Excessive Use of Force and Migrant Death and Disappearance in Southern Arizona

Introduction

In the early 2000s, when the deaths of migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border increased dramatically, researchers and human rights advocates began to emphasize the deadly nature of prevention through deterrence strategies first undertaken by the U.S. federal government in the mid-1990s (Eschbach et al. 1999; Cornelius 2001; Rubio-Goldsmith et al. 2006; Nevins 2010; Miller 2014). Prevention through deterrence policies pushed migrants crossing the border between official ports of entry and outside of checkpoints into more inaccessible and rugged terrain than they faced before. After these policies went into effect, migrants faced longer treks through more remote areas of the borderlands, where many died from exposure-related causes (Sapkota et al. 2006; Anderson and Parks 2008; Hess and Winston 2014; Chambers, Boyce, and Martínez 2022). While the true number of deaths of migrants in transit for the entire U.S. side of the border is unknown, the Pima County Office of the Medical Examiner (PCOME) in Tucson, Arizona has investigated the deaths of 3,895 individuals either known to be or believed to be migrants from the year 2000 to the time of writing (Pima County Office of the Medical Examiner 2024).

Less attention has been paid in this literature, however, to examining how direct encounters between migrants and U.S. Border Patrol (USBP) agents in remote areas of the borderlands contribute to migrant death and disappearance during this era of prevention through deterrence. While the federal government’s purposeful and tactical use of geography has certainly been an enormous factor contributing to migrant fatalities along the US-Mexico border, we argue that a close examination of the immediate circumstances preceding a migrant’s death or disappearance — including migrant encounters with U.S. officials — helps expand the understanding of death in liminal spaces. While it is true that the spatial aspects of prevention through deterrence policies have been deadly, researchers and policymakers should not ignore the fact that prevention through deterrence has always been a strategy of militarization that depends on the actions of Border Patrol agents themselves. Prevention through deterrence was inspired in part by “Operation Hold the Line,” a 1993 El Paso sector Border Patrol operation that depended upon a large “show of force” among agents who were concentrated in particular regions (Kerwin 2001; Hing 2001, 2004; Nevins 2010). Prevention through deterrence was never solely about using natural geographies, but rather about using militarized strategies against civilians. The U.S. federal government continues to put lives at risk through both the manipulation of natural geographies and the specific tactics used by border enforcement agents within those geographies. In this article, we do not attempt to quantify migrant deaths caused by encounters with Border Patrol agents; rather, we call for closer attention to this often-overlooked aspect of prevention through deterrence.

It is important to contextualize policies of prevention through deterrence within a broader shift in U.S. federal border strategy toward increasingly militaristic methods beginning in the late 1970s (Dunn 1996, 2021; Green 2011; Miller 2014; Slack et al. 2016; Sabo et al. 2014). Timothy Dunn has traced how a “low-intensity conflict” (LIC) approach was applied to the border, which entailed the use of military personnel, ideology, tactics, and technology. In fact, the United States Border Patrol’s 1994 Strategic Plan, which officially introduced prevention through deterrence policies, was written with the assistance from the Pentagon’s Center for Low-Intensity Conflict (Immigration and Naturalization Service [INS] 1994; Dunn 1996, 2009; Andreas 2009). At its most basic level, a LIC approach entails aggressive military strategies used against civilians (Dunn 1996, 2021; Nelson 2019). The doctrine was developed in the 1980s as a part of counter-revolutionary foreign policy applied especially in Central American countries (Dunn 1996, 2021; Nelson 2019). “The essence of LIC doctrine,” according to Dunn (1996), “is the establishment and maintenance of social control over targeted civilian populations through the implementation of a broad range of sophisticated measures via the coordinated and integrated efforts of policy, para-military, and military forces” (p. 4). Hallmarks of the doctrine include military forces taking on police functions and vice versa, and “an emphasis on controlling targeted civilian populations rather than territory” (ibid., 21).

