Jeremy Slack | University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) (original) (raw)

Papers by Jeremy Slack

Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space

Between 2018 and 2020, dramatic changes in US-Mexico policy transformed experiences of asylum on ... more Between 2018 and 2020, dramatic changes in US-Mexico policy transformed experiences of asylum on the border. Quotas on applications at ports of entry (known as "metering"), the “Remain in Mexico” policy, and the deployment of the pandemic era “lockdown” through Title 42, each severely limited asylum opportunities. In response, a host of informal waiting lists emerged, developed and were utilized by a binational network of non-governmental and government agencies, shelters, cartels, and individuals. In this article we use a feminist geographic lens to examine the intimate geopolitics of esperar created by these lists. Via in-depth oral histories with Mexican asylum-seekers, shelter staff, legal advocates, and the wider border bureaucracy, we examine their formation, everyday management, the slow violences and immediate threats they posed, and their work as an informal technology of state control. Our analysis demonstrates how the lists operated as informal tactics of divers...

Social Science Research Network, Jul 4, 2016

El reporte compila ensayos que reflexionan sobre el asesinato de 72 migrantes en San Fernando, Ta... more El reporte compila ensayos que reflexionan sobre el asesinato de 72 migrantes en San Fernando, Tamaulipas, en agosto del año 2010. Se analiza cómo dicha masacre fue un crimen de lesa humanidad, cómo socavó la información derivada de la prensa mexicana, la vida cotidiana de los sanfernandenses, los flujos migratorios extranjeros y cómo se articuló con la política migratoria de Estados Unidos.

In summary, our research shows that US Border Patrol agents and other CBP officers abuse migrants... more In summary, our research shows that US Border Patrol agents and other CBP officers abuse migrants, physically and verbally, with significant frequency. In addition, many resent immigrants in general, and display racism toward Mexicans and other Latin Americans, as well as prejudice on the basis of sexual orientation. This suggests that the proposal to make Border Patrol agents asylum officers could lead to imbalanced and adversarial decision-makers, the opposite of what is called for in law. There was a widespread tone of anger and little restraint in the use of cursing and yelling. We found that Border Patrol threats of physical abuse — such as killing, shooting, and abandonment in the desert — were common, which raises concern over the safety and the handling of traumatized people in an asylum context. Finally, there were numerous threats to use law as a form of punishment, which indicates a problematic attitude among persons that might be tasked with gathering information and making legal decisions.

The Handbook of Race, Ethnicity, Crime, and Justice, 2018

By the end of fiscal year 2016, the Obama administration had formally removed (i.e., deported) mo... more By the end of fiscal year 2016, the Obama administration had formally removed (i.e., deported) more than 3.4 million noncitizens from the United States—exceeding the 2.2 million deported during G. W. Bush’s term, as well as the nearly 870,000 during the Clinton administration (US Department of Homeland Security, 2016a, 2016b). In fact, the Obama administration deported more noncitizens than any other presidential administration and was “on pace to deport more people than the sum of all 19 presidents who governed the United States from 1892–2000” (Rogers, 2016). As a result, many immigrant rights groups criticized the Obama administration and often referred to the President as the “Deporter‐in‐Chief” (Dickson, 2014, para. 1). Other scholars argue that these criticisms are misguided for several reasons. First, when considered within the broader historical context of total repatriations (i.e., “removals” and “returns”), fewer noncitizens have been repatriated from the country in recent years relative to the 1990s and 2000s (Rosenblum & Meissner, 2014; US Department of Homeland Security, 2016b). Second, many of the policies that led to mass deportation preceded the Obama administration (Golash‐Boza, 2015; Rosenblum & Meissner, 2014), including the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA) and the 1996 Anti‐Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA), among others. Finally, the Obama administration exercised prosecutorial discretion, as outlined in the 2011 Morton memos and the 2014 Priority Enforcement Program (PEP), which limited the deportation of noncitizens “outside established priority categories” (Rosenblum & Meissner, 2014).

