What Part of “Illegal” Don’t You Understand? The Social Consequences of Criminalizing Unauthorized Mexican Migrants in the United States

Introduction

Between drug-related violence, state and federal anti-immigrant initiatives, and the newly minted, “Consequences Delivery System” (CDS) aimed at punishing undocumented migrants, the situation along the US-Mexico border presents a grim reality for the hundreds of thousands of people deported every year. Although scholars have identified policy changes that have contributed greatly to the criminalization of unauthorized immigrants in the United States (Boehm, 2011; Coleman, 2007; Golash-Boza, 2009; Welch, 2003, 2007), relatively little work has focused on the social implications of this emerging criminalization process. Controversial policies such as Arizona’s Senate Bill 1070 and Alabama’s House Bill 56, as well as federal programs like Secure Communities, 287(g), and Operation Streamline have all contributed to the increased incarceration of unauthorized immigrants in addition to record numbers of interior apprehensions and repatriations by U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE). We ask how these policies are contributing to the (re)production and perpetuation of another criminalized, subordinate class within the United States, while also placing people in danger upon return to Mexico, especially for those that become involved in crime, as a direct result of the contacts made while incarcerated for immigration violations or being deported.

Relying on data gathered through semi-structured interviews with recent deportees at a shelter in northern Mexico, we detail how recent policy changes have, not only figuratively, but literally redefined what it means to be an “illegal alien” in the United States. We stress that our intention is not to generalize all unauthorized migrants and the contemporary migration experience, nor do we empirically test extant theories of criminalization. Rather our goal is to draw on our conversations with deportees to illuminate the social harm arising from the systematic criminalization of unauthorized migrants as a politically motivated and profit-generating enterprise. This in itself is a challenging task. Friedrichs (2007) has called attention to chasm between traditional and critical perspectives in explicating issues of crime and criminalization at a global level. We hope to indirectly contribute to the bridging of this gap by drawing on extant mainstream theories of crime to help highlight the consequences of treating violators of immigration law as criminals, while simultaneously providing a critical analysis of the powerful entities that have deliberately reshaped immigration policy in the United States.

The Criminalization of Immigration Law and Increased Incarceration

In this article, we interrogate the “immigration industrial complex” (Golash-Boza, 2009) in order to identify the implications of big business and lawmakers generating what we believe to be a major social problem—the social criminalization of migrants. The process of questioning the immigration industrial complex involves theorizing the intersections between individuals, the state, and the corporations in securing the border; be it inside the United States or directly at the 2000-mile border with Mexico. Three interrelated factors, among others, have contributed significantly to the rise of the immigration industrial complex: the “criminalization of immigration law” (Coleman, 2007: 56), a shift toward an incarceration-oriented approach to immigration control, and the emergence of the CDS (Fisher, 2011)—the latter having largely emerged out of the aforementioned processes.

During the 1990s and 2000s, the United States attempted to address the issue of unauthorized migration by adopting the prevention through deterrence strategy, which relied largely on militarizing the US-Mexico border (Andreas, 1998, 2000; Dunn, 2009; Massey et al., 2003; U.S. Border Patrol, 1994). The prevention through deterrence strategy also focused on increasing migrant apprehensions near the border as a means to deter future crossing attempts. After being apprehended, migrants typically agreed to a voluntary repatriation to a Mexican border town. This approach resulted in the “voluntary departure complex” (Heyman, 1995) in which the migrants simply kept attempting to cross the border until they successfully avoided detection.

Around the same time, policy-makers seized windows of opportunity created by moral panics over the 1993 and 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center to enact tougher immigration legislation (Coleman, 2007; Golash-Boza, 2009; Welch, 2003, 2007). In the process, policy-makers have coupled “immigration control to criminal law enforcement,” a course of action that Coleman has described as the “criminalization of immigration law” (2007: 56). Immigration infractions have historically been treated as federal civil administrative matters; however, an increasingly anti-immigrant political climate and worries surrounding potential terrorist attacks have shifted policies toward criminal prosecution for unauthorized entry (Coleman, 2007; Welch, 2003, 2007). This has led to an increased risk of apprehension, incarceration, and deportation, stemming from interactions with law and immigration enforcement officials.