We argue that an overlooked aspect of these militarized strategies has been the actions and tactics of border enforcement personnel, especially those of U.S. Border Patrol (USBP) agents, directed toward migrants. Deliberate actions by law enforcement agents in remote areas of the borderlands — places largely out of view to the public — likely contribute to the phenomenon of migrant deaths in substantial but largely unquantified ways. We caution against the interpretation of the spatial aspects of prevention through deterrence policies as those that simply make use of existing natural geographies. Instead, we emphasize how these strategies have involved three processes: (1) the constant manipulation and management of natural landscapes, (2) the use of remote regions to perpetrate excessive use of force largely out of the view of the public, and (3) the alibi provided by a discourse that blames the “dangerous desert” for an increase in deaths and disappearances. Our goal in this article is to establish a framework for further research into the role that USBP agents’ actions and tactics in the borderlands have on migrant death and disappearance following the implementation of prevention through deterrence policies. After briefly situating this discussion within the broader literature on the history of the militarization of border enforcement, we then turn to evidence collected from autopsy and missing person reports shared by the PCOME. This evidence suggests that migrant deaths and disappearances are not just a result of funneling border crossers into remote, rugged terrain where they may get lost, but are also a result of migrants being chased, intimidated, and abused by law enforcement agents within these landscapes. In short, the militarization of the U.S.-Mexico border has been broader than the use of natural landscapes. As Stacy Holland, captain of the Texas Department of Public Safety’s aviation division said, “We’re using tactics and equipment that you will see in war zones” (Del Bosque 2015; No More Deaths 2016).

The Militarization of the U.S.-Mexico Border

While our focus in this article is on the period of U.S.-Mexico border history following the adoption of a prevention through deterrence approach, it is important to highlight the social context within which the U.S. Border Patrol emerged. The modern U.S. border security regime has roots in the racialized violence of the U.S.-Mexico borderlands of the nineteenth century (Dunn 1996; Lytle Hernández 2010; Martinez 2018). The U.S.-Mexico border itself was originally established through military force during both the Texas Revolution of 1836 and the Mexican American War of 1846–1848. Timothy Dunn presents a history of the militarization of the border from 1848 through the 1990s, distinguishing between U.S. military repression of mexicanos resisting Anglo domination and militarized dispossession of mexicano land during the period of pacification (1848–1918), and twentieth-century forms of militarization which were largely focused on controlling labor before shifting to a “national security” framework (Dunn 1996). Although these eras of militarization were quite different, there were some continuities. The same state agents who facilitated widespread anti-Mexican violence at the turn of the century — including Texas Rangers — became the architects of the USBP in the 1920s (Lytle-Hernandez 2010; Martinez 2018). The USBP was founded in 1924 both to control Mexican labor and to police the racial boundaries of the American Southwest (Ngai 2004; Lytle-Hernandez 2010; Martinez 2018).

Following the founding of USBP, border enforcement in the twentieth century was largely focused on controlling immigrant labor (Dunn 1996; Ngai 2004; Lytle-Hernandez 2010; Heyman 2012). This changed in the late 1970s as the Carter and Reagan administrations began to frame immigration along the border as an issue of “national security” (Dunn 1996). In the 1980s, the U.S. began to apply a military strategy of low-intensity conflict to border enforcement. According to Timothy Dunn, low-intensity conflict (LIC) doctrine emerged in the 1980s during the Reagan administration as the U.S. worked to repress leftist insurgencies around the world, especially in Central America. There are three key aspects of the LIC approach: (1) an emphasis on the internal defense of a nation, (2) a focus on controlling civilian populations (often through psychological operations), and (3) collaboration between police and military forces. A LIC approach typically entails increased use of military-grade weapons and technologies that have a lower profile than what would be used in more formal, visible, and official military interventions. What this meant for the border region was a gradual shift in official discourse about the border to frame it first as a national security issue (1970s), then part of counterinsurgency warfare (1980s), then a key aspect of the “war on drugs” (1980s and 1990s), and later, critical to the “global war on terror” (2000s). This ramping up of military discourse came with increased public support, congressional funding, and military assistance in the form of technology (including military issue rifles and helicopters on loan from the U.S. Army in the 1980s), training, and personnel.

As a militarized approach to border enforcement developed, human rights abuses became more common. Excessive use of force on the part of Border Patrol and other INS agents during the George H.W. Bush administration (1989–1992) was well-recognized and extensively documented (Americas Watch 1992; Dunn 1996; Heyman 1995). The “besieged esprit de corps” (Heyman 1995, 277) among Border Patrol agents together with public perceptions of the border region as “out of control” normalized military tactics used against civilians. A powerful example of this normalization was the 1992 acquittal of a Border Patrol agent charged with murdering an unarmed Mexican man in Arizona. The agent was found ‘not guilty’ largely based on the argument that his actions occurred within “a war zone” where the use of force was justified (Dunn 1996, 88).