Journal of the Southwest, 2018

On June 5, 2014, the right-wing website Breitbart News released photos of South Texas detention f... more On June 5, 2014, the right-wing website Breitbart News released photos of South Texas detention facilities overflowing with women and children (Darby, 2014). The headline, “Leaked Photos Reveal Children Warehoused in Crowded U.S. Cells, Border Patrol Overwhelmed,” demonstrates the role of contestation in shaping border policies. The photos show dirty cells, full of young children and women, often sleeping on the floor or with standing room only. While the surface message was apparently humanitarian, the evident agenda was to mobilize fear about a migrant invasion at the U.S.-Mexico border (henceforth, the “border”). Although the source of the photos was anonymous, it must have been taken by someone inside the Border Patrol or Immigration and Customs Enforcement since photography is not allowed and few people gain access to processing centers (hence, the term “leaked”). Reported by Brandon Darby, a controversial FBI informant who infiltrated the 2008 Republican National Convention and sent two protestors there to jail, the article has limited text, but asserts that “thousands of illegal immigrants have overrun U.S. border security and their processing centers in Texas.” This publicity sparked an important turn to strengthening border enforcement and provided a nationally significant political symbol, both at the time and in the 2016 election. Understand-

The death of seven year-old Jakelin Amei Rosmery Caal Maquin in December of 2018 while in US Bord... more The death of seven year-old Jakelin Amei Rosmery Caal Maquin in December of 2018 while in US Border Patrol custody has led to outrage, frustration, and a host of unanswered questions. We know that she and her father were apprehended at 9:51 p.m., but Jakelin was not admitted to Providence Children's Hospital in El Paso until 8:51 a.m. the following morning. Other than that, the public awaits credible information on the cause of her death and, in particular, whether she perished because of Border Patrol failure. Beyond this tragic case, our research-which consists of more than 1,100 post-deportation surveys with unauthorized Mexican migrants-suggests that the denial of medical attention to migrants in US custody is a widespread and systemic problem, and one that appears to affect indigenous language speakers disproportionately. Research Methodology As part of the Migrant Border Crossing Study (MBCS), we surveyed 1,109 recently deported Mexican migrants who crossed the border without documents, were apprehended, and deported to Mexico. From 2010-2012, we completed surveys in Tijuana and Mexicali, Baja California; Nogales, Sonora; Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua; Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas; and Mexico City-achieving a response rate of over 90 percent. We have conducted research on unauthorized Mexican migration for more than a decade. Over the years, we were eyewitnesses to a host of problems, such as people being deported with injuries and in poor condition, some unable to walk, and many dehydrated and hungry. On several occasions, we interviewed people who had just hours before been released from surgery. For instance, one young man had fractured his vertebrae while crossing the border in the desert, but was deported the same day as his spinal surgery. In a separate case, a man was deported with a broken collarbone protruding from his skin.

Ethnographic Collaborations in Latin America, 2016

For several decades, pundits and critics have predicted the end of borders, envisioning a globali... more For several decades, pundits and critics have predicted the end of borders, envisioning a globalized world that ushers in a new era of collaboration and cooperation (Friedman 2005). Yet despite these proclamations and significant advancements in communication technology, as well as the explosion of social media, we have not seen significantly greater collaboration, even between partners as close as those along the United States-Mexico border. This is especially true in academic research. Perhaps communication technologies have taken more time to be fully integrated into the often age-restricted fields of academia. Maybe the very nature of academic collaboration needs far greater contact than is achievable through online and technological resources. Whatever the cause, intense debates in recent years about the safety of working in northern Mexico have complicated research efforts and created a huge divide between Mexican and US colleagues, as many institutions have banned official travel to Mexico.1

Territory, Politics, Governance, 2015

Handbook on Critical Geographies of Migration

Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 2020

Norteamérica, 2010

In 2010, we witnessed a series of events showing the shifting state of clandestine migration all ... more In 2010, we witnessed a series of events showing the shifting state of clandestine migration all along the border between Mexico and the United States. This article, based on interviews with people deported by U.S. authorities, reviews several themes rarely looked at in the literature, and brings newperspectives to better known topics. These are all integral parts of the network of violence woven into the experiences of border crossings. The authors discuss different manifestations of that violence as they explain both the structural forces that spawn and characterize it and individual reactions to these factors.

Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space

Social Science Research Network, Jul 4, 2016

The Handbook of Race, Ethnicity, Crime, and Justice, 2018

Journal of the Southwest, 2018

Ethnographic Collaborations in Latin America, 2016

Territory, Politics, Governance, 2015

Handbook on Critical Geographies of Migration

Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 2020

Norteamérica, 2010

Handbook on Critical Geographies of Migration, 2019

The Shadow of the Wall: Violence and Migration on the U.S.-Mexico Border, 2018

University of Arizona Press

The Shadow of the Wall: Violence and Migration on the U.S.-Mexico Border, 2018

University of Arizona Press

The Latino/a American Dream, 2016

Journal on Migration and Human Security, 2020

The routine human rights abuses and due process violations of unaccompanied alien children (UAC) ... more The routine human rights abuses and due process violations of unaccompanied alien children (UAC) by US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) have contributed to a mounting humanitarian and legal crisis along the US-Mexico border. In the United States, the treatment of UAC is governed by laws, policies, and standards drawn from the Flores Settlement, the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (TVPRA), and CBP procedures and directives, which are intended to ensure UAC's protection, well-being, and ability to pursue relief from removal, such as asylum. As nongovernmental organizations and human rights groups have documented, however, CBP has repeatedly violated these legal standards and policies, and subjected UAC to abuses and rights violations. This article draws from surveys of 97 recently deported Mexican UAC, which examine their experiences with US imigration authorities. The study finds that Mexican UAC are detained in subpar conditions, are routinely not screened for fear of return to their home countries or for human trafficking, and are not sufficiently informed about the deportation process. The article recommends that CBP should take immediate steps to improve the treatment of UAC, that CBP and other entities responsible for the care of UAC be monitored to ensure their compliance with US law and policy, and that Mexican UAC be afforded the same procedures and protection under the TVPRA as UAC from noncontiguous states.

Journal of the Southwest, 2018

On June 5, 2014, the right-wing website Breitbart News released photos of South Texas detention f... more On June 5, 2014, the right-wing website Breitbart News released
photos of South Texas detention facilities overflowing with women and
children (Darby, 2014). The headline, “Leaked Photos Reveal Children
Warehoused in Crowded U.S. Cells, Border Patrol Overwhelmed,”
demonstrates the role of contestation in shaping border policies. The
photos show dirty cells, full of young children and women, often sleeping on the floor or with standing room only. While the surface message
was apparently humanitarian, the evident agenda was to mobilize fear
about a migrant invasion at the U.S.-Mexico border (henceforth, the
“border”). Although the source of the photos was anonymous, it must
have been taken by someone inside the Border Patrol or Immigration
and Customs Enforcement since photography is not allowed and few
people gain access to processing centers (hence, the term “leaked”).
Reported by Brandon Darby, a controversial FBI informant who infiltrated the 2008 Republican National Convention and sent two protestors there to jail, the article has limited text, but asserts that “thousands
of illegal immigrants have overrun U.S. border security and their processing centers in Texas.” This publicity sparked an important turn to
strengthening border enforcement and provided a nationally significant
political symbol, both at the time and in the 2016 election. Understand ing the full impact of this event and the surrounding maelstrom of
humanitarian and anti-immigrant responses to the increase in Central
American refugee families requires a holistic and multiscalar analysis of
contending actors and how they changed and reproduced that which
we call the “border.”