The 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigration Responsibility Act expanded the list of “aggravated felonies—a specific class of crimes committed by non-citizens, applicable only in the context of immigration law, and warranting deportation from the U.S.” (Coleman, 2007: 58). This included unauthorized reentry. The newly enacted immigration policies were also made retroactive, meaning that immigrants could be deported for crimes for which they were previously adjudicated, including instances where individuals pled guilty to certain offenses in exchange for probation rather than risk serving jail time, and even in cases where no formal sentence was given (Coleman, 2007; Welch, 2007). This meant that “individuals could be identified as deportable aggravated felons without an explicit conviction for an aggravated felony” (Coleman, 2007: 58). The growing incongruences between immigration law and criminal law have increased, whereby immigrants are essentially tried twice for the same crime, once in a criminal court and again in an immigration court. This has resulted in the need for immigration lawyers to undergo training in criminal law and for public defenders to familiarize themselves with immigration law when defending immigrants in criminal court.

Perhaps most disturbing is that lines between immigration policy and criminal law have become increasingly blurred, while the judicial review process for immigration violations has become increasingly limited (Coleman, 2007). This restricts the ability of unauthorized migrants to legitimately defend themselves against charges during the judicial process and increases the likelihood of an unfavorable outcome compared to citizens—most notably deportation or incarceration.

The use of private detention facilities to house violators of immigration law has increased significantly over the past 10 years (Wides-Muñoz and Burke, 2012), a trend that appears to have paralleled increased penalties associated with unauthorized reentry. Today, about half of all people held on immigration violations are serving time in private detention facilities (Wides-Muñoz and Burke, 2012). The extent to which the private prison lobby was involved in crafting Arizona’s SB 1070 received increased public scrutiny due to a radio news story by National Public Radio (2010). In December 2009, 4 months before the bill was signed into law, the American Legislative Exchange Council held a conference in Washington DC. At the conference, former Senator Russell Pearce (R-AZ) and other lobbyists drafted a piece of legislation entitled “Support our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act,” the exact name given to the bill signed into law by Arizona Governor Jan Brewer, in 2010 (Sullivan, 2010). The connections between the policy makers who drafted the bill and private prison interests are undeniable, yet completely legal (Wides-Muñoz and Burke, 2012). Of the 36 bill’s cosponsors, 30 received donations from prison lobbyist groups, and two of Governor Brewer’s top aides are themselves former lobbyists for private prisons (Sullivan, 2010). Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), which was on the verge of bankruptcy in 2000 (Wides-Muñoz and Burke, 2012), has openly pursued detention of immigrants as a primary source of revenue generation. “Last year, they wrote that they expect to bring in ‘a significant portion of our revenues’ from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the agency that detains illegal immigrants” (Sullivan, 2010). In 2011, they reported a net income of US$162 million, with federal contracts making up 43% of the company’s total revenues.

Clandestine migration to the United States has slumped to 20-year lows, and this has coincided with an economic downturn that has been particularly devastating for construction and service sectors of the economy (Cornelius et al., 2010). This trend threatened to leave private detention centers half-empty, and the more than 20,000 Border Patrol agents (U.S. Department of Customs and Border Protection, 2011) tending to empty processing centers or patrolling an empty desert. We contend that part of the impetus to increase criminal penalties for immigration violations comes from the need to maintain this revenue stream from the federal government. CCA has purchased detention facilities across the United States, and in many states garnered contracts pledging minimum 90% occupancy (Pavlo, 2012).

The exploitation and extraction of capital from undocumented workers in the United States has expanded beyond low wages and few benefits and now includes the emergence of an industry—one that is paid to take control of this labor force in times of economic contraction when demand for it has decreased. Today, this approach is neatly packaged and touted to the general public as the CDS. The CDS “guides management and agents through a process designed to uniquely evaluate each subject and identify the ideal consequences to impede and deter further illegal activity” (Fisher, 2011). The CDS approach has increased incarceration time for undocumented migrants and increased the number of people that are now considered criminal aliens, thereby maintaining the status quo in terms of justification for the record number of detention facilities and Border Patrol agents. With increased budget scrutiny and other fiscal concerns, state legislators are wary of constituents questioning payments for empty detention facilitates. Therefore, in addition to being profitable, increasing the arrests and incarceration of undocumented migrants becomes politically valuable.

