K
Kickin' Ass and Takin' Names
Guest
Immigrant Crackdowns Are Building the National Security State
By Roberto Lovato, Public Eye
Posted on April 14, 2008, Printed on April 14, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/81008/
"He [King George] has erected a multitude of new offices and set
hither swarms of officers to harass out people and eat out their
subsistence." The Declaration of Independence, 1776
Building Up the Domestic Security Apparatus
Most explanations of the relentless pursuit of undocumented immigrants
since 9/11 view it as a response to the continuing pressures of angry,
mostly white, citizens. The "anti-immigrant climate" created by civic
groups like the Minutemen, politicos like (name the Republican
candidate of your choice) and media personalities like CNN's Lou
Dobbs, we are told, has led directly to the massive -- and growing --
government bureaucracy for policing immigrants.
The Washington Post, for example, told us in 2006 that "The Minutemen
rose to prominence last year when they began organizing armed citizen
patrols along the U.S.-Mexico border, a move credited with helping to
ignite the debate that has dominated Washington in recent months."
Along the way to allegedly responding to "grassroots" calls about
"real immigration reform" and "doing something about illegals," the
Bush Administration dismantled the former Immigration and
Naturalization Service (INS) and created the Immigration and Customs
Enforcement (ICE) agency, whose more than 15,000 employees and $5.6
billion budget make it the largest investigative component of the
Department of Homeland Security and the second largest investigative
agency in the federal government after the FBI. In the process of
restructuring, national security concerns regarding threats from
external terrorist enemies got mixed in with domestic concerns about
immigrant "invaders" denounced by a growing galaxy of anti-immigrant
interests.
Implicit in daily media reports about "immigration reform" is the idea
that bottom-up pressure led to the decision to dismantle the former
INS and then place the immigration bureaucracy under the Department of
Homeland Security (DHS). Citizen activism contributed significantly to
the most massive, most important government restructuring since the
end of World War II. Nor do press accounts mention Boeing and other
aerospace and surveillance companies, which, for example, will benefit
as government contractors to the federal Secure Border Initiative
(SBI) that is scheduled to receive more than $2 billion in funding for
fencing, electronic surveillance and other equipment required for the
new physical and virtual fence being built at the border.
Nowhere in the more popular explanations of this historic and massive
government restructuring of immigration and other government functions
do the raisons d'etat -- the reasons of the state, the logic of
government -- enter the picture. When talking about immigration
reform, what little, if any, agency ascribed to the Bush
Administration usually includes such mantra-like phrases like
"protecting the homeland," "securing the border," and others. And even
in the immigrant rights community few, for example, are asking why the
Bush Administration decided to move the citizenship processing and
immigration enforcement functions of government from the more
domestic, policing-oriented Department of Justice (DOJ) to the more
militarized, anti-terrorist bureaucracy of the Department of Homeland
Security.
Little, if any, consideration is given to the possibility that
immigrants and immigration policy serve other interests that have
nothing to do with chasing down maids, poultry workers, and
landscapers.
Failure to consider the reasons of state behind the buildup leading to
the birth of the ICE, the most militarized branch of the federal
government after the Pentagon, leaves the analysis of, and political
action around, immigration reform partial at best. While important,
focusing on the electoral workings of the white voter excludes a
fundamental part of the immigration bureaucracy equation: how
immigrants provide the rationale for the expansion of government
policing bureaucracy in times of political crisis, economic distress,
and major geopolitical shifts. Shortly after the attacks and the
creation of DHS, the Bush Administration used immigrants and fear of
outsiders to tighten border restrictions, pass repressive laws and
increase budgets to put more drones, weapons and troops inside the
country.
Government actions since 9/11 point clearly to how the U.S. government
has set up a new Pentagon-like bureaucracy to fight a new kind of
protracted domestic war against a new kind of domestic enemy --
undocumented immigrants. While willing to believe that there were
ulterior motives behind the Iraq war and the pursuit of al Qaeda, few
consider that there are non-immigration-related motives behind ICE's
al Qaeda-ization of immigrants and immigration policy: multi-billion
dollar contracts to military-industrial companies like Boeing, General
Electric and Halliburton for "virtual" border walls, migrant detention
centers, drones, ground-based sensors, and other surveillance
technology for use in the Arizona desert that were originally designed
for war zones like the deserts of Iraq; the de-facto militarization of
immigration policy through the deployment of 6,000 additional National
Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexico border; hundreds of raids in
neighborhoods and workplaces across the country; the passage of
hundreds of punitive, anti-migrant state and federal laws like the
Military Commissions Act, which denies the habeas corpus rights of
even legal residents who are suspected of providing "material support"
to terrorist groups.
