This overview personalizes the condition of border crossers, outlines U.S. border policy, and highlights the contributions to the issue.

Key words: immigration, boundary policing, globalization, immigrants -- Mexican -- United States, Mexican-American border region, police, state [the] – nation-state, United States -- Immigration and Naturalization Service, violence -- violence against women

Dunn's article notes that the militarization of the U.S.-Mexico border has human rights implications beyond immigration and border issues. He focuses on the tragic killing of Esequiel Hernandez, Jr., a young Mexican-American in Redford, Texas. Dunn argues that the Southwest border is the key locus of militarized enforcement in the U.S., as well as the site of the longest-running manifestation of such efforts, with the deepest institutional ties between the military and police bodies.

Key words: intelligence/surveillance, border militarization, immigration enforcement, human rights, border patrols -- United States, Hernandez, Esequiel, Mexican-American border region, United States -- military policy, United States -- social policy -- drug control policy

Falcón examines the gendered effects of militarization on women at the U.S.-Mexico border, particularly in the form of "militarized border rape" and sexual assault. For Falcón, militarization ideology is embedded with issues of hyper-masculinity, patriarchy, and threats to national security. She maintains that violence against women has escalated to the serial, multiple, and mass murders of Mexican women (e.g., in the border city of Ciudad Juárez).

Key words: rape, human rights, human rights, immigrants -- women, Mexican-American border region, rape, United States -- Immigration and Naturalization Service, United States -- military policy -- drug control policy

Huspek investigates the increased reliance of the Immigration and Naturalization Service and state and local police agencies on military terminology, with an emphasis on the impact this has had on unauthorized migrants and state practices. How was Operation Gatekeeper "operationalized"? How have unauthorized practices been affected? Huspek explores the relationship between the state and the citizenry, as well as that between the state and capital.

Key words: immigration policy, immigrants -- undocumented immigrants -- United States, labor and laboring classes -- immigrant labor -- United States, Mexican-American border region, Operation Gatekeeper [U.S.], state [the] -- immigration policy

Brownell reveals how border enforcement structures unauthorized migration, which benefits U.S. capital interests in ways authorized migration does not. He discusses changes in U.S. policy and practice at the Mexican border under the rubric of militarization starting in September 1993. The Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) has dubbed this shift in policy its "Comprehensive Southwest Border Enforcement Strategy." Brownell argues that the shift in border policy seeks to address economic concerns of the U.S. electorate. This new policy actually exacerbates the issues underlying these concerns. Changes in the composition of migrant flows may have effects that are independent of changes in the size of those flows. These effects are similar in many respects to proposals by agribusiness for a new guestworker program. Organized labor has staunchly opposed a new agricultural guestworker program. Despite this similarity, the public largely perceives the militarization of the U.S.-Mexico border as protecting U.S. workers from the economic effects of undocumented immigration.

Key words: immigration, border militarization, migrant labor -- Mexican, border patrols -- United States, immigrants -- Mexican -- United States, immigrants -- undocumented immigrants -- United States, labor and laboring classes -- immigrant labor -- United States, Mexican-American border region, United States -- Immigration and Naturalization Service, United States -- immigration policy

Khokha relates the "interior enforcement strategy" of the INS to human rights violations of migrants within the U.S. proper. The author's evidence and analysis support the position that current border enforcement policy and practice benefit U.S. employers and further the divide between undocumented workers and U.S.-born workers. Moreover, the de facto stratified workforce negatively affects the position of all workers.

Key words: immigration, labor relations, Indians in the United States, United States -- Immigration and Naturalization Service, United States -- immigration policy, United States -- race relations

In a piece on the dynamics of El Paso, Ciudad Juárez' border sister, Ortiz examines the contextual dimensions that foster and sustain border rights violations. He provides ethnographic research and probes the work of U.S.-Mexico border scholars. This article argues that recognizing the contextual dynamics in El Paso helps us to understand pervasive incongruent practices and representations related to the border region. Such recognition of the ambiguous and unstable condition of the border region may generate more comprehensive and effective responses to disruptive INS militarization practices. Improvements in documenting abuses and policies should enhance their effectiveness and appeal with local populations once their displaced situation is addressed. In El Paso and along most of border region, this social cost of abuses fosters a pervasive sense of alienation. The social fabric is corroded and the basis for a sustainable response to INS atrocities erodes. Information on the abuses or on the INS is not enough.

Key words: global issues, border studies -- Texas, Mexico, immigrants -- Mexican -- United States, Mexican-American border region, Mexico -- maquiladoras, United States -- Immigration and Naturalization Service

This dialogue between NGOs from the U.S. and Mexico posits a bilateral symbiosis of the causes and consequences of militarization. The report confirms disturbing trends: increased social polarization in both countries, the view of civilians as potential enemies, and the idea that in a militarized social conflict, it is appropriate to destroy the enemy (i.e., civilian populations). Tragically, the study found that militarization in Mexico has profoundly increased.

Key words: social movements, migration, border militarization, NGOs, globalization -- economic aspects, human rights, immigrants -- transnational migration, justice, Mexican-American border region, Mexico -- Zapatista National Liberation Army [EZLN], United States -- military policy

Nevins provides an overview and critique of the various interpretations of U.S.-Mexico border policing beginning in the early 1990s. By situating the topic globally, Nevins demonstrates that despite current notions of the demise of nation-states and the emergence of "borderless economies," the forces of globalization have served to strengthen territorial boundaries. This is especially true along the divides between the relatively rich and poor. Such developments lend credence to the contention that boundary maintenance goes hand in hand with efforts to reproduce inequalities across space. In a context of growing socioeconomic inequality internationally, some analysts have discussed a "global apartheid" that is characterized by extreme hierarchy and unevenness of circumstances and acute deprivation and mass misery among the poor. Such socioeconomic divisions most often correspond to race. According to Nevins, these analyses fail to demonstrate how control of residence and movement serves to maintain and enhance the inequality embodied in the metaphor "global apartheid."

Key words: immigration, security, immigration enforcement, globalization, immigrants -- transnational migration, immigrants -- undocumented immigrants, Mexican-American border region, state [the]

The Border Patrol's longstanding strategy has sought to force unauthorized crossings from urbanized areas into more remote areas. In Border Games: Policing the U.S.-Mexico Divide, the culmination of many years of research, Peter Andreas marshals a mountain of evidence and meticulous, authoritative analysis to argue that the border enforcement narrative obscures how border policy has fundamentally structured, conditioned, and, at times, unintentionally enabled unauthorized crossings.

Key words: immigration, book review, Mexico

Andreas' response clarifies what the book is not about: it was not meant to be a comprehensive examination of the U.S.-Mexico border or of the unauthorized border crossing experience of migrants. His more modest and focused aim was to unpack the logic of border enforcement escalation, focusing on explaining the sharp expansion of drug and immigration control efforts in recent years.

Key words: immigration, book review, response to immigration, immigrants -- Mexican -- United States, Mexican-American border region, smuggling -- Mexican-American border region, drug traffic -- government policy -- U.S., illegal aliens -- government policy -- U.S., border patrols -- Mexican-American border region, boundaries, Mexican-American border region -- economic conditions, U.S. -- boundaries -- Mexico, Mexico -- boundaries -- U.S.