Prevention through deterrence policies pushed a substantial portion of border enforcement activity into more remote areas, obscuring abuses against migrants from public view. Despite this, a large body of literature has documented USBP use of excessive force in interactions with migrants in the prevention through deterrence era (Phillips et al. 2002; Ngai 2005; Hernández 2010; Nevins 2010; Green 2011; Sabo et al. 2014; Martinez 2018; Human Rights Watch 2021). For example, a survey conducted with a random sample of 415 repatriated undocumented Mexican migrants in Nogales, Sonora, between 2007 and 2009 found that 11 percent were physically abused and 34 percent verbally abused by the agents who apprehended them while crossing the border, most of which were USBP (Martínez et al. 2017). In a separate study conducted in 2010–2012, Slack and colleagues used a similar methodology to survey over 1,100 repatriated undocumented Mexican migrants in Tijuana, Mexicali, Nogales, Juárez, Nuevo Laredo, and Mexico City about their border-crossing experiences and yielded similar findings. Approximately 12 percent and 20 percent of migrants reported physical abuse and verbal abuse by U.S. authorities, respectively (Slack, Martínez, and Whiteford 2018). Moreover, nearly 18 percent of respondents stated they witnessed USBP physically abuse other migrants during their crossing experience (Slack, Martínez, and Whiteford 2018). Overall, these findings are strikingly similar to those reported by other researchers and NGOs engaged in abuse documentation efforts during the prevention through deterrence era (see Phillips, Rodriguez, and Hagan 2002; Phillips, Hagan, and Rodriguez 2006; No More Deaths 2008, 2011; Danielson 2013).

While excessive use of force and the militarization of civilian law enforcement agencies are not trends unique to the USBP, there are unique characteristics of USBP that have made accountability over agent behavior especially difficult. Sociologist Irene Vega has documented what she describes as an organizational “culture of force” within USBP that is maintained “through 1) narratives that construct the border as a uniquely dangerous work environment, and 2) lessons that encourage an overly-individualistic view of reasonableness” as it pertains to the use of force (Vega 2022, 1154). This together with the fact that USBP agents often work alone in remote areas, have “a great deal of discretionary power when it comes to their conduct” (ibid., 1166), and experience a very high volume of encounters, creates a milieu where there is routine abuse of migrants with low levels of accountability. Dozens of lethal shootings and otherwise routine abuses of immigrants in custody have gone unpunished (Martínez, Slack, and Heyman 2013; Martínez, Cantor, and Ewing 2014). The agency’s mistreatment of migrants extends beyond physical and verbal abuse. For instance, civil rights organizations have sued USBP for coercing immigrants into signing “voluntary returns” without providing full and accurate information, and for racially profiling Latinos (American Civil Liberties Union 2023).

Despite numerous efforts to hold the agency accountable for human rights abuses, USBP remains an abusive organization with limited transparency, accountability, and oversight (Martínez, Cantor, and Ewing 2014; Cantor and Ewing 2017; Heyman 2017; Martínez, Heyman, and Slack 2020; Jones 2022). This is a concern not only given its size and growth over the past several decades but also considering the frequency with which agents have routine encounters with migrants in remote regions of the borderlands in what Heyman (1999) describes as “non-accountable zones” (p. 276; see also Vega 2022). USBP, which has been under U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) within the Department of Homeland Security since 2003, has expanded substantially over time, particularly after the implementation of the 1994 prevention through deterrence strategy as well as in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks (Martínez, Heyman, and Slack 2020). In 1992, for instance, USBP employed 4,139 agents and operated with a $326 million budget (ibid.). By 2021, the agency employed 19,536 agents and had an annual budget of nearly $4.9 billion (American Immigration Council 2021; CBP 2021). USBP’s parent agency, CBP, is now the largest civilian police force in the United States (Vega 2022), with more than 45,000 CBP officers and USBP agents (CBP 2021). Together, the budget for CBP and ICE exceeds the funding of the next four largest federal law enforcement agencies combined (Kerwin and Warren 2019; Miller 2019). The budgets of CBP ($20.8 billion) and ICE ($9.1 billion) in FY 2023 neared $30 billion (Department of Homeland Security 2024).

The militarization of border enforcement together with the effect of prevention through deterrence in pushing migration and enforcement into remote areas means that an enormous agency with a track record of perpetrating human rights abuses is able to operate largely out of view of the public. This context begs an analysis of migrant deaths that considers causes beyond abstract notions of inanimate increased border enforcement efforts combined with the natural conditions of southwestern borderlands and pays closer attention to the behaviors of USBP agents within that landscape.

