the need to hide from migration operations. Now the migrant population is improvising strategies, walking for days and weeks in uninhabited geographical spaces with extreme climates, in which-in addition to the natural vulnerability of these spaces-their vulnerability is enhanced by the impunity with which criminal groups attack migrants.

While it is true that there is no large-capacity migrant holding center in Jalisco, there is a center where people apprehended in the state of Jalisco, as well as some points near this geographical demarcation, are detained. This explains why the first operations recorded as part of the PIFS took place in this state, even though it does not have the infrastructure and sufficient conditions to house migrants. According to testimonies from migrants in transit and other people living along the rail lines, during the summer of 2015, the INM began to carry out up to two operations per week in the surrounding areas.

The scenarios described in this section reflect an increase in migration controls and the securitization of the migration policy, which have resulted not only in the multiplication of migration practices previously confined to the territorial limits of Mexico but have also undergone a process of externalization (^{Burridge et al., 2017}), namely, explicit efforts to involve more institutions-in this case, the Army and the Federal Police-and, of course, to extend throughout the national territory.

The double geographical imagination

The expansion and multiplication of borders is coupled with the selective nature of the borders, their function as tools to separate and differentiate, not only between different populations, but between goods and capital, and the migrant population in transit. However, contrary to what has occurred with the national migration policy, in these spaces, the federal authority is indifferent to the presence of migrants in the ZMG, except when they represent an obstacle to the free transit of goods and capital.

By law, the Federal Police cannot detain migrants in transit unless they commit a crime. The Federal Police’s role in relation to migrants in transit in the ZMG has therefore been based on frequent extortion and aggression and on protecting the free transit of goods that are transported along the rail lines.

In the ZMG, the train enters through the municipality of El Salto, and before Las Juntas in Tlaquepaque, the Federal Police force migrants to get off the train so that it can enter the yards. However, along that route, it is often possible to observe Federal Police patrols next to the tracks, hidden in the bushes. A driver on one of the trains that enters the ZMG claims that the Federal Police are not actually interested in the migrants traveling on the train: “Well…they hardly ever make them get off, only when the train’s cargo is valuable (...) They have to take care of the ‘merchandise,’ they don’t care about the migrants, except when they can get something out of them. They force them to get off to protect the train” (^{Mayordomo, 2014}).⁸

The same logic used by the Federal Police is replicated by Ferromex, the company that owns the largest railway route in Mexico, which crosses through Guadalajara. This company has hired private security to patrol the tracks along the train’s route through Mexico.

In the ZMG, a resident of the community of El Verde, in the municipality of El Salto, where the train arrives, says:

People who work for Eulen frequently pass through here. The other day, three migrants were outside my house waiting for me to bring them water, and when I went outside, they were already asking them questions, but I told them the migrants were staying at my house and they had to leave (^{habitante de El Verde, 2014}).

Both institutions, the Federal Police and Ferromex, shape a scenario in which migrants are transformed into a threat to the goods circulating through the country. In the capitalist system, there are no borders for goods; they are transported to other parts of the country and to the United States as symbols of progress and economic growth. The movement of migrants, however, is seen as a security threat. Doreen ^{Massey (2005}) has called this seemingly contradictory logic a “double geographical imagination,” where one is marked by mobility and borderlessness, while the other is marked by a strong border discipline. A double imagination works in favor of those who are already powerful. On the freight train, goods travel freely protected by the Federal Police and by Ferromex’s private security. The capitalist logic-underpinned by the state-legitimizes the right and power of companies to move their goods from one place to another with relative ease. However, the journey of the migrants who are traveling on the train has to be clandestine, exposing them to greater dangers without protection from the state, which, rather than assuming its responsibility to ensure the human rights and dignity of those in their territory, exposes them to greater vulnerability.

The (un)governmentality of migrants in transit

The strengthening of the trends in rebordering work as we have seen: actions and strategies that take place in physical space (not necessarily confined to the territorial limits of a state) but that do not end with it, as they have a strong symbolic character that, in turn, accounts for the logic in which the state exercises its power over individuals.

