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FRONTERA NORTE VOL. 33, ART. 1, 2021
https://doi.org/10.33679/rfn.v1i1.2071
1
Frontera Norte is an annual digital journal published by El Colegio de la Frontera Norte.
https://fronteranorte.colef.mx
Notes on border security along the U.S.-Mexico border faced with human mobility
and from the human security paradigm
Apuntes sobre la seguridad fronteriza en la frontera México-Estados Unidos ante
la movilidad humana y desde el paradigma de la seguridad humana
Emiliano Ignacio Díaz Carnero
1
ABSTRACT:
This study provides an initial approach to the human security paradigm, border security, and
migration issues along the U.S.-Mexico border. It is based on the Geography of peace, a perspective
that unifies critical geography (geopolitics based on political economy and historical-geographical
materialism), human rights, and studies on peace and conflict transformation. We propose a paradigm
shift in border security, moving from a State-centered approach to national security to one focused
on people and their rights, guided by the principle of shared responsibility. This study seeks to
promote a paradigm shift providing strategies and specific courses of action that contribute to
achieving the human security approach at the Mexican borders.
Keywords: 1. Border security, 2. human mobility, 3. human security, 4. migration, 5. U.S.-Mexico
border.
RESUMEN
El objetivo de este artículo es hacer una aproximación inicial tanto al paradigma de la seguridad
humana como a las cuestiones sobre seguridad fronteriza y migración en la frontera norte de México.
La aproximación es conceptual y se plantea desde la Geografía para la paz, que es una perspectiva
que articula los planteamientos de la geografía crítica (geografía política desde la economía política
y el materialismo histórico geográfico), los derechos humanos y los estudios de paz y de
transformación de conflictos. Las conclusiones se centran en proponer un cambio de paradigma en la
seguridad fronteriza, pasando de un enfoque de seguridad nacional centrado en el Estado a uno
enfocado en las personas y sus derechos, y guiado por el principio de responsabilidad compartida. A
pesar de ser una aproximación inicial, este artículo busca promover un cambio de paradigma para
aportar estrategias y líneas de acción concretas que contribuyan a materializar el enfoque de seguridad
humana en las fronteras de México.
Palabras claves: 1. Seguridad fronteriza, 2. movilidad humana, 3. seguridad humana, 4. migración,
5. frontera México-Estados Unidos.
Date received: December 3, 2019.
Date accepted: March 26, 2020.
Published online: January 15, 2021.
1
El Colegio de la Frontera Norte, Mexico, emilianodc@colef.mx, https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5576-
6482
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INTRODUCTION
In memory of Jakelin Ameí Rosmary Caal Maquin (7 years old) and
Felipe Gómez-Alonzo (9 years old), Guatemalan minors who died in
December 2018 while in the custody of the United States Border Patrol.
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.
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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
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Díaz Carnero, E. I.
4
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.
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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).
Figure 1. UNDP’s Peace Dividend
Source: PNUD (1994)
500
600
700
800
900
1000
1100
1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000
US$ billion
Military Expenditure Peace Dividend
Real Peace Dividend:
Potential Peace Dividend: 1995-2000
Total: 460 000 millon U.S. dollars
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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).
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.
Source: SIPRI (2018).
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.
0
500
1000
1500
2000
1988 1994 2000 2006 2012 2018
Military expenditure
(constant 2017 US$ billion)
Africa Americas Asia and Oceania Europe Middle East
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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.
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8
Figure 3. Human security paradigm strategies
Source: IIDH-PNUD (2017)
Fisas (1998) presents a comparative table that synthesizes the differences between the
guiding principles of the two security paradigms:
Table 1. Principles comparison
Old security model
New security model
Continuous accumulation of armaments
Disarmament
Aggressive nature of doctrines and
armaments
Non-aggressive defense
Deterrence
Appeasement
Interventionism
Peacekeeping forces
Conflict prevention
Militarization of science
Demilitarization
Arms industry development
Industry conversion
Uncontrolled arms trade
Trade control and transparency
Nuclear weapons proliferation
Nuclear disarmament
Enemy image creation
Tolerance, cooperation, understanding
Secrecy and lack of democratic control
of security
Transparency and participation
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Perception of threats
Confidence measures
Military-centered
Multidimensional
National security
Shared security, in common
Exclusive
Inclusive
Domination of the nation over the
multinational
Domination of the multinational
Empowerment of regional bodies
Culture of violence and force
Culture of peace
Statism
Multiplicity of actors
Military Blocks
Security organizations
Source: Fisas (1998, p.249)
These concepts, strategies, and principles were well applied in the Central America Peace
Accords and its conceptual and diplomatic predecessors: the Contadora Act
2
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 policies
3
.