Toward an Ethnography of Removal

Scholars have begun to take interest in processes of removal and deportation of immigrants. Although not a fully fledged subtopic of academic inquiry, the examination of modes and manners of removal provides an important supplement to studies of migration. However, deportation and removal as processes are almost always intertwined, not only with migration but with imprisonment as well. For De Genova and Puetz (2010), the question becomes, why does the state deport? Why remove people en masse? We follow by asking—why systematically criminalize and incarcerate an entire segment of the population, especially when they will almost inevitably be removed to another part of the world afterward? The answers to these questions rest, in part, on the control of the surplus value of labor (Marx, 1867). By providing the constant potential for deportation or “deportability” (De Genova and Peutz, 2010; Nunez and Heyman, 2007), a docile workforce is created with limited engagement outside the sites of capital extraction. Although insightful, we contend that this theoretical approach may not be as applicable during times of economic contraction when there is decreased demand for or surplus of undocumented labor.

Rather than merely deporting the surplus labor force in times of economic downturn, systematic criminalization and incarceration ensures excess undocumented labor is economically exploited to its full potential before being removed. Detention facilities have become sites of capital extraction beyond the surplus value of labor, ultimately extending to the commodification of the imprisoned body, especially in its extreme form with the exponential growth of for-profit private prisons. We follow Loïc Wacquant (2000) in his characterization of the prison as a surrogate ghetto, whereupon incarceration is a new legal regime—one which logically extends slavery, Jim Crow laws, and the ghettoization of the inner city as a place to house unwanted labor. The dialectical relationship of capital, labor and now, the imprisonment of that labor force have created a system of immense social consequences that stays with people for years or decades after they are released, especially for people intent on reuniting with families in the United States.

The criminalization of unauthorized migrants and all the intricacies this process entails creates multiple layers of marginality, highlighting the flexibility of the state, and the need to create new criminal categories. As immigration offenders are frequently incarcerated in the same spaces with criminal offenders, coupled with the desperation of people that need to find a way to support family members either in Mexico or in the United States, engaging in other criminal activity is becoming increasingly common.

The practice of incarcerating violators of immigration law has exposed many unauthorized migrants to a differential association of criminal offenders (Sutherland, 1947; Burgess and Akers, 1966) in detention facilities where norms and values that are favorable to criminal behavior can be acquired and reproduced. The social consequences of criminalizing and incarcerating largely economic migrants for unauthorized entry include (1) significantly reducing people’s chances of gaining legal permanent resident status, or having this status revoked, and blocking the opportunity to legitimately live and work in the United States, despite possessing extensive social ties to the country; and (2) introducing migrants into illegitimate means structures (Cloward, 1959; Cloward and Ohlin, 1960), which may precipitate involvement in the narcotic and human smuggling or trafficking business by incarcerating them with drug smugglers and other convicted criminals. These experiences are especially destructive for young migrants that are determined to remain in the United States because they have incorporated into American society and have more social ties and life experiences there rather than in their countries of origin.

We document ways this exposure increased economic migrants’ exposure to cross border illicit activities, such as human or drug smuggling, which are normally distinct from clandestine border crossings (Spener, 2009). Drawing from our qualitative interviews with recently deported migrants, we highlight the different ways that subsectors of the migrant stream are targeted. While circumstances facing the vast majority of undocumented migrants include lack of adequate legal counsel, the incongruence between immigration and criminal law, and extreme repercussions for menial offenses, the tremendous variation in consequences, treatment, and abuse creates a difficult and confusing scenario for research.

Methodology

The data in this article come from 210 in-depth interviews with recently deported migrants in a shelter in Nogales, Sonora, Mexico. The interviews are derived mainly from deportees who spent time in Arizona’s state and federal penal systems, or were held in one of many private detention facilities across the state.