In the same way that private companies like the Pinkerton Detective
Agency provided highly profitable policing, surveillance, and other
government services targeting immigrants and citizens in the 20th
century, companies like Halliburton, Blackwater, the Corrections
Corporation of America, Boeing, and others are reaping profits by
helping build the government's immigrant policing bureaucracy today.
Contrary to the electoral logic prevailing in "pro-immigrant" and
mainstream media explanations of the current buildup of the
(anti)immigrant government bureaucracy, ICE's war on immigrants is not
solely, nor even primarily about shoring up support for the
Republicans and other prowar political and economic interests as most
analysts and activists would have us believe. A look at precedents for
this kind of government anti-immigrant action yields the conclusion
that using immigrants to build up government policing and military
capabilities is, in fact, a standard practice of the art of
statecraft. The historical record provides ample evidence of how
national security experts, politicians, elected officials, bureaucrats
and other managers of the state have used immigrants and anti-
immigrant sentiments and policies as a way of normalizing and
advancing militarization within the borders of the United States (the
"homeland").
At a time when the mortgage and banking crises make obvious that the
American Dream is dying for most, a time in which even its illusion is
hardly tenable as revealed in polls that found that less than 18
percent of the U.S. population believes it is living the "American
Dream," the state needs many reasons to reassert control over an
increasingly unruly populace by putting more ICE agents and other gun-
wielding government agents among the citizenry.
Focusing on non-citizens makes it easier for citizens to swallow the
increased domestic militarism inherent in increasing numbers of
uniformed men and women with guns in their midst. Constant reports of
raids on the homes of the undocumented immigrants normalize the idea
of government intrusion into the homes of legal residents. Political
scientists, investigative journalists, and activists have long
reminded us of how elites are constantly concerned with creating the
structures that may be needed to control a potentially unruly
population, especially one protesting for its rights like the millions
of immigrants who marched in 2006.
History and present experience remind us that, in times of heightened
(and often exaggerated) fears about national security, immigration and
immigrants are no longer just wedge issues in electoral politics; they
magically morph into "dangerous" others who fill the need for new,
domestic enemies required by an economy, a political system, a
citizenry, a country created, nurtured and dependent on civilizational
warfare and expansionism. Historians write about the geopolitical
contours of the U.S. empire that began with the stealing of Mexican
land. But little to no attention is paid to how, today, the domestic
contours of empire -- and the infrastructure that supports it -- are
also being reinforced by targeting Mexicans and other immigrants
actually living inside this now very troubled land.
The ICE's media and policy framing of the issue of immigration as a
kind of "war" complete with "most wanted" lists of terrorists, drug
traffickers, and immigrants like Elvira Arellano, the undocumented
immigrant leader deported after seeking and gaining sanctuary in a
Chicago church, follows clearly the directives outlined in a couple of
critical documents developed just after 9/11.
A Key Moment After 9/11
In order to understand how and why ICE now constitutes an important
part of the ascendant national security bureaucracy, we must first
look at the intimate relationship between National Security policy and
"Homeland Security" policy. One of the defining aspects of immigration
policy and the current attacks on immigrants is the fact that they are
being shaped by elite priorities of the post-9/11 climate.
Shortly after 9/11, the Bush Administration had, in July 2002,
introduced its "National Strategy for Homeland Security," a document
that outlines how to "mobilize and organize our Nation to secure the
U.S. homeland from terrorist attacks." Two months later, the Bush
Administration released the more geopolitically focused "National
Security Strategy of the United States of America," whose purpose is
to "help make the world not just safer but better." 9/11 provided the
impetus to create a bureaucratic and policy environment dominated by
security imperatives laid out in two of the most definitive documents
of our time, documents which outline strategies that, we are told,
"together take precedence over all other national strategies,
programs, and plans," including immigration policy. Immigration policy
nonetheless receives considerable attention, especially in the
Homeland Security Strategy. The role of the private sector is also
made explicit on the DHS website, which says, "The Department of
Homeland Security is responsible for assessing the nation's
vulnerabilities" and that "the private sector is central to this
task."
By placing other government functions under the purview of the
national security imperatives laid out in the two documents, the Bush
Administration enabled and deepened the militarization of government
bureaucracies like the ICE. At the same time, immigrants provided the
Bush Administration a way to facilitate the transference of public
wealth to military industrial interests like those of Halliburton,
Boeing and others through government contracts in a kind of Homeland
Security Keynesianism.