Deadly Apprehension Methods

We follow the Tucson-based humanitarian organization No More Deaths’ (2016) use of the term “deadly apprehension methods” to describe lethal apprehension tactics used by USBP agents and local law enforcement acting in a border enforcement capacity. Although most of the cases we found where a pursuit ended in a death involved USBP agents, some involved local law enforcement. Some of these events could have been precipitated by law enforcement investigations that are not border enforcement related. However, it is important to reiterate Dunn’s (1996) description of LIC: “Hallmarks of the doctrine include military forces taking on police functions and vice versa,” (p. 21). While the tactics used by law enforcement may not be intended to cause death but rather result in an apprehension, it is crucial to keep in mind two standards from international humanitarian law. First, states are obliged to take “all reasonable precautionary steps to protect life and prevent excessive violence” (United Nations 2016, 12). Second, individuals are to be protected from the arbitrary deprivation of life (United Nations 2017). Importantly on this second point, “‘deliberate intent’ on the part of the State is not required for a killing or a deprivation of life to be deemed ‘arbitrary’” (ibid., 7).

There has been very little systematic tracking of migrant fatalities during encounters with USBP personnel. Two exceptions are the Southern Border Communities Coalition (SBCC) and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Texas. SBCC defines such encounters as “any instance in which a CBP agent is trying to apprehend an individual, has made contact with a person, and/or has a person in custody and that person passes away during the interaction or shortly after the interaction” (Southern Border Communities Coalition 2024). SBCC’s data comes from CBP press releases, media and news outlet reporting, and reports by community members (Ibid.). At the time of writing, SBCC had documented 304 fatal encounters with CBP since the year 2010 (Ibid.). Similarly, the ACLU of Texas tracks fatal encounters with USBP agents drawing on news media sources. The ACLU reported 293 such fatalities between January 2010 and November 2023 (American Civil Liberties Union 2024).

In our review of autopsy and missing person reports from the PCOME between 2000 and 2023, we observed evidence of deadly apprehension methods that can be grouped into three categories: (1) high-speed motor vehicle pursuits, (2) the use of aggressive tactics to apprehend migrants who are on foot, and (3) the use of lethal force during apprehension attempts. Below, we discuss each of these practices, which are consistent with Dunn’s (1996) discussion of how LIC constitutes military strategies deployed against civilians. We do not estimate the proportion of migrant deaths or disappearances in southern Arizona associated with these practices, which is something that should be the focus of future research. However, we believe that our close examination of these USBP tactics as reflected in forensic reports of undocumented border crosser deaths contributes to the social scientific understanding of death and disappearance in liminal spaces such as the U.S.-Mexico borderlands by expanding the discussion beyond a focus on the use of geography in prevention through deterrence strategies.

Discussion: Deaths Due to Border Militarization

In the existing literature about migrant deaths, there has been a disproportionate focus on the use of natural landscapes within the U.S. federal government’s strategy of prevention through deterrence. We argue that this focus has led to an incomplete understanding of the ways that migrants encounter danger during a border crossing. While many migrants who have died likely experienced a scenario in which they found themselves lost in remote terrain, we have provided preliminary evidence suggesting that this is not the full story. Prior research among undocumented migrants as they make their journey north has shown that they work together, support one another, and do not take lightly the decision to leave one another behind (Vogt 2016, 2018; Slack, Martínez, and Whiteford 2018; Slack and Martínez 2018). As evidenced in the missing person reports discussed above, migrants may become separated from their groups and traveling companions because they were chased or intimidated by aggressive USBP tactics. Migrants often risk deportation and death to tend to the injured, sick, or dead, rather than leaving someone behind. For example, there is a well-known story in Tucson of a group of migrants who carried a gravely injured woman, Beatrice, to a road rather than leave her behind. They were all apprehended while Beatrice was taken to a Tucson hospital where she later died. The stretcher made by the group from desert materials and cloth torn from their own clothing is on permanent display at the Arizona Historical Society in Tucson, AZ (Arizona Historical Society 2022).

In addition to migrants caring for one another, places along the border like the Sonoran Desert have sustained life for centuries and are not inherently dangerous. Barbara Sostaita has argued against the idea that the desert has been successfully “deployed” as a weapon against migrants: “The settler state is not allying itself with the desert. It is actively working to destroy the desert” (Sostaita 2023, 1). To maintain prevention through deterrence strategies, the land must be constantly managed and altered. Sostaita continues,

For the Border Patrol, the desert is not so much an accomplice as it is an obstacle to catching and detaining migrants. Saguaros stand in the way of walls, and so they are cut down. Ancestral burial grounds are desecrated. Mountains harbor fugitives, and so they are blasted to make way for switchback roads (ibid.).