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
2
There are two Contadora Act documents: the Document of Objectives from 1983 and the
Contadora Act on Peace and Co-operation in Central America from 1984 (Hernández
García, 2018).
3
From our perspective, peace agreements in Central America (CA) were sabotaged by two
external factors: U.S. punitive policies to combat drugs in general and Plan Colombia in
particular; and by U.S. immigration policies. When the sea-air route was closed with Plan
Colombia, the land route was opened through CA and Mexico.
Notes on border security along the U.S.-Mexico border faced with human mobility...
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10
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).
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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.
SECURITY, MIGRATION, AND MEMORY. NOTES ON THE CLOSE THE U.S.-
MEXICO BORDER POLICY OF THE U.S. ADMINISTRATION AND
MEXICO´S RESPONSE
Facing the migrant caravans at the end of 2018, the U.S. president stated that the United
States was at risk of invasion and that a national security threat existed (Malkin & Villegas,
2019). From his neorealist perspective in international relations
4
and his hate and fear-filled
discourse, he proposed walls and more military presence along the U.S.-Mexico border as a
border security strategy.
5
The discourse of hate and fear by the then U.S. president broadcast by the media in the
U.S. and Mexico reproduced the image or strong idea of “invasion and threat”, by linking
migration and insecurity, immigrants and criminality, and fostering a false image of a “crisis”
in border security. According to this narrative, a crisis threatened the “national security” of
the United States, which needed to be confronted with more military presence. From our
perspective, this narrative sought to create public opinion conditions so that the U.S.
president obtained both public-media support and economic-budgetary funds to construct the
new border wall. A wall he said would “guarantee” U.S. national security and would stop
“criminals,” drugs, and anything that puts the United States at risk.
However, is there truly a crisis, or is it a politically-motivated and invented crisis? Both,
currently there is a double humanitarian crisis along the US-Mexico border.
The first is a humanitarian refugee and forced displacement crisis in Mexico and Central
America, with thousands of people migrating and requesting international protection. The
result of two other very complex crises that need to be analyzed in depth: those in Mexico
4
Expressed in the U.S. exit from the U.N.'s Human Rights Council and the withdrawal of
the U.S. economic contribution to UNESCO because it recognized Palestine as a member
State of this U.N. agency, as well as the sabotage of multilateral dialogues and negotiations,
such as the one generated by the Global Compact for Migration, and the arbitrary departure
of the United States from the Paris Agreement on Climate Change and the Nuclear
Agreement with Iran.
5
See the “State of the Union” address by the U.S. president on January 8, 2019 (White House,
2019).
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12
and the countries of the Northern Triangle of Central America (Guatemala, Honduras, and
El Salvador). The Mexican crisis is one of insecurity and violence (Díaz Carnero, 2016) and
corruption and impunity (Díaz Carnero, 2017b). In the Northern Triangle of Central America,
the crisis is of insecurity and violence and of a political-institutional, environmental, and
social-economic nature.
The U.S. government created the second crisis with its immigration policy that avoids
both the United States’ historical migration issue and the constant and changing migratory
flow from Central America, which intensifies the humanitarian refugee crisis. This political
response affects the internal U.S. immigration policy and its foreign policy given the refugee
crisis of the 2018 caravans. This crisis has been manipulated and politically used by the U.S.
administration.
6
The U.S. government’s response to the migratory phenomenon and the refugee crisis,
which some call a “close the border” policy (HOPE, 2018), has produced a discourse of fear
criminalizing both the immigrant and the asylum seeker. The discourse of fear reproduced
by the media—which foments hate crimes, discrimination, racism, and intolerance—is a
narrative that fails to engage in a plural and democratic dialogue that does not result in civic,
social, democratic, peaceful, and plural coexistence, and does not allow for the inclusion of
diversity in the United States. This fear discourse does not contribute to serious reflection on
the pending immigration reform process in the United States. It contributes less to
comprehending the current refugee crisis and its causes and possible consequences for the
entire Mesoamerican region.
