Security and border security from different paradigms in Latin America

In the United States (U.S.)-Mexico relationship, security and border security are vitally important, strategic, and fundamental issues because they affect the binational (^{Curzio, 2006}) and regional agenda, including Central American countries. In this regard, this study is the first approach to the human security paradigm and the region’s security and migration issues. The reflection on human mobility flows is based on analyzing the caravan’s context at the end of 2018 and U.S. immigration policies during 2017 and 2018. The study does not include U.S. and Mexico immigration policies during 2019, which are the subject matter of other studies by this author soon to be published.

Border security is the knowledge and long-standing practice undertaken in the center and the periphery of city-states, empires, and civilizations of the past as well as in modern nation-states to regulate the commercial and cultural flow of goods, ideas, and people. However, as a systematized and practiced concept and as a theoretical, technical, and political matter, it is still being questioned and shaped.

There is extensive literature on the subject of security in general, but very little on border security. The hegemonic approach to security is based on the traditional state security paradigm; however, a new approach, the human security paradigm, is developing and consolidating itself with much momentum. This approach is very different from the hegemonic perspective. It is committed to becoming a real and relevant alternative given the significant challenges facing the world’s borders.

The traditional approach to security based on a military vision of punitive nature, and its orientation toward weapons acquired came to be after the Treaty of Westphalia of 1648, when the state became the center of modernity. The bases of the modern state and national sovereignty emanated therefrom and were shaped by the “Peace of Westphalia” and the hegemonic security paradigm of modern days: the state security paradigm.

After that treaty, the state became the center of public life in international and domestic affairs. The state and its sovereign, at that time, the king, was what ^{Hobbes (2001)} termed the Leviathan—following the biblical metaphor—, a monster with extraordinary powers, free, sovereign, and independent, which no one could question, much less challenge internally or externally. Every public matter had to be carried out with the sovereign’s vigilance and consent. The king was responsible for guaranteeing his subjects’ security, watching over territorial integrity, taking care of the borders, and protecting the state and its institutions (at the time of enlightened despotism, the king was the state). Elements that formed what was initially called state security and was later named national security.

Over time, it became clear that the king was not the state nor did sovereignty reside in him. Nowadays, the state is much more than its leaders, and sovereignty is more distributed. Liberal and social-democratic theories assert that the state and its institutions have checks and balances that, in principle, guarantee a less authoritarian and a more pluralistic and democratic exercise of power. However, the realist concept of sovereignty built by ^{Hobbes (2001)} and reaffirmed by ^{Carl Schmitt (2001)} remains on top. It is currently clear that the king is not the state and that the state is more than its leaders. The state is a set of institutions; the staff who manage and work in these institutions; laws, rules, and regulations; a particular condensation of the network of relationships of power, dominion, and strength that goes through society (^{Osorio, 2004}). Nowadays, it is evident that the nation is not the same as the state, its institutions, and its leaders. A fundamental distinction when reflecting on security-related issues.

In Latin America, the distinctions between sovereignty, nation, state, and government are fundamental because, during the Cold War, the state security paradigm was used as a national security discourse, especially via the National Security Doctrine (NSD) (^{Cavalla Rojas, 1979}).

The national security discourse argues that the security of the population, the security of an entire nation and its territory are the same as the security and protection of the governments in power, who exercise power from State institutions. Countless injustices were committed in Latin America under that argument.

The national security discourse justified its actions by arguing that citizens’ protection, territorial integrity, and the entire nation’s interests were the same. However, as evidenced by the NSD (under which all the troops, cadets, and army officers of Latin America were academically and militarily trained during the Cold War), it safeguarded interests alien to that of the nations where this narrative and practice was exercised.

In Latin America, it began in 1964, when the Brazilian military overthrew the elected president, Joao Goulart, and a new type of military dictatorship was established (^{Cavalla Rojas, 1979}). These are not transitional governments but regimes that intend to implement a political project—a new society and a new State—designated the National Security State (^{Cavalla Rojas, 1979}). The Brazilian experience and its political model, implemented by the U.S. government, through the Inter-American Defense System and the School of the Americas, presented itself as an alternative in different countries of the continent (^{Cavalla Rojas, 1979}), given the rise of mass politics in several countries.

The National Security State model had its ideological and geopolitical basis in the NSD. This doctrine was promoted by courses and texts, such as General Augusto Pinochet’s, on the constituent elements of the state, which spread through the curricula of institutes, academies, and military and war schools throughout the continent.