Journal of Latin American Geography, 2019

Drawing on postdeportation surveys (N = 1,109) with Mexican migrants, we examine the impact of im... more Drawing on postdeportation surveys (N = 1,109) with Mexican migrants, we examine the impact of immigration enforcement programs and various social factors on repeat migration intentions. Our multivariate analyses suggest immigrants with strong personal ties to the United States have higher relative odds of intending to cross the border again, even when controlling modes of removal from the United States. Our findings highlight the inevitable failure of immigration policy and enforcement programs when placed against the powerful pull of family and home. These findings shed greater insight on the complex nature of unauthorized migration in an era of increased securitization and deportation.

This article draws on a unique dataset of more than eleven hundred postdeportation surveys to exa... more This article draws on a unique dataset of more than eleven hundred postdeportation surveys to examine migrants' experiences with coyotes (human smugglers) along the U.S.-Mexico border. Our focus is on migrants' satisfaction with the services provided by their most recent smuggler and whether they would be willing to put family or friends in contact with that person. We find a distinct difference between people's expectations for their own migratory experience compared to what they would be willing to subject loved ones to. expectations of comfort and safety are decidedly low for oneself; but for loved ones, a more expressive, qualitative assessment shapes their willingness to recommend a coyote: qualities such as trustworthiness, honesty, comportment, and treatment come to the fore. News coverage focusing on the deaths of smuggled migrants often portrays coyotes as nefarious and exploitative, but the migrant-smuggler relationship is much more complex than suggested by these media accounts. We provide empirical insight into the factors associated with successful, satisfactory, and safe relationships between migrants and their guides.

This article examines the use of anthropological research by expert witnesses in legal cases invo... more This article examines the use of anthropological research by expert witnesses in legal cases involving Mexican immigrants and the intellectual strategies employed to defend them as well as the obstacles such efforts confront. Expert witness research and writing in more than one hundred immigration and criminal cases is the basis for a discussion of the political and legal constraints that often lead to a particular characterization of Mexico, one which lies in contradiction to conventional anthropological approaches to the “cultures” anthropologists study. We consider these matters in terms of several issues about which the expert witness develops arguments and sometimes wins asylum and criminal cases: Mexican cultural “practices,” drug trafficking activities, and the Mexican political system. We conclude that given the great dangers faced by immigrant defendants, academic experts should make “good enough” arguments in order to pragmatically defend such clients in immigration and criminal courts, even if those arguments may differ from how anthropologists typically portray immigrants and Mexico in academic publications.

During a post-election TV interview that aired mid-November 2016, then President-Elect Donald Tru... more During a post-election TV interview that aired mid-November 2016, then President-Elect Donald Trump claimed that there are millions of so-called “criminal aliens” living in the United States: “What we are going to do is get the people that are criminal and have criminal records, gang members, drug dealers, we have a lot of these people, probably two million, it could be even three million, we are getting them out of our country or we are going to incarcerate.” This claim is a blatant misrepresentation of the facts. A recent report by the Migration Policy Institute suggests that just over 800,000 (or 7 percent) of the 11 million undocumented individuals in the United States have criminal records. Of this population, 300,000 individuals are felony offenders and 390,000 are serious misdemeanor offenders — tallies which exclude more than 93 percent of the resident undocumented population (Rosenblum 2015, 22-24).[1] Moreover, the Congressional Research Service found that 140,000 undocumented migrants — or slightly more than 1 percent of the undocumented population — are currently serving time in prison in the United States (Kandel 2016). The facts, therefore, are closer to what Doris Meissner, former Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) Commissioner, argues: that the number of “criminal aliens” arrested as a percentage of all fugitive immigration cases is “modest” (Meissner et al. 2013, 102-03).

The facts notwithstanding, President Trump’s fictional tally is important to consider because it conveys an intent to produce at least this many people who — through discourse and policy — can be criminalized and incarcerated or deported as “criminal aliens.” In this article, we critically review the literature on immigrant criminalization and trace the specific laws that first linked and then solidified the association between undocumented immigrants and criminality. To move beyond a legal, abstract context, we also draw on our quantitative and qualitative research to underscore ways immigrants experience criminalization in their family, school, and work lives.