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
6
With the president's clear political and media intention to guarantee his reelection in 2020,
since the wall's construction at the border with Mexico was the focal promise of his candidacy
in 2016.
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Hispanic origin currently residing in the United States makes 56 476 777 people, of which
63.3 percent are of Mexican origin.
Figure 4. Increase of Mexican migrants according to the United States census 1970-2010
Source: Adapted from Durand (2017).
According to the Pew Center (2018), in 2008, the flow of migrants began to decrease.
The highest level was registered in 2007 with 12.2 million people, but it decreased in 2008
(Figure 5).
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).
795,000
2,100,000
4,200,000
9,100,000
11,700,000
0
2000000
4000000
6000000
8000000
10000000
12000000
14000000
1970 1980 1990 2000 2010
Notes on border security along the U.S.-Mexico border faced with human mobility...
Díaz Carnero, E. I.
14
Figure 5. Number of undocumented migrants in the United States. (in millions)
Source: Pew Research Center (2018).
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]
3.5
5.7
8.6
10.7 11.1
12.2
11.4 11.0 10.7
1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2016
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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.
7
Although the Mexican government has denied this possibility, since June 2016, Mexican
immigration authorities have collaborated with Customs and Border Protection (CBP) so that
asylum seekers wait in Mexico to be received by U.S. authorities (París Pombo et al., 2018).
8
The Southern Border Program was launched in the summer of 2014 to detain and deport
Central Americans illegally transiting through Mexico to the United States (Tourliere,
2018b).
Notes on border security along the U.S.-Mexico border faced with human mobility...
Díaz Carnero, E. I.
16
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).
Figure 6. U.S. asylum denial by nationality (2017)
Source: HOPE (2018)
0.0% 10.0% 20.0% 30.0% 40.0% 50.0% 60.0% 70.0% 80.0% 90.0% 100.0%
Ethiopia
China
Nepal
India
Somalia
Guatemala
Honduras
El Salvador
Haiti
Mexico
Percent Denied Asylum
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Figure 7. Percentage of denied and approved asylum cases in the United States (2017)
Source: HOPE (2018).
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.
Table 2. Increase in Mexico’s refugee applicants
(2013 to 2018)
Year
Applications
2013
1 296
2014
2 136
2015
3 424
2016
8 788
2017
14 596
2018
29 600
Source: SEGOB (2018).
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.
0.0%
10.0%
20.0%
30.0%
40.0%
50.0%
60.0%
70.0%
80.0%
90.0%
100.0%
0
5,000
10,000
15,000
20,000
25,000
30,000
35,000
40,000
1996
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
2015
2016
2017
Percent Denied
Asylum Decisions
Granted Asylum Denied Asylum Percent Denied Asylum
Notes on border security along the U.S.-Mexico border faced with human mobility...
Díaz Carnero, E. I.
18
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
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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).
Notes on border security along the U.S.-Mexico border faced with human mobility...
Díaz Carnero, E. I.
20
Figure 8. People deported by the United States and Mexico during 2016
Source: Mars (2018).
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.”
FINAL THOUGHTS
Crises and conflicts are often sources of risk and opportunity, according to the Geography of
peace. The current refugee crisis is a risk and an opportunity. As stated earlier, there is a
double crisis along the U.S.-Mexico border. The first is a humanitarian crisis, with thousands
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of migrants and refugees in legal limbo waiting in risky and vulnerable conditions at the
homes and shelters on both sides of the border. The humanitarian crisis is related to
insecurity, violence, corruption, and impunity in Mexico and the Northern Triangle of Central
America. In the latter case, we must add the drought crisis and the region’s extractive
economic model, which benefits only a small group of people (who control the State
apparatus). State control by a small group of people who respond to their interests is the last
element of the crisis: politics, whose institutional weakness is already unsustainable.
The second crisis is generated by the U.S government’s zero-tolerance and closed border
policies while facing the refugee crisis. The U.S. government’s ineffectiveness and
insensitivity to pending immigration reform caused the second crisis. The factors that
intensify the crisis are the proposal to externalize the U.S. border by moving the U.S.-Mexico
border to Mexico’s southern border under the Southern Border program and the unilateral
intention of converting Mexico into a de facto “safe third country” so that U.S. asylum-
seekers await their process in Mexican territory.
