Todd Miller (1)

This book was a thorough, frankly disheartening look at the processes of US-backed border militarization in non-US countries, and the ways that the US and Israel in particular are pushing to limit the movement of the poor, while opening doors for especially corporations and the rich to be able to move freely between nation-states. Miller's multiple case study sites--Mexico, Guatemala, Puerto Rico, Israel/Palestine, Jordan, Morocco, Kenya/Tanzania, the Philippines, and I may be forgetting a few--reveal just how far the "US" imperial border stretches, especially through US-backed and US-trained border control and the use of technology. There's so much here that it can get overwhelming, and there were times when I felt kind of like "well fuck there's nothing to be done about this," and while I think Miller does a decent job of starting to show us the way out of that sense of despair, but it's rough.

I think, though, because he's so detailed it can get hard to fully follow his frameworks, and it was easy for me to get lost in the shuffle of locations. I also think that while indigeneity is clearly something he's working with, identifying indigenous world-views about land as one of his primary answers to these issues he's grappling with comes kind of late in the text, to the point where I was like "hey are you gonna talk about this at all or??" But I would definitely recommend this book as a way into thinking about security states and what that actually means in practice on a global scale.… (más)

Although obviously far from the only book on the topic, this, I believe, is a crucial book. Relatively short and extremely clear, to the point, and well written, Storming the Wall outlines the politics and economics of climate change. Miller describes convincingly the ways in which the current waves of migration around the world are largely driven by environmental degradation caused by climate change, and the ways in which the political response to that migration is the response one would expect of the "haves" preparing to protect their status from the "have nots" rather than a world bringing its scientific expertise to bear on the ways to prevent and/or ameliorate the problems. While "security" technology has been growing into a multi-billion dollar industry, formerly arable land in Central America, for example, has grown untenable for agriculture with extremely little effort made or money spent on trying to reverse this trend. Miller also demonstrates that, in the U.S., while Republican politicians may still be denying the effects, and even the existence, of climate change, the Department of Homeland Security, the Justice Department and the American military have been convinced of the growing effects of climate change for decades, and have been drawing up strategies and action plans accordingly. And they are not trying to figure out how to help people; they are creating plans for keeping people out. In the meantime, governments are doing what they can to discourage and even suppress grass root movements trying to bring these issues to light and to affect change in a more positive and compassionate direction.… (más)

After a somewhat slow start, the author gains momentum and delivers a blistering critique of the increasingly expanding security state. Under the pretext of protecting the borders, various government agencies and enforcement units have swollen beyond any credible or manageable standard and have extended their reach into the privacy of many American citizens. Now as part of the military-industrial complex, the Border Patrol has seen a huge surge in growth and funding and manufactures more detentions to justify such outlays. Needless to say, private businesses are strong advocates of such policies as government contracts are abundant for feeding such an enterprise.
Whether it is the Canadian or Mexican border, citizenship and documentation is no protection against the intrusive tentacles of the Border Patrol and affiliated law enforcement entities. Puerto Ricans (American citizens) are classified as " Mexicans" and deported, and states such as South Carolina refuse to recognize their citizenship status and deny them driver's licenses. The book details a litany of other abuses that have became routine as the hydra of Homeland Security continues on its merry or not so merry way.
Includes full citations of funding, detentions, and deportations as well as a run down of the who's who in the security game. Appalling and highly recommended for anyone interested in the topic.… (más)

It’s hard not to assume what ideological track a book is going to take when it repeatedly uses the terms “militarization” and “social control” in its first chapters when referring to the US Border Patrol. And indeed, author Todd Miller comes across as someone with a serious bone to pick as he portrays agents and officers working along our nation’s international borders as soldiers almost akin to Nazi Germany’s Gestapo.

He opens up his new book, titled Border Patrol Nation, by detailing US Customs and Border Protection’s (CBP) involvement in providing security for the past dozen or so Super Bowl games. This is not a huge secret; CBP publishes several press releases each year explaining how CBP works in collaboration with state and local police, as well as the Department of Defense, to enforce no-fly zones over the stadiums and conduct security checks of vehicles entering the stadium parking areas. The agency participates only at the request of the federal government, and it brings to the table many resources that the locals don’t have or can’t acquire before the big game.

But because agents are enforcing federal immigration laws in Super Bowl locations like Miami and Phoenix, this somehow characterizes CBP’s role as one of an intrusive and human rights-violating paramilitary organization. Oddly enough, he highlights this unique mission in a way that says, Can you believe you didn’t know about this? Unfortunately for Miller, the fact that few people probably know about CBP’s involvement in Super Bowl security—and the dearth of irate liberal media coverage about it—implies that maybe their actions really aren’t intrusive at all. Considering how long they’ve been doing it, it’s interesting he comes across as the first to “break” this story, even though the media has written about it before.