Boyce (2015) has demonstrated how “the climate, topography, and inhabitants of the border region have never fully cooperated” with USBP’s attempt to enlist the desert in its enforcement strategy (p. 257). The land, its inhabitants, and migrants themselves are aggressively managed and actively disrupted for USBP to maintain dominance. In addition to chasing, intimidating, and physically abusing migrants, USPB as an agency also prevents or disrupts relationships of care and efforts to provide aid in the borderlands: Tohono O’Odham traditions and movements are disrupted or prevented (Blanchfield and Kolowratnik 2019; Zícari 2019; Schaeffer 2022; Madsen 2023), humanitarian aid workers are harassed and arrested (Caminero-Santangelo 2009; Boyce 2019; Sostaita 2020), and water and food left for migrants is destroyed (No More Deaths 2018).

Rather than thinking of the desert itself as a weapon or as “hostile terrain” (De León 2015), the evidence presented in this article argues for a refocusing on the tactics of U.S. law enforcement agents toward migrants within this terrain. Through the doctrine of low-intensity conflict, aggressive military strategies have been used against civilians in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands since the mid-1970s, increasing dramatically after 9/11 (Dunn 1996, 2021; Nevins 2006; Green 2011). Historically, and as demonstrated by our review of medical examiner data, a LIC approach is more violent in practice than described in policy (Nelson 2019). Although U.S. federal policy documents that outlined prevention through deterrence strategies emphasized the non-human (e.g., ecology, walls, technology), the reality on the ground is that the strategy has always included aggressive and militarized tactics on the part of federal and local law enforcement agencies toward civilians. As the United Nations Special Rapporteur of the Human Rights Council on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions has stated, “militarization of border control leaves civilians ‘vulnerable to a wide range of abuses’ owing to the mind-sets of some who may perceive themselves as being akin to the military” (United Nations 2017, 6). Migrant deaths along the U.S.-Mexico border are not caused by dangerous or inhospitable terrain; rather, they are a direct result of military strategies being deployed against civilians.

Policy Recommendations

Based on our review of autopsy and missing person reports from the PCOME, we make several policy recommendations emphasizing the need for closer scrutiny of USBP pursuit and apprehension tactics, and closer attention to migrant fatality events where law enforcement personnel were present.

Conclusion

Throughout this article, we have argued that a militarized approach to border enforcement has been deadly in ways that extend beyond the reliance on geography to deter undocumented migration. Based on a qualitative analysis of autopsy and missing person reports from the Pima County Office of the Medical Examiner (PCOME) in Arizona between 2000 and 2023, we show how excessive use of force by border enforcement personnel can be deadly for migrants. These interactions have not been fully considered in prior studies focusing on the relationship between prevention through deterrence strategies and migrant death and disappearance along the US-Mexico border. Specifically, we observed three types of Border Patrol (USBP) practices that have been deadly: reckless motor vehicle pursuits, aggressive strategies used to detain individuals who are on foot, and the use of lethal force. Our findings reveal that these actions and tactics by immigration enforcement officers, which we argue constitute forms of “excessive use of force,” represent significant yet overlooked factors contributing to migrant death and disappearance in southern Arizona. Future research should conduct subsequent analyses of migrant death cases for which there were eyewitnesses to assess how the contexts and circumstances surrounding migrant death and disappearance have changed over time. We predict that deterrence-based policies have increased the incidence not only of migrant deaths due to exposure to the elements, but also due to aggressive pursuit and apprehension methods on the part of USBP.

While prevention through deterrence policies do involve the strategic use of border geographies as mechanisms of deterrence, they have also involved the use of militaristic tactics on the part of border enforcement agencies. We recontextualize prevention through deterrence policies within the history of the shift to militaristic strategies undertaken at the border by the U.S. government in the 1990s. While it is true that many border crossers have lost their lives because U.S. border policy has funneled them into remote geographies, an unknown number have also lost their lives due to the use of dangerous apprehension tactics used by border enforcement personnel. We understand both types of fatalities as direct results of prevention through deterrence strategies, and therefore call for an immediate end of prevention through deterrence policies along the U.S.-Mexico border.