“The Border Patrol State” by Leslie Marmon Silko talks about the border region and the regulations on the “border state patrol” placed by law enforcement on immigration which results in the dehumanizing and criminalizing of marginalized groups. From page 4 going into 5, it states in the text, “. In the city of South Tucson, where 80 percent of the respondents were Chicano or Mexicano, a joint research project by the University of Wisconsin and the University of Arizona recently concluded that one out of every five people there had been detained, mistreated verbally or nonverbally, or questioned by I.N.S. agents in the past two years.”. This is due to how the media portrays immigration and how officials handle it. The author also brings up the murders and the disappearance of many immigrants once coming across the “border state patrol.”
I appreciate the author for bringing awareness to an issue that is still current to this day. The mistreatment of immigrants, ranging from verbal to physical abuse is often overlooked in the media and yet, is deemed dangerous ones in media. Oftentimes, I hear about multiple people going missing while being detained, and yet nothing is being done about the thousands of people and children missing under official government care. When the author goes into her experience on the night of the highway, you can sense the fear and anxiety that overcame her that day, yet still, this type of mistreatment continues to happen.
In the excerpt from, ” The Land of Open Graves: Living and Dying on the Migrant Trail” by Jason deLeon, chapter 6 “Technological Warfare” starts with introducing Lucho and Memo as they prepare themselves for crossing the border. They try to lighten the mood as they pack their things by cracking a few jokes which insinuates how intense everyone must have felt. They pack items to prepare to fight off animals and to camouflage by wearing black clothes so they won’t be seen, regardless of how hot they would get from the heat being absorbed due to the black shirt. On page 7 (150), it states “[…] I ask about the discomfort from the extra heat generated by wearing black in the scorching desert, and he replies, “It’s better to be hot than to get caught.”. Which shows how much physically they were willing to sacrifice.
Overall, both texts explore the hardships of immigrants and the process and emotions of crossing the border. On page 13, (156) talks about the social and economic issues the walls create despite not being able to find a way around them. This goes into detail on the fixations of the dehumanization of immigrants and the fixation behind the ability to prevent them from crossing the border using the wall. The use of security is weaponized against a community and is used as a justifiable reason to discriminate against a marginalized group.