This is just the start of a book that feels all over the place with regard to Miller’s criticisms of the border security “complex.” This isn’t to say that he doesn’t provide solid information; he interviewed many of the same people I did for Border Insecurity, like Glenn Spencer of American Border Patrol and Bruce Wright at the University of Arizona Tech Park. The interviews themselves and the statistics and descriptions of various aspects of border security, like the virtual border fence and border-related conferences, are accurate enough. He also does a good job of explaining the burgeoning border security industry, including the billions of dollars being spent on research and development of new technology and the growth of small companies seeking a piece of this ever-growing pie.

However, Miller’s liberal ideology frequently gets in the way of what had the potential to be a decent analysis of the expansion of Border Patrol’s presence in the United States. He provides a considerable number of anecdotes from illegal immigrants and residents of the Tohono O’odham Tribal Nation where they claim they were verbally or physically harassed or abused by Border Patrol agents, and the stories are very emotionally intense and convincing. Miller cites reports by the United Nations and human rights organizations that condemn the agency’s alleged excessive use of force, but he doesn’t say if the victims he spoke to ever reported the incidents to other US authorities or filed a formal complaint with CBP.

Despite the picture he paints of the Tribal Nation as being under the thumb of an oppressive border agency, Miller does give a factual account of the high rate of Nation residents involved in drug and human smuggling. When I worked as an intelligence analyst in northern California many years ago, I had already started hearing how the Nation would accept payments from the cartels to move drugs through the impoverished reservation, and how tribal police tended to be uncooperative with other law enforcement agencies. As a Tucson resident, those perceptions definitely persist, and I was disheartened to read about Tohono O’odham youth getting involved with smugglers, as typical this is for a cartel recruiting venture.

Unfortunately, Miller swings back to being ideologically one-sided when he moves into his chapter about the northern border. He writes extensively about Mexican and other minority populations being profiled and targeted by the Border Patrol in Detroit, but doesn’t cite any demographic statistics regarding the estimated population of illegal immigrants in the city. If 80 percent of Detroit’s illegal immigrant population were white and 70 percent of deportees were people of color, then Miller would have a serious point to consider. However, without context, we’re left to base our conclusions on Miller’s assumptions alone.

He also focuses his northern border chapter mostly on illegal immigrants and his view that DHS surveillance is seriously overreaching. But he never once touches upon the insane amount of illicit cross-border trafficking occurring along the St Clair and Detroit rivers, to include illegal drugs and large volumes of cash heading in both directions. The “thumb” area of Michigan is notorious for small single-engine planes loaded with drugs flying across the border outside of national radar coverage, and the response time of CBP boats on the river often isn’t fast enough to tackle the heavy smuggling activity there. Miller mentions none of this in relation to the reason CBP has increased its presence along our northern border.

Miller is a good writer; that’s definitely not the underlying problem with Border Patrol Nation. His stories are engaging and the reading is easy. However, structurally there is little to no flow, and he doesn’t make any direct points or specifically state the main thesis of the book until the last few pages. Even then, his argument is that “according to today’s Homeland Security regime all but the all but the elite and all-powerful few should be monitored as a potential threat.” He states both implicitly and explicitly throughout the book that the existence and expansion of the Border Patrol is equivalent to an imperialistic and racist attempt to divide the American people in the “have and have-nots” and the “global North and global South.”

Furthermore, Miller wonders how our government can spend so much money on border security while looking away from the economy, poverty, and homelessness. He offers little to nothing by way of a solution, other than the generic “resistance.” He talks about a cyclist who lay down under a Border Patrol vehicle to protest the apprehension of an illegal immigrant. But his entire book merely sends the general message that “the Border Patrol is evil” without seriously acknowledging that violent drug smugglers and criminals are crossing our borders illegally every day, attacking US law enforcement on a regular basis, and raping and assaulting on US soil the very illegal immigrants he champions.

Ultimately, Border Patrol Nation comes across as a call for open borders, paints the US Border Patrol as an agency filled with agents who have little regard for human and civil rights of both US and “non-citizens,” and offers no alternative to securing our borders from those who mean to do us harm other than protest or civil resistance. Miller’s pleasant writing style and expertise is overshadowed by his very clear bias, and he will turn off a lot of readers who could learn a lot from his work simply because he’s writing for an audience that shares his liberal viewpoint.… (más)