Our qualitative data collection process was part of a larger study. We conducted extensive mixed-methods research, including two waves of quantitative surveys (n = 415 in wave I; n = 1,113 in wave II) and in-depth interviews (n = 210), across the US–Mexico border from October 2007 to August 2012. While the discussion in this article is not necessarily generalizable to all unauthorized migrants, we do emphasize that all potential participants were randomly selected using a spatial random sampling technique as part of the larger project. The representativeness of the quantitative data collected during the first wave is discussed elsewhere, while the cleaning, coding, and weighting of the data collected during the second wave is still underway. To be included in our study, individuals must have crossed into the United States without official authorization, been apprehended by a U.S. authority, and repatriated or deported to Mexico. In total, the project involved six teams of researchers from the United States and Mexico working in Tijuana and Mexicali, Baja California; Nogales, Sonora; Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua; Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, and Mexico City. While both authors are principal investigators on this larger project, the present article represents a more direct conversation to grapple with the consequences of the rapidly increasing detention time for migrants and particularly migrants’ accounts of being housed alongside violent offenders and gangs. For instance, among 415 respondents surveyed in wave I, we found that nearly 25% were sent to a detention center after being processed by the Border Patrol. This figure increased notably to nearly 40% of respondents in wave II. Most were held in detention facilities that had a gang task force. While most people charged with immigration offenses are housed in separate units away from gang members and violence, transfers, work releases, and appointments for court appearances mix the populations, sometimes for days at a time, creating experiences that many people relate with fear and shock. As suggested by the preliminary descriptive results from wave II, the rate of detention post-apprehension is likely much higher today as programs such as Secure Communities and Operation Streamline have gained more momentum across the country. A closer examination of the social repercussions of criminalizing and incarcerating unauthorized economic migrants for political and economic gain is imperative.

Our research with people post-deportation to Mexico presents a perspective that differs from previous scholars’ work on “deportability” (De Genova and Peutz, 2010; Nunez and Heyman, 2007). This body of literature usually draws from fieldwork with populations living in the United States without documents and living in fear of being apprehended and deported. Our research, by contrast, focuses exclusively on people that have already experienced the full force of the incarceration–deportation system, revealing the violence enacted by the complicated webs of prisons, federal, state, and local agencies, and ad hoc local legal arrangements.

We stress that working with people post-deportation is an important methodological distinction that shapes our perspective on this issue. The majority of the people we interviewed were dropped onto the streets of an unfamiliar border town only hours before. Many had not spent any time in Mexico in years and were grappling with complex decisions as well as the traumatic experiences arising from the dangerous crossing attempt of the border and time spent incarcerated and isolated from friends and family while in detention. Moreover, almost everyone disappears from the border within a matter of days, providing short, anonymous, and often intense interview sessions. For this reason, we want to steer the focus away from the deportability complex and toward the consequences approach, highlighting how the immigration industrial complex also produces multiple forms of criminality that are necessary to maintain an economic and political system of incarceration. Clearly, we feel that these conversations can offer productive insights to one another and hope that post-deportation experiences begin to figure more prominently into the discussions on deportation and removal.

The Ramifications of a Penal Approach to Unauthorized Immigration

In order to maintain the security apparatus and its economic prominence, a subsection of migrants must be created that will continually remain in contact with the State. This subsection consists of the individuals that have established a home and family in the United States and will continue to attempt to gain entry regardless of the punishment handed down. We have interviewed people who have spent years in detention for immigration violations and are determined to enter the United States yet again. In one case, one of our respondents spent 2 years in detention, was deported, crossed again, was apprehended and deported without being detained, and then, upon crossing again was detained for 6 months prior to being interviewed. ¹ Despite this demoralizing, and highly confusing experience, he was dead set on returning to be with his family. The process of crossing, hoping for a successful attempt, and then upon failure, hoping that sentencing will be lenient is a defining factor in his life. Moreover, if he arrives to his destination, he will live in constant fear of any contact with authorities because of his status.