The first half of our analysis is focused on immigrant criminalization from the late 1980s through the Obama administration, with an emphasis on immigration enforcement practices first engineered in the 1990s. Most significant, we argue, are the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigration Responsibility Act (IIRIRA) and the 1996 Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA). The second section of our analysis explores the social impacts of immigrant criminalization, as people’s experiences bring the consequences of immigrant criminalization most clearly into focus.

We approach our analysis of the production of criminality of immigrants through the lens of legal violence (Menjivar and Abrego 2012), a concept designed to understand the immediate and long-term harmful effects that the immigration regime makes possible. Instead of narrowly focusing only on the physical injury of intentional acts to cause harm, this concept broadens the lens to include less visible sources of violence that reside in institutions and structures and without identifiable perpetrators or incidents to be tabulated. This violence comes from structures, laws, institutions, and practices that, similar to acts of physical violence, leave indelible marks on individuals and produce social suffering. In examining the effects of today’s ramped up immigration enforcement, we turn to this concept to capture the violence that this regime produces in the lives of immigrants.

Immigrant criminalization has underpinned US immigration policy over the last several decades. The year 1996, in particular, was a signal year in the process of criminalizing immigrants. Having 20 years to trace the connections, it becomes evident that the policies of 1996 used the term “criminal alien” as a strategic sleight of hand. These laws established the concept of “criminal alienhood” that has slowly but purposefully redefined what it means to be unauthorized in the United States such that criminality and unauthorized status are too often considered synonymous (Ewing, Martínez, and Rumbaut 2015). Policies that followed in the 2000s, moreover, cast an increasingly wider net which continually re-determined who could be classified as a “criminal alien,” such that the term is now a mostly incoherent grab bag. Simultaneously and in contrast, the practices that produce “criminal aliens” are coherent insofar as they condition immigrant life in the United States in now predictable ways. This solidity allows us to turn in our conclusion to some thoughts about the likely future of US immigration policy and practice under President Trump.

[1] These numbers are based on the assumption that “unauthorized immigrants and lawful noncitizens commit crimes at similar rates” (Rosenblum 2015, 22). However, there is research that provides good support that criminality among the undocumented is lower than for the foreign-born population overall (Rumbaut 2009; Ewing, Martínez, and Rumbaut 2015).

Essays, Center for Migration Studies, 2019

Journal of the Southwest, 2018

On June 5, 2014, the right-wing website Breitbart News released photos of South Texas detention f... more On June 5, 2014, the right-wing website Breitbart News released photos of South Texas detention facilities overflowing with women and children. The headline, “Leaked Photos Reveal Children Warehoused in Crowded U.S. Cells, Border Patrol Overwhelmed,” demonstrates the role of contestation in shaping border policies. This publicity sparked an important turn to strengthening border enforcement and provided a nationally significant political symbol, both at the time and in the 2016 election. Understanding the full impact of this event and the surrounding maelstrom of humanitarian and anti-immigrant responses to the increase in Central American refugee families requires a holistic and multiscalar analysis of contending actors and how they changed and reproduced that which we call the “border.” Despite the Central American increase, total U.S. southern border arrests have declined, but border immigration enforcement has continued, and in some ways grown. This is the central paradox we wish to explore: In light of drastically reduced apprehensions, and the prevalence within that apprehension pool of law-abiding asylum seekers, we ask why has border immigration enforcement increased, not declined? Recent empirical evidence has linked these contending discourses about borders and immigration to niche right-wing media, and to the election of Donald Trump. The themes we raise here—contention around Central American migration of families and unaccompanied children, the political construction of border “crisis,” and the symbolic and material saliency of the U.S.-Mexico border in immigration debates—continue to be central under the Trump administration.

