Collection

Drugs, Law Enforcement, and Immigration in the 1980s

The Reagan administration changed the direction of federal policy and federal spending, away from the social safety net and civil rights policies of the New Deal Order and toward the deregulation of business and the expansion of the military and law enforcement. This collection centers on an article for Made By History that looks at the intersection of IMMIGRATION policy, LAW ENFORCEMENT, and the War on DRUGS. The other articles in the collection explore other ways these themes shaped the 1980s and intersected in other eras, from the 1880s to the present.

created by Kathryn Ostrofsky on August 2, 2022

Ronald Reagan and Nancy Reagan wave at inauguration in 1981

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Reagan’s War on Drugs Also Waged War on Immigrants

Lawmakers are undoing the worst parts of 1980s drug legislation, but they have forgotten its ties to immigration enforcement.

by Alexander M. Stephens via Made By History on October 27, 2021

CORE RESOURCE: How the War on DRUGS also affected LAW ENFORCEMENT of IMMIGRATION policies.

Evangelicals and Immigration: A Conflicted History

Before the 1990s, evangelical Christians were busier resettling newly arrived refugees than trying to keep them out.

by Ulrike Elisabeth Stockhausen via Process: A Blog for American History on March 18, 2019

MEANWHILE: While federal policy was hostile to IMMIGRATION, evangelical Christians welcomed and offered aid to the country's newcomers.

Bleachman, a mascot created by the San Francisco AIDS Foundation as a part of a campaign directed at drug users and intended to help slow the transmission of HIV in needle-using communities, 1988.

What We Can Learn From Harm Reduction’s Defeats

The history of the movement is one of unlikely success. But what can we learn from embattled experiments like prescribed heroin?

by Sessi Kuwabara Blanchard via The Nation on February 15, 2022

MEANWHILE: The War on DRUGS was not the only possible policy choice to address addiction. This article examines a long-forgotten alternative: harm reduction.

Rowhouses in Philadelphia burn after officials dropped a bomb on the MOVE house in May 1985.

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The Shocking MOVE Bombing Was Part of a Broader Pattern of Anti-Black Racism

How culture fueled the infamous police decision.

by J. T. Roane via Made By History on May 13, 2021

MEANWHILE: An example of the militarization of LAW ENFORCEMENT: Philadelphia police used helicopters to bomb a neighborhood where Black activists were organizing in 1985, killing 11 and destroying 61 residential homes.

The Border Patrol has Been a Cult of Brutality Since 1924

The U.S. needs a historical reckoning with the true cause of the border crisis: the long, brutal history of border enforcement itself.

by Greg Grandin via The Intercept on January 12, 2019

PREVIOUSLY: This article traces the history of LAW ENFORCEMENT of IMMIGRATION on the U.S.-Mexico border throughout the 20th century.

a rolled dollar bill and cocaine on a table

How America Convinced the World to Demonize Drugs

Much of the world used to treat drug addiction as a health issue, not a criminal one. And then America got its way.

by J. S. Rafaeli via Vice on August 13, 2018

PREVIOUSLY: The origins of the War on Drugs stretch back 100 years to the 1880s, and the role of American imperialism in transforming DRUG policy into a LAW ENFORCEMENT issue.

The Migrant Caravan: Made in USA

Much of the migrant "crisis" is blowback from decades of official U.S. policy in Central America.

by Robert Saviano via New York Review of Books on February 14, 2019

LATER: How the U.S. foreign policy side of the War on DRUGS, from refugee deportation to CIA/DEA actions, contributed to the IMMIGRATION of Central American refugees seeking asylum in the U.S. in the 2010s.