The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is expanding its efforts to militarize the 2,000-mile border separating the United States and Mexico. It is now utilizing low-tech foot work and high-tech satellite systems as well as plane surveillance in their “war on immigrants.” These high-tech tactics were developed in the war on Afghanistan.
U.S. border patrol agents claim that the tactics are being employed to address more completely the influx of
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According to U.S. border patrol statistics, the “balloon effect” happened after the completion of the 14-mile wall separating San Diego, Calif., and Tijuana, Mexico. The wall did not prevent people from trying to cross the border in search of work. Instead, it forced immigrants to pass through Arizona. The desert conditions there took the lives of over 200 immigrants in 2006.
The tens of thousands of immigrants who attempt to cross from Mexico to the United States each year will encounter a high-tech, repressive machine. There are vibration, magnetic, and infrared sensors, and armed border patrol agents equipped with night-vision goggles. They also are often confronted by armed members of a neo-fascist organization, the Minuteman Project.
As of November 2006, the border patrol also began using a $7.5 million unmanned surveillance plane to detect undocumented immigrants crossing the border. This is the first of 18 planes that the DHS hopes to have flying over the U.S.-Mexico border by 2012. It is part of the effort that President George W. Bush has dubbed, “the most technologically advanced border security initiative in American history.”
Militarizing the U.S.-Mexico border is not meant to stop altogether the flow of immigrants entering the country. No significant portion of the U.S. ruling class wants to end immigration. The capitalists need a consistent influx of cheap labor to keep the unstable economy running.
In this context, the employment of tactics at the border that were perfected in the U.S. government’s racist, imperialist war on the people of Afghanistan is no surprise. Nor are the recent government raids of meat packing plants and immigrant neighborhoods. Part of the government’s immigration strategy is to intimidate, terrorize and criminalize undocumented workers at the border along with those already living inside the United States.
It does this to ensure that wages stay low for all workers for the sake of keeping capitalist profits high. Neither the government nor its capitalist allies want workers to combine and struggle against the oppression facing them at work and in their everyday lives.
Although undocumented workers suffer the most, all workers in the United States are threatened by the U.S. government’s militaristic border tactics and anti-immigrant racism.
As the U.S. government continually increases its military budget for imperialist wars abroad and repressive operations at home, 47 million people have no health care, affordable housing is scarce and education costs continue to rise.
The militarization of the U.S.-Mexico border only benefits the military-industrial complex and other capitalist exploiters. It will result in the loss of thousands of innocent lives and siphon away much-needed funds that should be used to meet people’s needs—documented or undocumented.