National security was defined as follows by the officers that preconized it: national security is the capacity of the state to guarantee its survival, maintaining its sovereignty and material and spiritual independence, preserving its way of life, and enabling the achievement of its fundamental objectives (^{Medina Lois, 1979}). This definition provides evidence that supports the vision of linking the national with the state, institutional, and governmental spheres. From our perspective, the NSD aimed to counteract the Cuban Revolution’s influence (December 1959) on the rest of Latin America.

Authoritarian governments that used the NSD to justify their actions and human rights violations include Nicaragua with Somoza; Paraguay with Stroessner; Mexico with Díaz Ordaz, Echeverría, and other presidents; Cuba with Batista, before the revolution, and Chile with Pinochet, after the military coup against Allende’s government, among many other dictators and authoritarian governments in Latin America.

From this perspective, security is focused on the state, its institutions, and its governments, not on people. Recognizing the political, economic, and military use given by the previously mentioned governments to the concept of national security reveals how the state security paradigm (on which the NSD was based) was focused on protecting the state, its institutions, and authoritarian governments, not its citizens.

The criticism against the NSD and the state security paradigm focused on the abuses committed by calling national security to something that had nothing to do with the nation, its citizens, its territory and economies, its needs and interests, its dreams, and its legitimate aspirations. Human security, not to be confused with national security, emphasizes people and their rights, not the state, its institutions, and its leaders.

The new security concept of human security emerges from a critique of the old military-inspired punitive state-based security model that encouraged the arms race. Our proposal for human security coincides with the—quite tardy—liberal-idealist response to the conservative-realist proposal of state security that has prevailed in international relations since the Treaty of Westphalia. ^{Vicenç Fisas (1998)}, founder of the Escuela de Paz [School of Peace] in Barcelona, states that:

[...] the concept of security has been dominated (or abducted) by its military expression, and more specifically by its armament component, so that for decades, in many countries, a fiction was created that with a higher accumulation of weapons and military force, a country or an alliance of countries could obtain more security (^{Fisas, 1998, p. 247}).

The first criticisms of this model of militarist and armament-based security were expressed by different social movements in favor of human rights worldwide, but in an energetic and specific way, among the social movements opposed to the war in Vietnam and the international movement for peace in Central America. Criticism was also observed in the heart of the United Nations (U.N.). However, it was not until the Human Development Report of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP; PNUD in Spanish) in 1994 where we can see a more elaborate discourse and better-documented criticism replicated in subsequent U.N. documents.

Since the U.N.’s creation in 1945, human rights and peace issues have been marginalized from the U.N.’s organizational and programmatic structure. Despite the efforts of its creators, these issues were not addressed beyond the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (^{De Alba & Genina, 2016}). The phrases of freedom from fear and freedom from poverty, incorporated in the Declaration, were used for the first time by U.S. president Franklin Delano Roosevelt in his speech before Congress on January 6, 1941, in which he enumerated the four freedoms that would guide the United States approach to the world: freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from poverty, and freedom from fear (^{IIDH-PNUD, 2017}). Freedom from poverty and freedom from fear were mentioned in the Atlantic Charter, signed on August 14, 1941, by Great Britain’s Prime Minister Winston Churchill and President Roosevelt (^{IIDH-PNUD, 2017}).

The effort to nurture the human rights topic within the U.N. stems from the organization’s origins: the U.N. Charter. However, topics on security and the fight against international terrorism after September 11, 2001, have predominated both in the organization’s structure and the content of its programs. After the end of the Cold War, the leading promoter of U.N. reforms was Boutros-Ghali (1992-1996). Nevertheless, Ambassador Luis Alfonso de Alba points out that it was not until the Kofi Annan period (1997-2006) when they were able to place human rights on the same level as security. For de Alba, Annan’s outstanding achievement was linking human rights and security (^{De Alba & Genina, 2016}).

As previously stated, where the human security paradigm is given shape and content—by incorporating a comprehensive vision of security and linking it with topics of peace construction, human development, and human rights—was in the UNDP’s 1994 Human Development Report (Figure 1). In it, the UNDP exhibits the excesses of arms expenditures during the Cold War and introduces what it called peace dividend (^{PNUD, 1994}).

