Unshaven, dirty and dingy, seventy people sit, their hands, feet and midriffs chained, in a Tucson Federal court. The sight is so overwhelming in its absurdity and its severity that it most closely resembles the slave trade in early American history.
What is the crime that these people have committed? Surely they must be criminals of the highest degree, murders, rapists, or drug dealers to be restrained so exhaustively.
The looks of bewilderment and fear in their eyes contest this indication of debauchery. In fact, these people have no criminal history at all. They now stand before a federal court as a part of Operation Streamline, a law that requires the
Federal criminal prosecution and imprisonment of all unlawful border crossers, and specifically targeting migrant workers who have committed no other crimes.
This program is intended as a deterrent to prevent illegal border crossers. Agent Stagg of Border Patrol Tucson insists that increased border security and harsher enforcement of border policies are in direct response to the increased terrorist threat after 9/11 and the increased violence and drug trade in Mexico.
However, recent statistics and report by the Warren Institute indicate that deterrence programs like Operation Streamline are actually encouraging drug trade and human smuggling. According to an analysis by Syracuse University, Operation Streamline has skyrocketed illegal entry prosecutions to over 50% of the Federal agenda in Arizona, while the drug and human smuggling charges dropped from over 25% of total prosecutions to about 5% from 2003 to 2008.
Not only does Operation Streamline divert important resources from fighting more serious crimes, it tries to stem immigration without assessing the root causes of migration. Much like Operations Hold the Line, Gatekeeper, and Safeguard that tightened security in major urban areas only to push migrants out into more perilous desert territories and often to death, Operation Streamline does not slow immigration, it simply reroutes the problem with increased risk.
In Mexico, even a worker employed in a relatively well paying factory job would still need to spend roughly 80% of their weekly paycheck to buy the most basic groceries. Migrants headed for the border at a shelter in Altar, Mexico, many as young as sixteen or seventeen years old, described their mission with eerily simplistic and unwavering purpose, “Queramos una major vida-We want a better life.” Many cited the lack of jobs in their home states, especially in Southern Mexico, and the necessity to earn a higher wage to support aging parents or young children.
The US may actually be guilty of creating some of the economic causes of immigration. Author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Michael Pollan points out, the US currently grows 10 billion bushels of corn on enough acreage to cover roughly twice the size of the state of New York. Corn production has grown so rapidly, the market simply cannot support the massive amounts of corn being produced. The US government steps in with over $25 billion dollars in subsidies.
While this helps the corn farmers stay afloat in the US, there is still excess corn flooding the market. Because of the North American Free Trade agreement, the US can export this excess to Mexico for free. This influx of cheap corn floods the foreign markets, dramatically lowering the price of corn.
Native farmers can’t compete with the imported corn that subsidies allow to be sold for even less than it takes to grow. These farmers can’t afford to grow their own crops anymore and they lose their livelihood. Pollan reports that in 2007, 1.5 million Mexican farmers were pushed off their land.
Without the ability to sustain themselves in their homeland, many migrants have no choice but to uproot and look for work elsewhere. For thousands, the desire simply to survive outweighs the dangers posed by crossing the border. Yet, with projects like Operation Streamline, migrants are forced to resort to more desperate measures to cope with the new obstacles.
Robert Kinney, head of the Las Cruces Federal Defender’s Office, says people in his community refer to Operation Streamline as “a coyote employment Bill,” because with the higher stakes, people are hoping that experienced coyotes can successfully navigate them away from areas affected by Operation Streamline. Not only must coyotes pay the drug traffickers who control all routes to the border, the huge demand and the consequent dividends for trafficking drugs into the United States can make the drug trade an enticing prospect to people with little other economic choice.
Graffiti plastered over the Mexican side of the border wall captures the frustration of the migrant dilemma most succinctly; the portrait of a migrant kneeling before a Border Patrol agent holding a gun to the migrant’s head reads, “we live to be free, we die to escape slavery”.