From Business Owner and Family Man to “Criminal”

The following vignette provides first-hand examples of the incongruences between immigration policies and criminal law, and how they can create a hidden disadvantage for unauthorized migrants who are simultaneously caught in the judicial, immigration, and penal systems. Luis’ story also demonstrates exactly how perilous an incarceration-oriented approach to dealing with unauthorized immigration can be for individuals without legal status and their families.

Operation Streamline and Detention: The “Solution” to the Voluntary Departure Complex

There are numerous ways for migrants to be removed from the United States, which do not involve a criminal proceeding; however, there has been a notable shift away from the administrative process of removal, such as a voluntary repatriation, in favor of criminal prosecution. Currently, most unauthorized Mexican immigrants apprehended while attempting to cross the border sign paperwork and are repatriated within a day or two, usually to a Mexican border town. Operation Streamline, a federal program initiated in response to the “voluntary departure complex” (Heyman, 1995), focuses on bringing unauthorized migrants to trial, where first-time offenders typically are convicted or plead guilty to unauthorized entry and face anywhere from time served to 180 days of detention (La Coalición de Derechos Humanos, 2008; Lydgate, 2010; McCombs, 2008; Stanton, 2008; U.S. Department of Customs and Border Protection, 2005). If a person is caught a second time, and has already been through Operation Streamline or previously deported, they “can be charged with felony reentry under 8 U.S.C. § 1326, which generally carries a 2-year maximum penalty but can involve up to a 20-year maximum if the migrant has a criminal record” (Lydgate, 2010).

The overwhelming majority of people incarcerated resulting from Operation Streamline proceedings are held in private detention facilities. The increased reliance on privately owned detention centers confirms Loïc Wacquant’s analysis of the prison industry’s “… frenetic development of a private incarceration industry… which has taken on a national and even international scope to satisfy the state’s demand for expanded punishment” (Wacquant, 2009: XV). We also follow Wacquant in his analysis of the incarceration system as another technology of control and extraction that mirrors the trajectory from slavery, to Jim Crow laws, to the ghetto as all places to store reserve labor when it is undesirable (Wacquant, 2000; see also Alexander, 2010). Operation Streamline, now practiced in the Yuma, Arizona; Tucson, Arizona; Las Cruces, New Mexico; El Paso, Texas; Laredo, Texas; Del Rio, Texas; McAllen, Texas; and Brownsville, Texas (Lydgate, 2010), is the first major attempt to attach a criminal charge to the act of entering the United States without authorization. Despite the magnitude of this shift, very little academic work has studied people’s experiences going through Operation Streamline.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has deemed the program a success by citing decreased apprehensions in these sectors, a metric they also have used to bestow success upon border enforcement efforts of the 1990s and early 2000s. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security cited a 70% decrease in apprehensions in Yuma sector after the adoption of Operation Streamline during the 2007 fiscal year (U.S. Department of Customs and Border Protection, 2007). However, this says little about migration flows in other areas along the border. Most importantly, these declines have come during a time of economic recession in the United States, a factor that certainly needs to be considered as playing a role in decreased migration flow. The U.S. Department of Justice has also noted that they have prosecuted 1200 individuals as a result of Operation Streamline, “300 of those prosecutions were felony cases against individuals who have criminal histories, have a previous order of removal or are involved in smuggling humans or contraband” (U.S. Department of Customs and Border Protection, 2007). Nevertheless, it is not clear how many of these individuals truly had previous criminal records or had simply previously been processed through Operation Streamline or formally deported and had thus been labeled criminals as a result. A report by the Berkeley Law School at the University of California concludes that Operation Streamline “diverts crucial law enforcement resources away from fighting violent crime along the border, fails to effectively reduce undocumented immigration, and violates the U.S. Constitution” (Lydgate, 2010).