Source: ^{PNUD (1994)}

Figure 1. UNDP’s Peace Dividend  

The figure shows the peace dividend from UNDP’s 1994 report. It became a world-famous image because it showed the historical excesses in global military spending (its highest point being in 1987, during the cold war) and having a potential peace dividend to invest in the construction of peace, as indicated by the legend that accompanied the image:

The figure above shows a decrease in military spending worldwide from 1978 to 2000, resulting in a peace dividend of 935 billion dollars. Regrettably, the peace dividend has not been used to finance worldwide social programs.

Another 460 billion dollars could be obtained as a peace dividend if military spending worldwide decreased by 3% per year during the 1995-2000 period. The World Summit for Social Development, to be held in 1995, provides an opportunity to reach an agreement to gain the peace dividend and to better apply it to human development (^{PNUD, 1994}, Spanish version cover page).

However, hope was short-lived, military expenses continued, and there was no investment for peace initiatives. Although global military expenditure decreased during the 1990s, expenditures were increasing by the end of that decade. This increase, intensified by the events on September 11, 2001, financed the war against international terrorism, as reported by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (^{SIPRI, 2018}).

Source: ^{SIPRI (2018)}.

Figure 2. World military spending by region (1988-2018) Note: The 1991 total for Europe was not calculated since no data is available for the Soviet Union that year.  

The concept of human security continued to evolve, and its concepts, principles, and strategies were distinctly defined. The 2005 World Summit and the report In larger freedom: towards development, security, and human rights for all (^{De Alba & Genina, 2016}), from Secretary-General Kofi Annan, introduced in March of the same year, presented a new U.N. program based on the human security paradigm.

According to the Human Security in Latin America project by the IIHR-UNDP, the concept of human security consists in protecting the vital essence of all human lives from critical (serious) and pervasive (generalized) threats to enhance human freedom and for the full realization of the human being (^{IIDH-PNUD, 2017}). This concept integrates the two freedoms mentioned in the 1941 Atlantic Charter, signed by Roosevelt and Churchill—the freedom from fear and the freedom from poverty (or need)—and the freedom to live with dignity. According to the ^{IIDH-PNUD (2017)}, they are defined as follows:

Freedom from fear: involves protecting people from direct threats to their safety and physical integrity; it includes the different forms of violence that can arise from external States, from the action of the state against its citizens, from the actions of some groups against others and the actions of people against other people.

Freedom from need or poverty: refers to protecting people so they can meet their basic needs, their livelihoods, and the economic, social, and environmental aspects of their lives.

Freedom to live with dignity: refers to the protection and empowerment of people to be free from violence, discrimination, and exclusion. In this context, human security goes beyond the absence of violence. It recognizes the existence of other threats to human beings, which can affect their survival (physical abuse, violence, persecution, or death), their livelihoods (unemployment, food insecurity, health threats), or their dignity (human rights violations, inequality, exclusion, discrimination).

From our perspective, the human security paradigm represents an excellent contribution for two reasons: firstly, because it integrates and links the three freedoms (from fear, from need, and to live with dignity); and secondly, because it articulates and links the three freedoms with the U.N.’s three pillars and purposes: the promotion of peace and international security by promoting human development and respect for human rights.

This paradigm is centered on people, not on geopolitical interests or groups, as was the NSD. It partakes from an integral vision of each context, which allows for the interaction of multiple actors guided by the driving force of joint or shared responsibility, which fosters cooperation, multilateral negotiation, and governance by empowering different actors.

The following diagram, created by the ^{IIDH-PNUD (2017)} Human Security in Latin America project, clearly summarizes the freedoms, strategies, and principles of the human security paradigm.

Source: ^{IIDH-PNUD (2017)}

Figure 3. Human security paradigm strategies  

^{Fisas (1998)} presents a comparative table that synthesizes the differences between the guiding principles of the two security paradigms:

These concepts, strategies, and principles were well applied in the Central America Peace Accords and its conceptual and diplomatic predecessors: the Contadora Act² and Esquipulas Peace Agreements. ^{Hernández García (2018)} states the following:

[...] the bases for the solution of the Central American armed conflict were stipulated at the Esquipulas II summit, held on August 7, 1987, when the leaders of those five Central American nations (Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua) signed the Procedure for the establishment of a firm and lasting peace in Central America, known as the Esquipulas II Accords, which was proposed by President Óscar Arias of Costa Rica and was inspired by the Contadora Act (^{Hernández García, 2018, p. 44}).

Peace agreements that, from our perspective, were sabotaged by U.S. immigration and drug policies³.

