Borders Don’t Stop Violence—They Create It

Monica Muñoz Martinez (MMM): We are in the midst of policy debates about immigration and ongoing concerns about the harm caused by US policies. Why is it important now to take a long view of the history of border enforcement?

Karl Jacoby (KJ): I often ask myself what we as historians can add to a conversation about the border that seems so focused, and with good reason, on contemporary challenges. My answer pivots on the belief that history can help us to understand the structural reasons behind what can otherwise seem like a confusing rush of events.

The border, by its very essence, makes manifest the limits of US power. This is why it has proven such a site of profound anxiety, especially for white Americans.

The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which ended the Mexican-American War (1846–48), committed the US to preventing Indigenous peoples from crossing the new border. The US soon realized, however, that its ability to make Native Americans accept this boundary—a line that, after all, made no sense to Indigenous nations that had inhabited this continent long before either the US or Mexico existed—was minimal.

The US also confronted the unwelcome fact that thousands of enslaved African Americans, particularly in Texas, used their proximity to the border to self-emancipate to Mexico. This persistent flight across the border undermined the cotton cultivation that was key to the antebellum US economy, along with the Southern fantasy that slavery was a benign institution.

All this highlights the distortions present in the contemporary discussions about a newfound border “crisis.” First, the idea of “regaining control of our borders” reflects a fantasy that never existed. But second, the border brings to the surface some of the most enduring and problematic features of the US—slavery and settler colonialism in the 19th century or the War on Drugs, climate change, and the continuing reality of settler colonialism today.

We often want to “solve” these issues through law enforcement. But policing cannot even come close to addressing the root causes of such long-standing and complicated issues. Indeed, it often exacerbates the problems.

This is why I find your research so significant, Monica. What insights into border policing did you gain from studying the Texas Rangers and the US Army in the 1910s?

MMM: You raise important points here that remind us that histories of colonization and slavery intersect in profound ways in the US-Mexico border region. I would add that the border has been a place where—through policing and enforcement—Indigenous, Asian, Mexican, and African people were cast as un-American, foreign, incapable of being citizens, and as a threat to the nation. Racist violence was used to subordinate and control populations who refused government intervention by both the United States and Mexico. Massacres, murders, and lynchings by the US military, law enforcement, and civilians were cast as defending or protecting white Americans and their claims to property. And the border was a tool used to enable all that violence.