The combination of both crises is dangerous. It puts thousands of people in extremely
vulnerable conditions, lacking basic needs, and exposes them to extortion by local and
migratory authorities, gangs, and criminal groups. People in this situation are being
criminalized and politically used, subjected to a fear campaign and a rhetoric that
criminalizes them and encourages hatred towards migrants and asylum seekers. This rhetoric
fosters a fake vision of reality that confuses and fails to clarify current challenges,
contributing to misinformation and sensationalism. Forced migration, be it documented or
undocumented, as well as international protection, are requested only in situations of great
danger: when facing threats in their home communities, when transiting through Mexico, and
when crossing (legally or illegally) to the United States.
This double crisis could become an opportunity because it can facilitate change and
transformation. It highlights and makes the crisis, the deficiencies, the needs, and the violated
rights visible. It is a mirror that shows oneself through our fellow humans and as a society.
It is an opportunity to do something, become informed and aware, take action, influence the
situation’s positive transformation, learn its causes, its effects on the crisis, and assume
commitments and responsibilities. This is an opportunity because that puts us face-to-face
with our reality and the challenges we have to overcome, transform, and improve.
There is a migratory and refugee crisis, but mainly, a humanitarian crisis. This
humanitarian crisis was exploited through the media for political and electoral purposes. The
crisis is manipulated with the primary purpose of supporting the criminalization of migrants
and promoting fear toward poor migrants, arguing an alleged “threat to national security”
that builds barriers to dialogue and understanding instead of bridges for cooperation.
The fear discourse promoted by the U.S. president is complemented by an unworthy,
illegitimate, and illegal response to separate families and deny asylum and refugee rights
while facing the migration and forced displacement phenomenon. These responses in the
Notes on border security along the U.S.-Mexico border faced with human mobility...
Díaz Carnero, E. I.
22
wake of the humanitarian and refugee crisis have taken the state security paradigm to the
extreme through the “zero tolerance,” “closed border,” and “national emergency” policies.
Transit migration and the refugee crisis are strategic issues for border security in the
United States and Mexico and a fundamental issue in both countries’ binational agendas.
Like any human mobility flow, a migratory flow is a phenomenon that continually changes.
It is the reason why it is vitally important to know its historical variations and its root causes.
The current refugee crisis is very different from the historical migratory flow. A
comprehensive response has to be designed and implemented to address the migration issue
with immigration reform in the United States and a joint plan in response to the effect of the
refuge and the exodus—the humanitarian crisis at the refugee camps along both sides of the
U.S.-Mexico border—, and the root causes of the crisis: insecurity and violence, corruption
and impunity, institutional weakness, and the environmental, economic, and political crisis
in Mexico and the Northern Triangle of Central America. The comprehensive response
should be based on the principle of shared responsibility proposed by the human security
paradigm.
The principle of shared responsibility and human security should be the criterion and focus
guiding the Mexican government’s border policy’s proposals and objectives, for example
concerning the proposed Comprehensive Development Plan for El Salvador, Guatemala,
Honduras, and south and southeast Mexico, and the U.N.’s Global Compact for Migration,
that the Mexican government much supported at the international level. These criteria should
be based on the principle of shared responsibility and human security at the Mexican borders.
An international response is needed because border security is intimately associated with
international flows of illegal economies. The response should detect and halt human
trafficking and trafficking networks and addresses people, their needs, and their rights. A
comprehensive policy is needed to understand the changing migratory flows to help build the
infrastructure and conditions to respond to the migration and refugee phenomenon with
dignity, offering development and security instead of insecurity and impunity, as is currently
the case.
Even though the human security paradigm is the belated response of the idealist doctrine,
it is essential to begin designing concrete strategies and guidelines that contribute to its
inclusion in public policies. In this way, we will prevent its principles and foundations from
being left as a set of good intentions. In this regard, it is necessary to review previous
experiences that tried to implement its principles; specifically, the contributions of the
Contadora Act (the 1983 Document of Objectives and the 1984 Contadora Act on Peace and
Co-operation in Central America) to learn from their successes and mistakes and the external
factors that prevented their implementation.
Translation: Miguel Ángel Ríos
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