Immigration and drug policies influence the States’ security agenda-setting and orienting the border security strategies that they adopt. These are fundamental issues when viewed from the perspective of the current context and debate on border security, both in Mexico with the Programa Frontera Sur [Southern Border Program] and the U.S. with its zero-tolerance and Close the border policies, as we will see later.

Border security

Besides their realist focus and scarcity, studies on border security are extensively empirical— they predominantly analyze the case of the U.S.-Mexico border— but their theoretical development is limited. For the realist focus and being empirical, we highlight the studies by ^{Ramos (2004}, ²⁰⁰²⁾ and ^{Noricumbo Robles (2017)}, and for limited theoretical development, the study by ^{Solar Mulas (2014)}.

As in most security strategies, the hegemonic approach to border security, the realist one, is of militarist-punitive character based on the NSD and the state security paradigm. Therefore, our theoretical and methodological proposal to analyze security, violence, and human rights at the borders is based on the human security paradigm described previously, the perspective of the International Political Economy (IPE), and the Illicit International Political Economy (IIPE), used by ^{Fuentes Flores (2017)}.

To study border security, ^{Fuentes Flores (2017)} investigated illicit markets and related crimes linked with the flows, routes, and international criminal networks originating and spreading in the border regions. These crimes can range from goods trafficking—due to the different prices in neighboring states— to extortion, rape, kidnapping, drug trafficking, weapons trafficking, and human trafficking.

The latter perspective is highly relevant because the border area experiences a concentrated version of all the different types of violence in Mexico. There are reports of extortion, sexual assaults, kidnappings, police abuse, and crimes perpetrated by gangs that operate along the migrant route (^{Alianza Américas, 2016}).

Given the above, what can be done locally, nationally, and regionally if it is an international phenomenon? The phenomenon cannot be fully addressed locally and nationally and needs international collaboration.

Given the international characteristics of the phenomenon, from the perspective of Geography of Peace, the public security (a local, civil, military expression of the state security paradigm) approach is limited, and a new perspective is necessary. A comprehensive perspective based on a regional and territorial vision; but above all, based on the human security paradigm, guided by the principle of shared responsibility, and considering the IPE and the IIPE.

For Fisas (1998), the principle of shared responsibility is the essence of the new security paradigm. This idea differentiates it from the state security and national security paradigm. For this author, the Palme Commission of the late seventies laid the foundations:

On which all security policies must be built in order to successfully focus on the turn of the century and the millennium: conflict prevention, transparency, confidence-building measures, the non-aggressive nature of forces and doctrine, demobilization, disarmament, and ecological security. These proposals have been developed based on the conviction that they are political, economic, demographic, and environmental factors. Apart from the militaristic excesses that are causing insecurity at the regional and global scales, these problems can not be solved by classic military security instruments (^{Fisas, 1998, p. 248}).

The principle of shared security is a proposal opposite to what is observed at the U.S.-Mexico border, where punitive, militaristic, and NSD based policies were established along the U.S.-Mexico border since 2001, after the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington. The new security office created after these attacks (the Department of Homeland Security or DHS) has not changed its security policies approach to date. On the contrary, it has moved to another level with the close the border policy of the U.S. administration. A policy that, unfortunately, the Mexican government under Enrique Peña Nieto’s administration reproduced through the Southern Border Program.

Migratory crisis, historical crisis. Refugee crisis, current crisis. Regional context and some history to better understand current challenges

The migratory caravans of late 2018 revealed migratory and refugee crises. At the end of November 2018, approximately 3 700 migrants were camped in the Benito Juárez sports center located in Tijuana, Baja California, Mexico (^{Notimex, 2018}). This camp surprised politicians, the media, and local citizens. However, the migration crisis is not new; it is old, as described in the following.

The migration of Mexican, Central American, Caribbean, and South American migrants to the United States is not new; it has existed for at least four or five decades.

According to ^{Durand (2017)}, 11 million Mexicans currently reside in the United States (Figure 4). According to the ^{Pew Research Center (2017)}, in 2015, 35 757 893 people of Mexican origin resided in the United States, of which 24 250 184 were of Mexican origin and the rest, 11 507 709, were born in Mexico. Adding the 20 718 884 people of non-Mexican Hispanic origin currently residing in the United States makes 56 476 777 people, of which 63.3 percent are of Mexican origin.

Source: Adapted from ^{Durand (2017)}.