Along these lines, in Society must be defended: lectures at the Collège de France, 1975-76, Foucault argues that a new regulatory technology for power emerged in the second half of the eighteenth century, no longer directed toward the body but toward the human race. In that sense, “biopolitics deals with the population as a political problem” for whom “regulatory mechanisms must be established to establish an equilibrium” (^{Foucault, [1976] 2003}). The direct consequence of this process has been the governmentalization of the state, where the relationship established between the government and the populations is based on aid policies, rather than participation. As a consequence, this

[… ] regime secures legitimacy not by the participation of citizens in matters of state but by claiming to provide well-being to the population. Its mode of reasoning is not deliberative openness but rather an instrumental notion of costs and benefits (^{Chatterjee, 2004}, p. 34).

Following Foucault, this state is intrinsically racist; that is to say, a state in which threats- whether internal or external to the population and from the population-are created and justified, and the “imperative to kill is acceptable only if it results not in a victory over political adversaries, but in the elimination of the biological threat” (^{Foucault, [1976] 2003, p. 256}). This elimination, Foucault clarifies, does not only mean “murder as such, but also every form of indirect murder: the fact of exposing someone to death, increasing the risk of death for some people, or, quite simply, political death, expulsion, rejection, and so on.” This is the power of the state that can “live and let die” (Foucault, [1976] 2003, p. 257).

As a result, the type of political relationship that the state establishes with the population is different than the relationship established with citizens. As ^{Chatterjee (2004}) points out, many inhabitants are “only […] ambiguously and contextually, rights-bearing citizens in the sense imagined by the constitution. They are not, therefore, proper members of civil society” (Chatterjee, 2004, p. 38). But-and in this Chatterjee is emphatic-as populations, they have to be controlled and managed by government agencies, and the relationship that the state establishes with them is always contextual and temporary.

^{Foucault ([1976] 2003)} and ^{Chatterjee’s (2004}) arguments present useful points for analyzing the case of migration in transit through the ZMG. First, the local authorities, confronted with the presence of migrants in transit in the city, are reluctant to recognize the nature of the subjects traversing the city as subjects of law, rather than merely aid. Migrants in transit traveling on freight trains, whether documented or undocumented, travel in “the margins” in clandestine means of transport along uncertain routes and therefore resist and escape the authorities’ efforts to count them, categorize them, and stabilize them in certain places. Moreover, their almost invariably temporary stay in the city makes it more difficult for the authorities to classify and control them. Second, the local authorities reject any responsibility for the lives of migrants in transit, and the types of relationships they establish with them-when they do-are based on fragile and temporary aid policies. Third, through racist logistics, such as those explained by Foucault, the local authorities have framed migrants in transit as a health threat to citizens, i.e., as a biological threat.

In interviews conducted with the mayors of the municipalities of Zapopan and Guadalajara during the summer of 2014,⁹ it was clear that for the local authorities, the problem of migrants in transit is that it is impossible to know who they are, where they are, where they come from, and where they are going. When the Mayor of Zapopan was asked if he thought he was responsible for migrants in transit through his municipality, he replied: “Focusing attention on migrants becomes very difficult, first of all because we don’t know who they are. Yes, they are faces, but they are not names or surnames […] nor have we physically located them in any space” (^{alcande de Zapopan, 2014}). In this sense, from the perspective of the local authority, control and categorization are essential to the provision of services.

Within the governmentalization of the state, being a face, a human being, is not sufficient to access services or even be recognized as a subject of law, as one also needs to have a name, an identity that the state can verify. During the same interview, the mayor was asked his opinion about the idea of establishing a transit migrant visa, to allow them to cross through Mexico. His response was:

That would help a lot, to have a standard, to have a clearer vision of where they are and what they are doing and to be able to add them to or include them in the legal framework...and we would also have a record of who they are, where are they going, what their plans are (^{alcande de Zapopan, 2014}).

Migrants in transit make the local authorities anxious because they cannot be recognized by their statistical instruments, necessary for the provision of care and services, which implies classifying them into certain categories and spaces. Precisely to that end, in 2016, FM4 Paso Libre, working with the independent congressman Pedro Kumamoto, presented a bill called the Hospitality Law to the Jalisco Congress (^{El Informador, 2016}). This initiative was discussed alongside another bill presented by the congresswoman Juana Ceballos, a member of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (Partido Revolucionario Institucional - PRI), called the Law for the Protection and Aid of Migrants in the State (^{Aquino, 2016}). One of the most controversial points in the latter law was the adoption of article four, which established that migrants were required by law to show documentation proving their identity as requested by the appropriate authorities as well as to provide personal information and data requested by state institutions. The argument put forward by the congresswoman who made the proposal was precisely to be able to create identification and control mechanisms that would be necessary in order for migrants to access state services.