Although only an hour long, the Operation Streamline proceeding can have long-term negative legal, social, and psychological implications for people who undergo the process. A 41-year-old man stated about his experience during the court proceeding “They shouldn’t treat us that way. They treat us like animals. It’s inhumane.” Another 22-year-old from Tlaxcala, Mexico, said succinctly, “They kill us psychologically.” Benjamín, a 45-year-old fisherman from Michoacán, has crossed over 13 times to work in the United States and has even been apprehended 5 times. Yet, this was his first experience with Operation Streamline. He stated, “I felt bad when it happened (the court proceeding)… that has never happened to me, I have never been chained up like that… now they treat you like an animal.” Javier, a 22-year-old originally from Chiapas who had been working at a factory in Tijuana, recalls “We all went in a big group in front of the judge… they put chains on us really tight… the whole time in there they made me feel like I killed someone.” The shock expressed here shows how alien this entire experience is for these individuals. These comments also help illustrate that not only has the legal criminalization process begun for these migrants but the psychological criminalization process has as well. It is not uncommon to hear statements from respondent justifying their own detention or criminal prosecution, under the same anti-immigrant adage “We broke the law.” “We came illegally.” These are labels, images, and experiences they have begun to internalize and will carry with them throughout their lives. The criminalization of migrants is also a symbolic process of violence that internalizes and naturalizes the identity of “criminal” (Bourdieu, 2001; Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992). These symbolic dimensions contribute to the social processes of criminalization that have concerned critical criminologists for decades.

Social Impacts of Criminalization: Desperation, Strain, and Access to Illegitimate Means Structures

Scholars have long suggested that crime is caused, in part, by strain stemming from various negative social experiences or the inability to achieve certain commonly held goals in the society (Agnew, 1992; Cloward and Ohlin, 1960; Cohen, 1955; Merton, 1938). Access to the means needed to pursue certain commonly held goals is not available to many members of the society due to certain economic and social restrictions, and it is precisely this disconnect that can lead to criminal behavior (Merton, 1938). Individuals may seek out illegitimate means that society deems deviant to pursue and achieve their desired goals or to alleviate other forms of strain such as poverty (e.g. Agnew, 1992; Cloward and Ohlin, 1960; Merton, 1938). This perspective offers great insight to the social criminalization of unauthorized migrants; especially, those who have served time in close proximity with human and drug smugglers.

The notion of illegitimate means structures can be applied to the case of unauthorized immigration in two ways: the first relates to the act of unauthorized migration itself, while the second speaks to the social contacts that unauthorized migrants develop while incarcerated alongside criminal offenders. An argument can be made that the need to migrate is a crucial social or economic goal for many unauthorized immigrants. Nevertheless, most do not possess the necessary human or economic capital to pursue legitimate immigration opportunities such as acquiring a visa. Therefore, the actual process of unauthorized migration itself can be viewed as an illegitimate means to an end goal (e.g. migrating to the United States to work or for family reunification).

This conceptual framework also proves fruitful when applied to the case of migrants who are apprehended and incarcerated for immigration violations. After multiple failed crossing attempts and months of incarceration, money is lost on hotels, food, travel to and from different crossing regions, and accumulated debts while families are left without income from at least one of their economic providers. Once incarcerated, the end goal of needing to migrate and to make money to support one’s family has not changed. But the desire to achieve said goal intensifies due to the pressures resulting from an unsuccessful crossing attempt. At the same time, migrants’ access to illegitimate means structures expands once they are incarcerated. Previously, an unauthorized immigrant may have only had access to an illegitimate means structure (social networks) to facilitate an unauthorized crossing and secure employment or housing in their desired destination. After being incarcerated for a considerable amount of time, people are exposed to completely different illegitimate means structures and social networks than they have had access to in the past. Couple this exposure with the labeling that takes place not only in the court system and detention centers, but also by anti-immigrant politicians, pundits and other public figures, and individuals’ notions of who and what is crime drastically change. The concept of symbolic violence, an internalization of the structures of domination and abuse particular to a certain group, demonstrates how destructive these experiences can be (Bourdieu, 2001).