Figure 4. Increase of Mexican migrants according to the United States census 1970-2010  

Possible causes of this decrease were the 2008 U.S. housing market crash, which generated an economic slowdown—that stabilized in Barack Obama’s second term (2012-2016)—, and the increased violence in Mexico that began in December 2006, when then- President Felipe Calderón (2006-2012) initiated the failed “Estrategia contra las Drogas” [Strategy against drugs]. This war strategy triggered violence in Mexico, with more than 250 000 people killed during Felipe Calderon´s term (^{Díaz Carnero, 2017a})—particularly in the U.S-Mexico border—after police operatives and military personnel deployed throughout Mexico. For example, in Ciudad Juárez, 2 026 military and 425 federal agents were deployed in 2008 (^{Sedena, 2008}).

As a result of the increased violence following the policy of war against the drug cartels, the transit through Mexico for Central American migrants became hellish. In 2010, the massacre in San Fernando, Tamaulipas, represented the assassination of 72 migrants who had been abducted and tortured; the bodies of 193 people were found in unmarked graves in San Fernando in April 2011. Additionally, in May 2012, 49 abandoned torsos were found in Cadereyta, Nuevo León (^{Redodem, 2015}).

Source: ^{Pew Research Center (2018)}.

Figure 5. Number of undocumented migrants in the United States. (in millions)  

However, in this extreme violence context, migrant flows continued and began to increase in 2014, with the unaccompanied child and adolescent (CAA) crisis. This increase can be observed in the increase in people requesting asylum in Mexico for humanitarian reasons.

According to the Migration Policy Unit of Mexico’s Ministry of the Interior (UPM-SEGOB), in 2018, 11 459 Humanitarian Visitors Cards were issued (TVRH), of which 4 410 were applicants from Honduras, 3 478 from Venezuela, 3 208 from El Salvador, 596 from Guatemala, and 269 from Nicaragua. The number of cards issued in 2014 was only 623, and it began to increase exponentially with 1 481 in 2015, which more than doubled in 2016 with 3 971 and 9 642 in 2017.

Ernesto Rodríguez, quoted by ^{Paris Pombo (2017)}, points out that the highest number of Central Americans in transit through Mexico was registered in 2005, with 418 000 people, decreasing the following six years and reaching a minimum of 126 000 in 2011; this was followed by an increase reaching 392 000 in 2014 and a slight decrease in 2015 to 377 000 (^{Paris Pombo, 2017, p.14}).

There is an estimated flow of 250 000 and 350 000 people illegally transiting through Mexico since 2015, most of them Central Americans. What was different at the end of 2018? They did not transit alone; they were in a caravan to face the risks of traveling through Mexico, a country with more than 250 000 murders since 2006 (^{Díaz Carnero, 2017a}), more than 37 000 missing people (^{Excelsior, 2018}), and almost 2 000 unmarked graves (^{Political Animal, 2018}).

The caravans of 2018 made visible the phenomenon of migratory transit through Mexico. Caravans are not a new phenomenon in Mexico. The migrant Via Crucis [Way of the Cross] departed in March 2018 with approximately 1 000 to 1 500 people; it has been departing yearly since 2010. The Caravana de Madres de Migrantes Desaparecidos [Caravan of Mothers of Missing Migrants], consisting of mothers who seek their children, has, as they refer to it, “fourteen years of struggle and hope” (^{Movimiento Migrante Mesoamericano, 2018}).

When this article was written, at the beginning of 2019, it was clear that this was not a caravan but an exodus, as migrants who were already in Mexico joined the caravans that traveled through Mexico in October and November 2018 (^{El Colegio de la Frontera Norte, 2018}). Migrants decided to join caravans to make themselves visible and not be in conditions of higher vulnerability and risk.

Closed border versus shared responsibility

From the Geography of Peace viewpoint (^{Díaz Carnero, 2018}), the closed-border policy implemented in 2017 by the U.S. administration is based on five strategies: a) mass denial of asylum rights to Mexicans and Central Americans who request it; b) the detention and mass deportation of migrants and asylum-seekers; c) family separation; d) the militarization of the U.S.-Mexican border; and finally, e) the unilateral practice of the United States naming Mexico as a de facto “safe third country”—asylum seekers entering the United States through the U.S.-Mexico border have to await the conclusion of their process in Mexican territory. The U.S. president’s executive order from January 25, 2017, entitled Border Security and Immigration Enforcement Improvements, proposed returning applicants from other countries to neighboring territories, as in Mexico, to wait for their hearings in United States Immigration Courts.⁷

Regrettably, many of the U.S.-Mexico border policy strategies were accepted and replicated by Enrique Peña Nieto’s administration (2012-2018) along Mexico’s southern border through the Southern Border Program.⁸ According to Proceso, during Peña Nieto’s presidency, 691 000 Central Americans were forcibly returned to their home countries under this program (^{Tourliere, 2018b, p. 16}).

