This summer I worked at a facility in Boca Chica, Texas for a few weeks. Boca Chica is a small town outside of Brownsville, Texas, and is right on the Rio Grande. It is so close to the border that my phone would switch to a Mexico data plan and I would cross through a border patrol checkpoint everyday going to and from work. It always made me think about racism and implicit bias when border patrol would wave my car through with a nod on most occasions. On the rare occasion My car was searched, the extent was a quick flashlight in my back seat, followed by a “are you a US citizen?” question before being waved through. This is a prime example of implicit bias and blatant racial profiling. On multiple occasions I saw cars pulled off to the side for further screening and nearly every time it was a Hispanic appearing person standing outside the car.
I researched this a bit more and found a supreme court case from 1975 called United States v. Brignoni-Ponce. It ruled that it is unreasonable and illegal to stop people at the border only based on the appearance of being of Mexican descent. However, it appears that this case did say that being of Mexican descent could be a “relevant factor” in a stop with other suspicion. This is racist and simply allows for border patrol to stop anyone they want. This is absurd to think that someone’s race could be a relevant factor in a traffic stop. In Brownsville, the town my hotel was in, I noticed a much higher police presence than other areas. This is historically a problem and is one of the reasons minority populations have higher crime statistics, among other reasons. Brownsville has a population in which 94% of people are Hispanic according to the census.
As a white person, I never got questioned for more than a few seconds, even passing through in a rental car, alone, well past midnight, with no work uniform, and with tools/bags/boots/etc in the backseat of the car. The legal racial profiling is a clear example of systemic racism. These events made me think about what it must feel like to be Hispanic in that area. It made me think about similarities to what we learned about immigration in week 9. The performativity of Hispanic people in that area must be difficult to manage and tiring to deal with every day. I would imagine children have a similar experience to Deming, with how they grow up, attend school, and make friends.
Below is an interesting article from the ACLU, an organization well known to fight injustices in the US talking about border check points.
Illustration of Location
Citations
“U.S. Census Bureau Quickfacts: Brownsville City, Texas”. Census Bureau Quickfacts, 2020, https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/brownsvillecitytexas.
US Supreme Court. United States Vs. Brignoni-Ponce. 74-114, 1975.
I really enjoyed reading your post and think it touched on some things that definitely need to be addressed today. There have been many cases of border patrols targeting people solely based on their looks, and they unfortunately get away with doing so. They automatically think that people with a certain skin color or accent are doing something out of the ordinary, and this can be quite intimidating to the innocent traveler. However, many of the people who could actually pose a real threat are let through because they fit the stereotype of a “normal” civilian. There should not be a specific standard for what a “normal” person looks like because looks rarely express someone’s true intentions. There have been many videos on Youtube of people being detained at borders, and it seems pretty difficult for them to get a word in over border patrol agents; these agents are too authoritative and make up their own rules based off their own biases, and this is sad.