Octavio, a 19-year-old migrant from the southern Mexican state of Chiapas, developed close ties to a criminal organization while he was incarcerated in a federal detention facility for a recent immigration violation. He explained, “There are more Sureños (a Mexican/Mexican-American gang) in jail than any other group. They protect us because we are all ‘paisanos’ (countrymen). You have to join with them and they make sure no one touches you. All the groups keep to themselves. There are the Blacks, the Chicanos and the Whites. The only ones that are separate and you don’t go near are Las Letras.” We were unfamiliar with this group and asked who they were. He looked over his shoulder nervously and said, “Los Zetas” a brutal and feared Mexican drug cartel that began kidnapping deported migrants along the border in recent years, forcing them to smuggle drugs, work as hit men, or work in marijuana fields in northern Mexico. ² Octavio said that during the 6 months he spent incarcerated, someone messed with a Sureño and “we pounded him.” We asked whether he had joined them, and he said that he had.

Octavio first came to the United States as a teenager and had been stopped by police officers in Phoenix because his friend was visibly intoxicated in public. The police roughed up Octavio and chipped his tooth. He intended to file a complaint, but when the police realized he was only 17, they immediately called ICE and repatriated him. Octavio said they never charged him with a crime. Upon reentering, he was again apprehended and sent to the Florence Correctional Center for 6 months, where he first came into contact with the Sureños (Personal Communication, February 16, 2011). Octavio’s relationship with the Sureños was ironically facilitated by the recent criminalization of immigration law and the emergence of an incarceration-oriented approach to unauthorized immigration.

While CCA claims to separate violent offenders from the rest of those incarcerated, migrants’ stories note that they still have a significant amount of contact with other types of criminal offenders. This often happens in long periods waiting to transfer to other facilities, or to go to court as well as during work or recreational activities, if available. As Mercedes indicates “… there is a lot of violence, drugs and weapons inside… .people smoke weed there openly… someone even got stabbed right before I left.” Miguel, a 23-year-old self-described campesino from Guanajuato, echoes Mercedes’s concerns “ … I couldn’t believe it, I felt like I was being kept in there with murderers.” For Jaime, an unsuccessful reentry attempt and the experience of being in jail put him in contact with the violent conflicts of different gangs. “In CCA there were gangs, drug mules, human smugglers… everything.” Jaime said that he stayed away from them by staying in his cell and drawing, foregoing recreation time. There were some fights and other migrants wanted him to get involved, choose sides, and align with the existing gangs. For some, the line between economic migrant and gang member blurs due to the everyday social pressures people encounter while incarcerated. Jaime said he just wanted to get away and stay in his cell to get out faster (Field Notes, June 15, 2010). Eusebio, a middle-aged man from Tabasco also complained about how drug traffickers get let out faster than people that are charged with reentry. “It almost seems like they want us to take drugs.” (Personal Communication, February 16, 2011). Avoiding deviant activity behind bars becomes much more difficult as the frequency and duration of migrants’ stay in detention facilities increases.

A 24-year-old Huave speaker named Andres from an indigenous community in Oaxaca relayed his experience of transitioning from migrant to drug trafficker. He had originally paid US$1,000 to cross into the United States, but after being apprehended twice, Andres moved to Sonora and began working in the fields earning only US$100 a week. However, this employment was sporadic. Although the details of exactly how he became involved with drug trafficking were unclear, he became camaradas (close friends) with drug smugglers while residing near the border after being deported. He explained that you have to meet the right people to get this type of work since it is physically demanding and also provides ample opportunities for gangs to lose valuable cargo. “I have taken marijuana across four times, but twice I had to abandon it in the desert, Andres said in choppy Spanish. On his most recent trip, he had run out of water and dumped the backpack with 40lb of marijuana and turned himself in to the nearest Border Patrol agent he could find. At US$1,800 per successful trip, he would be making 4.5 months’ salary for a week’s work. “I will keep crossing until I get caught, but once they give me eight months in jail I will have to find something else [other work] because it will be too much time away from my family,” Andres said.