Together with the discourse of fear and hate that criminalizes the migrant and links migration with organized crime, drug and weapons trafficking, these five strategies intensify the humanitarian crisis along the border and put the migrants and asylum seekers at higher risk and vulnerability.

Asylum denial

Immigration courts in the United States are not part of the judicial branch, but the executive branch, through the Department of Justice, vastly consisting of former border agents. Additionally, as politicians, the media, and civil society organizations have pointed out, these courts are on the verge of collapse with more than 700 000 pending cases.

The Hope Border Institute (HOPE) reported that U.S. immigration courts are indeed about to collapse: they have 650 000 pending cases (^{HOPE, 2018}). According to El País’s Washington correspondent, as of June 2018, there were 700 000 pending immigration court cases (^{Mars, 2018}) of every type: asylum, refuge, change of immigration status, etc. ^{Tourliere (2018b)} stated that, in December 2018, the United States received 93 000 asylum claims from people at the U.S.-Mexico border. People have to wait between six months and two years to receive a government response since there are currently 300 000 pending requests.

Using TRAC information, ^{HOPE (2018)} reported that the U.S. border patrol’s El Paso sector leads the asylum denial rate in the United States, reaching levels between 93.7 and 99.4 percent for individual judges in 2016, and with similar rates in 2017, well above the national average of 61.8 percent.

According to Rafael Alarcón (cited by ^{Heras, 2018}), during 2016, the Obama administration approved 20 455 asylum cases, of which 22 percent were for Asians, 11 for Salvadorans, 10 for Guatemalans, 7 for Hondurans, and only 5 percent for Mexicans (1,000 requests). Compared with the data presented by TRAC (^{HOPE, 2018}), it shows a continued asylum-denying trend and increased denials with the next administration, especially for Mexicans and Central Americans (Figure 6).

Source: ^{HOPE (2018)}

Figure 6. U.S. asylum denial by nationality (2017)  

Source: ^{HOPE (2018)}.

Figure 7. Percentage of denied and approved asylum cases in the United States (2017)  

A consequence of the closed border policy is the increase in Mexico’s refugee applications. According to UPM-SEGOB and the Mexican Commission for Refugee Assistance (COMAR), refugee applications in Mexico increased by more than 2 200 percent between 2013 and 2018 (^{SEGOB, 2018}). In 2013, the COMAR had 1 296 applications; in 2018, it registered 29 600, demonstrating the current refugee crisis.

Mexico granted refugee status to 22.5 percent of applicants between 2013 and 2017. According to the COMAR, 30 249 applications were received during this period, and only 6,819 people were granted refugee status.

Family separation

The family separation policy used on families detained by the U.S. border patrol and on asylum-seeking families reinforces the U.S.’s closed border policy. In the middle of 2018, by order of then-Attorney General Jeff Sesions and under the Executive Order entitled Border Security and Immigration Enforcement Improvements (January 25, 2017), the U.S. government began a Zero Tolerance policy consisting of separating migrant children and adolescents from their parents.

According to El País—referencing Reuters—, from October 2016 to February 2018, there were close to 1 800 family separations (^{Mars, 2018}, unnumbered). Additionally— referencing the Associated Press—, between April 19 and June 6, 2018, 2 033 children were separated from their parents when trying to enter the United States illegally at U.S. border crossings (^{Mars, 2018}, unnumbered). In mid-2018, the United States had 11 351 migrant children distributed in a hundred detention centers (^{Mars, 2018}).

Part of the 11 351 CAA in U.S. custody were 5 700 minors in centers from the non-governmental organization Southwest Key, and above all, the 1 500 “lost” children that Trump’s administration could not find and the 1 700 minors still detained at Tornillo detention center (^{Mars, 2018}).

The latter is an improvised center built with tents in the middle of the El Paso desert. Human rights organizations liken it to a concentration camp for minors, lacking the necessary infrastructure or trained professional and specialized personnel to provide adequate care and accommodate minors.