Interestingly, it was the National Human Rights Commission (Comisión Nacional de Derechos Humanos-CNDH) itself that, one month after the adoption of that law in October 2017, found it to be unconstitutional, as the aforementioned article violated the rights of the migrant population, specifically those referring to freedom of transit, personal integrity, personal security, privacy and protection of personal data.

The perception of illegality, linked to the need to surveil and control using different instruments, increases the vulnerability of the irregular migrants located in the city. For the Mayor of Guadalajara in office at that time (2012-2015), the legal status of migrants is a fundamental concern “because creating a series of official programs means accepting or encouraging the phenomenon of migration” (^{alcalde de Guadalajara, 2014}). The racist character of the state is therefore manifested in the identification of an external threat that should not be encouraged or should be contained.

The racist character of the state is also evident in the local authorities’ characterization of the migrants in transit: not only as a security threat but also as a health threat. In March 2013, a councilwoman on the Zapopan City Council¹⁰ presented an initiative to open a shelter for migrants in the municipality. According to the proposal presented at city hall, the aim of the shelter would be to provide humanitarian aid to migrants in transit: a place to rest, eat and take a shower. However, an additional concern was noted in the text of the initiative. According to the councilwoman, when she was drafting the initiative, the Jalisco Ministry of Health warned that migrants in transit from Central America represented a source of infection, as carriers of diseases that had already been eradicated in Mexico, but not in those countries. Migrants in transit thus also became a biological threat that had to be properly contained and controlled. When the councilwoman was interviewed, she said: “We need to know who is coming into our house, who is leaving, who has been vaccinated, who hasn’t. Above all, we are thinking about the locals” (^{regidora de Zapopan, 2014}). Thus, as Foucault described, state racism operates by creating an external threat, represented by the bodies of the migrants in transit, bodies from which citizens living in areas near the rail lines must be protected. This is how a symbolic border is drawn-based on a supposed biological threat-between those who belong and those who do not.

There are several government initiatives in the municipalities of Guadalajara and Zapopan to construct migrant shelters in the ZMG. In fact, the construction of shelters has been one of the only proposals that municipal governments have presented related to migration in transit through the region. Shelters are essential for local authorities because they give them the opportunity to control and stabilize the bodies of the migrant population in a particular place. What is actually important is not the need for comprehensive humanitarian aid given the abandonment and risk to which migrants in transit through Mexico are exposed but, rather, to provide spaces that do not break with the established social imaginaries and preserve the city from unauthorized bodies.

These proposals, such as that of public shelters for migrants, are tenuous (none have become solidified); for the local authorities, support for migrants can only be based on an aid model. For the Mayor of Guadalajara, “The participation of the municipal authority could only be of a humanitarian nature, and it has to do with establishing some measures to support those in this situation, but it could only be aid” (^{alcalde de Guadalajara, 2014}). This statement highlights the fragile, circumstantial and temporary nature of any involvement by the local government related to migration in transit.

To date, neither state laws nor municipal regulations have taken the necessary actions to align their regulatory frameworks with the provisions of the 2011 Migration Law and the 2014-2018 Special Migration Program, nor have any programs or projects that comply institutionally with the mandate in the Constitution been established. According to the Mayor of Zapopan, “[…] I don't want to call it neglect but, perhaps, indifference from the INM. The federal government has never provided any programs to the municipalities” (^{alcande de Zapopan, 2014}). It is precisely through this institutional indifference that authorities at all levels-exercising the sovereign power referred to by Foucault-decide to ignore migrants as political subjects, denying them a political existence and delineating a symbolic border between citizens and the rest. As a result, the authorities assume no responsibility for transit migration, which works to make it invisible.

Accordingly, state practices at the local level have been based not on the persecution of migrants or the establishment of greater migration controls but on efforts to categorize, name and identify the migrant population, to maintain and locate them in a specific space. The practices of the state-its governmentalization-are therefore translated into tactics to make them visible, which according to ^{Tazzioli and Walters (2016}), are techniques for controlling and detecting migrants’ movements. In other words, at the local level, state institutions have focused on making visible, categorizing and stabilizing the migrant population in order to have control over it, as well as to be able-if appropriate-to eliminate the biological threats that, it is argued, they may come to represent.