Every day, hundreds of Mexican migrants are put in precarious circumstances upon repatriation by the U.S. authorities to an unfamiliar town on the US-Mexico border. All too often, individuals such as Luis, the focus of our vignette, find themselves with just the clothes on their backs and as far from their communities of origin as from their desired destination. For some, the only social capital from which they can draw are the contacts they have made while incarcerated with individuals who may already be involved with human and drug smuggling near and along the border. In these cases, the detention facilities and border region itself are perfect examples of the appropriate environments for the acquisition and reinforcement of values and skills associated with illicit behavior, as discussed by Cloward and Ohlin (1960). During his 60-day stay in CCA, Luis recalled that drug mules were bragging about the amount of drugs that they had been carrying yet were only given voluntary repatriations. Not only was this frustrating to Luis, but it also made him realize that while he was paying someone else to cross (a coyote or guide), others were being paid to cross with marijuana. He even went on to suggest that he would consider crossing with drugs the next time if the penalties were not much different.

Policies that systematically criminalize and incarcerate people at high rates, such as Operation Streamline, are exposing economic migrants to criminal networks and certain norms and values that they may have otherwise never been exposed to. With that said, we are aware that zero-tolerance incarceration-oriented policies aimed policing immigration enforcement may have a polarizing affect by deterring some migrants from ever attempting an unauthorized crossing while also funneling other migrants into the previously unfamiliar and violent world of drugs and crime.

Conclusion

The shift from a deterrence strategy toward consequences approach (e.g. criminalization and incarceration) to dealing with immigration as well as the creation of a for-profit prison system akin to a modern slave trade has exponentially increased the ramifications for unauthorized economic or familial migration. The process of criminalizing a foreign population on American soil also creates problems for Mexico, especially as deportees from prisons are frequently being targeted either as potential recruits for the drug cartels or, conversely, as enemy combatants if they are from rival territories (i.e. someone from Sinaloa being deported to Tamaulipas). As we have shown, not only does this take the form of abuse of human rights, but it also produces strain among migrants (Agnew, 1992; Merton, 1938) and can increase exposure to illegitimate means structures (Cloward and Ohlin, 1960). Being in contact with a criminal element, perceiving that the penalties for more serious crimes are only slightly greater than for those related to immigration, and internalizing the treatment as a dangerous criminal for a civil violation all can increase the propensity to actively engage in criminal activity.

These decisions are the most pronounced for the people whose lives and families are now entirely situated in the United States and exacerbated by increased exposure to crime while incarcerated. An increasing subsection of deportees will not stop trying to gain entry into the United States and, in the process, will become more likely to engage in illicit activities in their desperation to return to their day-to-day lives. The “CDS” labels people as criminal, within the U.S. context, a destructive label for many whose homes and families are permanently located in the United States. The process of labeling people as criminal also has an impact, as people negotiate the fact that much of the U.S. population has come to casually refer to them as “illegals” or worse. We argue that this process in turn generates further violence by exposing people to far more dangerous and destructive practices that would otherwise be absent from the undocumented migration experience. These practices include human smuggling or working as a guide, trafficking drugs as a burrero or even working as a border bandit or kidnapper, border bandit, or assassin for various drug cartels. Obviously not everyone is impacted the same way. Some people reject outright the label of illegal or criminal, while others simply decide to leave the United States behind and return to Mexico, regardless of the hardships implied by that choice. However, with hundreds of thousands of removals every year, the extent of this process both for the United States and for Mexico is a cause for great concern.

Unauthorized, economically driven migration is a largely benign phenomenon in and of itself. It is only when it is criminalized and couched within highly dangerous situations that it becomes a threat to people’s lives and the safety and security of those living along the border. Ultimately, the United State’s current consequences approach to unauthorized migration systematically criminalizes an entire segment of the U.S. population and contributes to the continued mass incarceration of people of color in a country with one of the highest incarceration rates in the entire world. Alexander (2010) has provided a convincing argument that the mass incarceration of young Black men in American jails and prisons is a de facto continuation of the Jim Crow. One cannot help but notice the striking parallels between the mass incarceration of African Americans and the criminalization of largely brown Mestizo and indigenous undocumented migrants from Latin America. Juan Crow appears to be riding in on the tail feathers of Jim Crow.