A tragedy occurred in December 2018: Jakelin Ameí Rosmery Caal Maquin, aged 7 (born in Rauxruha, Guatemala, in 2011) and Felipe Gómez-Alonso, aged 9 (born in Yalambojoch, Guatemala, in 2010) died while under U.S. Border Patrol custody. Jakelin died on December 8 at a hospital in El Paso, Texas, and Felipe died on December 24 in Alamogordo, New Mexico. According to their families, both died from influenza, contracted while under the Border Patrol’s custody.

Detention and deportation

Part of the family separation policy and to reinforce the asylum and refugee status denial strategy is the immigrant detention and deportation strategy. A precursor to U.S. immigration policy’s containment logic was observed during the George W. Bush administration (2001-2009).

George W. Bush signed the Secure Fence Act in October 2006; the main objectives were “to increase Border Patrol size, deploy elements of the National Guard, and authorize a security fence for hundreds of miles along the border” (^{Noricumbo Robles, 2017}, unnumbered). The increase in the number of border agents, which totaled 8 580 in 2000, increased to 11 032 by 2006. At the end of the Bush and the beginning of Obama’s administration in 2008, it was 15 442, to reach the official figure of 17 026 at the end of Obama’s administration. According to El País, in May 2018, the Border Patrol detained:

[...]51 912 people from Mexico, more than double the 19 940 arrests for May 2017. For the third consecutive month, apprehensions remained above 50 000 and continued to rise. However, the figure for May remains below the 55 442 from May 2016 and the 68 804 from May 2014, during Barack Obama’s Democrat administration (^{Faus, 2018, unnumbered)}.

According to ^{HOPE (2018)}, the chronic judicial delay experienced by U.S. immigration courts prolongs the waiting and detention process for immigrants and increases the government’s detention costs, known as bed rates. The current administration wants to increase detention beds, of which 34 000 are legally assigned to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), to 80 000, which is why it has authorized contracts with private detention centers in South Texas. In addition to long detention periods, there are fast-track deportations. HOPE (2018) observed that 11 percent of detained asylum-seekers were deported in immigration courts during preliminary hearings or the bail process, which means that many were deported before their application process was over (^{HOPE, 2018, p, 19}).

Mexico uses a similar strategy. According to Jan Jarab, a representative in Mexico of the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mexico uses a policy known as the 3Ds—detection, detention, and deportation—based on punishment and deterrence (^{Tourliere, 2018a}). According to the official, we cannot allow the deterrence policy to be the paradigm (^{Tourliere, 2018a, p, 47}).

Official data shows that, between January 2013 and April 2018, agents of the National Migration Institute (INM) detained 138 362 Central American migrants—55 000 of them under 12 years of age—, and nine out of every ten were deported (^{Tourliere, 2018a}). These children were part of the 625 000 Central American migrants who were returned to their home countries by Mexican authorities during Enrique Peña Nieto’s presidency at a rate of 321 per day.

Between January and July 2017, the INM arrested 53 301 foreigners, of whom 44 663 were deported. In the same period, the number of Central American migrants from El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua detained by the INM was 43 916, of which 42 600 were deported, representing 95.65 percent of the detained migrants (^{Soberanes, 2018}, unnumbered).

The report noted that between January and July 2018, the number of Central Americans detained by the INM was 65 823, of which 57 087 were deported (^{Soberanes, 2018}, unnumbered); that is, 86.72 percent. As a comparison, in 2016, Obama’s final year, Mexico deported 50 000 more people than the United States (Figure 8).

Source: ^{Mars (2018)}.

Figure 8. People deported by the United States and Mexico during 2016  

Militarization

In October 2018, the U.S. administration mobilized 5 200 army members to the U.S.-Mexico border to “stop the invasion and support border agents.” These army members would join the more than 18 000 Border Patrol agents and 2 092 National Guard members who had been deployed in April 2018. Joining these were 1000 CBP officers supported by Black hawk helicopters and C-130 and C-17 cargo planes (^{BBC News, 2018}).

The U.S. President’s vision for the U.S.-Mexico border is modeled after that of the border between the two Koreas (^{CNN Español, 2018}). In a March 2018 speech, President Donald Trump said that if the United States spent millions to maintain the South Korean border, the same could be done for the Mexican border: fortify and militarize it. The border between the two Koreas is home to 32 000 soldiers, and it is heavily guarded over the four-kilometer belt known paradoxically as the “Korean demilitarized zone.”