Our theoretical approach for answering these questions has two thrusts. One is that the social world is constructed through contentious politics, though such contention occurs within a wider structural backdrop. Contestation involves multiple actors coalescing and conflicting to seek social and political outcomes. Such outcomes are contingent, with multiple factors and actors entering into play, and may not be what was sought or predicted, even by “winners.” The other is that borders are not simple facts on the ground, but rather are outcomes of state and societal action that continually are produced, reproduced, or changed. This approach is summarized with a process word, “bordering.” Scholars have recently
explored this concept of bordering processes (such as interior security surveillance, exterior consular visa control) set away from conventional geopolitical boundaries. However, bordering is not only adding such practices to novel sites. The push to move beyond the border through expanding the criteria of how we view journeys does not detract from the necessity of understanding how the specific place that is the border is remade through conflict, a process which has direct ramifications farther away. We contend that the bordering process perspective also applies to formal nation-state borders. The specificities of these traditional borders are not just inherent qualities of geopolitical lines on a map. Long-established power geographies like the U.S.-Mexico border were historically constructed, and can again mutate through processes of struggle and transformation, or have their characteristic power practices reauthorized, rejustified, and resourced. Their social-political arrangements thus require continual reproduction or reworking, shaped by contentious politics within wider social domains.

Mass deportation is at the forefront of political discourse in the United States. The Shadow of t... more Mass deportation is at the forefront of political discourse in the United States. The Shadow of the Wall shows in tangible ways the migration experiences of hundreds of people, including their encounters with U.S. Border Patrol, cartels , detention facilities, and the deportation process. Deportees reveal in their heartwrenching stories the power of family separation and reunification and the cost of criminalization, and they call into question assumptions about human rights and federal policies. The authors analyze data from the Migrant Border Crossing Study (MBCS), a mixed-methods, binational research project that offers socially relevant, rigorous social science about migration, immigration enforcement, and violence on the border. Using information gathered from more than 1,600 post-deportation surveys, this volume examines the different faces of violence and migration along the Arizona-Sonora border and shows that deportees are highly connected to the United States and will stop at nothing to return to their families. The Shadow of the Wall underscores the unintended social consequences of increased border enforcement, immigrant criminalization, and deportation along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Journal of Latin American Geography, 2019

Table of Contents: Unsettling territory: Indigenous mobilizations, the territorial turn, and th... more Table of Contents:

Unsettling territory: Indigenous mobilizations, the territorial turn, and the limits of land rights in the Paraguay-Brazil borderlands (Joel E. Correia)

Geographic Rift in the Urban Periphery, and Its Concrete Manifestations in Morelia, Mexico (Brian M. Napoletano, Jaime Paneque-Gálvez, Yadira Méndez-Lemus, & Antonio Vieyra)

Indigenous Survival and Settler Colonial Dispossession on the Mexican Frontier: The Case of Cedagĭ Wahia and Wo’oson O’odham Indigenous Communities (Blake Gentry, Geofrey Alan Boyce, Jose M. Garcia, & Samuel N. Chambers)

La frontera en el septentrión del Obispado de Michoacán, Nueva España, 1536–1650 (América Alejandra Navarro López & Pedro Sergio Urquijo Torres)

Can the Use of a Specific Species Influence Habitat Conservation? Case Study of the Ethnobotany of the Palm Iriartea Deltoidea and Conservation in Northwestern Ecuador (Maria Fadiman)

La agricultura en terrazas en la adaptación a la variabilidad climática en la Mixteca Alta, Oaxaca, México (Gerardo Bocco, Berenice Solís Castillo, Quetzalcóatl Orozco-Ramírez, & Adrián Ortega-Iturriaga)

In Good Faith: Land Grabbing, Legal Dispossession, and Land Restitution in Colombia (Max Counter)

Trump’s Border Militarization and the Limits to Capital (Jeremy Slack)

Bolsonaro and the Inequalities of Geographical Development in Brazil (Nelson Rojas de Carvalho & Orlando Alves dos Santos Junior)

The Embers of Radical Ecology and Revolutionary Ideology in Nicaragua’s Protests (Michael A. Petriello & Audrey J. Joslin)

Truncated Transnationalism, the Tenuousness of Temporary Protected Status, and Trump (Ines Miyares, Richard Wright, Alison Mountz, & Adrian Bailey)