Feature Abolishing the Toxic “Tough-on-Immigration” Paradigm Felipe Hernández “The greatest purveyor of violence in the Introduction world today [is] my own government.” – In October 2018, a caravan of about 7,000 Dr. Martin Luther King (1967)1 people from Central America seeking ref- uge from extortion, state and gang violence, Abstract femicide, and the effects of climate change This article contextualizes and examines were violently met with hundreds of Federal the tough-on-immigration paradigm that has Mexican Police forces on the Guatemala– driven both Republican and Democratic Mexico border armed with tactical gear immigration policies. First, this article traces and training largely provided by the United the evolution of the sociopolitical construct States.2,3 As if preparing for war, Trump mobi- of the undeserving criminal alien, a non- lized nearly 6,000 troops on the US–Mexico White person deemed a threat to White border, issued an executive order authorizing free personhood, to demonstrate how this military personnel to use “force [including construct legitimizes tough-on-immigration lethal force, where necessary],”4 and issued policy prescriptions. Second, the article a proclamation suspending asylum rights for demonstrates how elected offcials since the all people on the caravan because “the mass Reagan administration have crafted immi- migration of aliens with no basis for admission gration policies solely through the tough-on- . precipitated a crisis.”5 When the caravan immigration paradigm as a tactic to obtain arrived at San Ysidro, Customs and Border political power. Third, this article illustrates Patrol (CBP) shut down the border and fred how both political parties leading up to the rubber bullets and tear gas to prevent them 2020 presidential election continue to pre- from crossing. Meanwhile, on the US side of serve the tough-on-immigration paradigm the border, nearly 15,000 children and thou- even in opposition to the Trump adminis- sands of adults, a majority of whom are from tration. Finally, the article proposes a new Central America, were held in cages, often up reparative justice paradigm for immigration to 20 people in one, causing abuse, trauma, policy that follows the lead of organizers and and the deaths of two children.6,7,8 In the back- those directly impacted in order to address the drop, the government was shut down over root causes of human displacement. Trump’s border wall by falsely declaring that Volume 31 | 2019 45 Electronic copy available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3444515 immigrants were fooding the border bringing center of this toxic cycle are the millions of crime, drugs, and violence.9 human beings whose dreams, hopes, and bod- While Trump’s actions against immigrants ies are bruised, abused, and disposed as if they have been overwhelming, they are not new. were meaningless byproducts of the law-and- Rather, they stem from the toxic cycle of order system of subordination.21,22 tough-on-immigration policies built across Historically, despite state repression coali- multiple administrations. This cycle uses tions of multiethnic, immigrant, and working- state-sanctioned violence such as military class peoples, particularly along border states, force, caging, and policing to separate families immigrants have successfully organized to and control displaced people as an ordinary challenge the law-and-order system to se- practice to maintain the dominant law-and- cure labor, immigrant, and civil rights and order system of subordination to divide social liberties.23 Such movements, often led by and political mobility on a global hierarchy by women and queer folx of color, have recog- race, class, gender, sexuality, and citizenship nized that struggles against prisons, police, status.10,11 The tough-on-immigration toxic state violence, capitalism, imperialism, and cycle, a global phenomenon, begins with the military occupations are inextricably linked false—but powerfully persuasive—dehuman- izing narrative that “illegal (criminal) aliens,” The tough-on-immigration toxic cycle… particularly from non-European “shithole” begins with the false—but powerfully countries, are invaders threatening the eco- persuasive—dehumanizing narrative nomic, social, moral, and political interests that “illegal (criminal) aliens,” …are of the country’s citizens. Once designated as threats and undesired populations, immi- invaders threatening the economic, social, grants are systematically linked to criminality moral, and political interests of to facilitate their permanent exploitation and the country’s citizens. marginalization, positioned against a strug- gling poor White class.12 This positioning to the global immigrant struggle.24,25 Yet the then moves those with political power, i.e., dominant discourse for immigration reform is poor White class, to legitimize the use of the often presented as a binary that supports the police, prisons, and the criminal legal sys- deserving immigrant while punishing the tem to control or eliminate the “criminal undeserving “criminal alien” via increased alien.”13,14,15 Throughout this entire process, border security and detention policies.26 Such corporate shareholders, politicians, and social binary organizing has led to some temporary, elites reap massive benefts from investing in and important, wins, such as the Deferred the law-and-order system that punishes and re- Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) pro- moves the “criminal alien” as a means to reg- gram, the 1986 Immigration Reform and ulate a stable global supply of labor to exploit Control Act, stopping the 2005 Sensenbrenner from predominantly non-White people with Immigration Bill (H.R. 4437), suspending little to no legal and political powers to resist, Sessions’s zero-tolerance policy, sanctuary i.e., factory workers, farm laborers, and domes- bills, and various state wins. However, as legal tic workers.16 In doing so, elite corporate and scholar Angelica Chazaro recently outlined, political classes facilitate a global social strati- the binary framing has also widened who fcation by creating a race to the bottom and qualifes as the undeserving “criminal alien” social death of undesirable groups through and strengthened the deportation machine.27 state violence like private prisons or mili- Today, both parties operate solely within the tarized borders, for example.17,18,19,20 At the dominant binary evident by their immigration 46 Harvard Kennedy School Journal of Hispanic Policy Electronic copy available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3444515 policy proposals: both call for tougher bor- protect and advance all economic, civil, and der security, more funds for detention and political interests of White citizens while de- deportation, and prioritized removals of the nying, or at the expense of, noncitizens (i.e., criminal alien, despite rejecting President non-Whites).32,33 Rooted in the historical Trump’s demand for a physical border wall.28 practice of European conquest-violence and Ultimately, as immigrant-rights groups like under the doctrine of Manifest Destiny, the United We Dream have recognized, tough-on- myth of Anglo-Saxon superiority, embedded immigration politics only marginally help the in US citizenship, was created by political small portion of immigrants characterized as and economic elites to convince a majority deserving at the expense of feeding more and poor White populace that they were entitled more people designated as criminal aliens to the lands, and fruits from those lands, they through the deportation machine.29 occupied by eliminating Native Americans This article has three aims. First, it traces and non-White Mexican peoples—both the evolution of the sociopolitical construct of characterized as sub-species invaders who the undeserving criminal alien to demonstrate were inherently vicious and criminal without how it serves as the basis for the tough-on- any right to land—as well as by subjecting immigration paradigm and, thus, toxic Black people to slavery and bondage.34,35,36 immigration policies. Second, this article Accordingly, in 1798, Congress passed the demonstrates how the tough-on-immigration Alien and Sedition Acts, which made aliens paradigm continues to shape immigration “liable to be apprehended, restrained, secured, policy across both parties today. Third, this and removed” during wartime under orders of article calls for the abolition of the tough-on- the president—a precursor to Trump’s emer- immigration paradigm and highlights the gency powers.37 By the 1820s, as the United calls of organizers for a new reparative justice States occupied western Mexican and Native paradigm. This new paradigm must reconcile lands, US settlers developed a complex and how the US law-and-order capitalist system proftable system of leased convict labor in continues to produce mass global human which those labeled as noncitizens or aliens, displacement, violence, and instability, pri- overwhelmingly Native, African, mulatto, and marily from communities of color in the mestizo people, were imprisoned on public global south, for exploitative labor practices charges (e.g., sleeping on the street, requiring as well as how the criminal and immigration public assistance) or as enemies of war. This legal systems are used as a social death “purga- included criminalizing habits of immigrants tory” for people designated as undesirable or that were deemed to threaten White people, criminal aliens.30 like the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which criminalized opium smoking on the notion