For example the two documents called for DHS to "Establish a national
laboratory for homeland security" that solicits "independent and
private analysis for science." This materialized through the budget of
ICE, which has resources for research and development of technologies
for surveilling, capturing, detaining, and generally combating what
politicos and Minutemen alike paint as the Malthusian monster of
immigration. Again, immigrants help the state justify massive
expenditures like those for the creation and maintenance of ICE,
which, in turn, have led to a major reconfiguration and expansion of
the state itself.
Perennial complaints of the former INS's infamous inefficiency in both
its border enforcement and citizenship processing functions, and the
9/11 catastrophe, combined to create the perfect political storm that
swept in another historic bureaucratic shift. Hidden behind what some
call the "anti-immigrant hysteria" characterizing periods like ours
are the political crises, economic earthquakes and geopolitical crises
that drive history.
The Lessons of History
History provides several precedents that illustrate how immigrants
have consistently provided elite political and corporate interests the
rationale for major government restructuring that often has little to
do with migration and much to do with other things, like: bureaucratic
patronage (think big government contracts for military industrial
firms); deploying and displaying power; controlling the populace and
rallying different sectors of society round the idea of the nation
(nationalism).
Long before the Patriot Act, DHS and ICE, policies linking immigrants
to the security of the country have formed an important part of U.S.
statecraft. The period before and after the passage of the Alien and
Sedition Acts of 1798, which gave then-president John Adams the
authority to remove any immigrant he deemed a threat to national
security, is one example. During this time, the Bush-like enumeration
of "Seditious Acts" was linked to the elite need to control the
populace, and militarize the society in times of profound instability.
Another example is the period of the Red Scare of 1919, when millions
of mostly-immigrant-led strikers provided the political impetus
leading to the creation of the domestic policing bureaucracy known as
the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). History has shown that, in
times of extraordinary instability, governments go to extraordinary
lengths and spend extraordinary amounts of money to create and
reinforce the ramparts of their policing apparatus and of nationhood
itself. Current efforts by the U.S. government to instrumentalize
immigrants as a means of buttressing itself in times of domestic and
geopolitical crisis follows a logic tried and true since the
establishment of the country amidst the global and internal turbulence
around the turn of the 18th century.
Immigrants and the Establishment of the National Security State
Like many of the newly established countries suffering some of the
political and economic shocks of economic and political modernization
in the late eighteenth century, the fledgling United States and its
leaders needed to simultaneously consolidate the nation state
established constitutionally in 1787 while also maneuvering for a
position on a global map dominated by the warring powers of France and
England. Central to accomplishing this were immigrants who provided
both a means of rallying and aligning segments of the populace while
also legitimating massive expenditures towards the construction of the
militarized bureaucracies meant to defend against domestic threats to
"national" security which linked external enemies real and perceived.
At the turn of the 18th century, the United States was much weaker
than and still very vulnerable to the power of Britain and France,
which were engaged in a war that defined political positions inside
and outside the new country. Like many of their elite and more
imperially inclined Federalist peers, Alexander Hamilton and President
John Adams were fearful of the French revolution. Developments in the
revolutionary republic pushed people and states around the Atlantic
world to take positions for and against the revolution at that time.
In addition, some Federalists like Hamilton also wanted to push out
the French and conquer Florida, Louisiana, and South America.
Immigrants and immigration policy of the post-revolutionary period
became ensnared in the battle for power between Federalists, who
advocated a more urban and mercantile route to nationhood, and the
anti-Federalist Republicans led by Thomas Jefferson, whose romantic
proto-capitalist path to consolidation of the nation was paved by
agrarian expansion. The battles between the Federalists and anti-
Federalists played themselves out in relation to France and the ideals
of the French revolution, as elites tried to cope with the instability
wrought by capitalist expansion on the rural majority.
The political, economic and geopolitical crises inherent in the
modernization process had a profound impact on how elites and the
state viewed the large immigrant population in the United States. In
response to the devastating effects of economic transformation,
thousands of French, German, Irish and other immigrants led uprisings
like the Whiskey Rebellion and Shay's Rebellion, which were viewed as
threats by elites, especially the Federalists.
In the face of both popular unrest and Republican competition for
political power, and in their efforts to consolidate the state and the
globally oriented mercantile and pre-industrial capitalist economy,
Hamilton and then-President Adams did what has, since their time,
become a standard operating procedure in the art of U.S. statecraft:
build the state and insert its control apparatus in the larger
populace by scapegoating immigrants as threats to national security.
In the words of historian John Morton Smith, "The internal security
program adopted by the Federalists during the Administration of John
Adams was designed not only to deal with potential dangers from
foreign invasion growing out of the "Half War" with France, but also
to repress domestic political opposition." In this context, immigrants
became the domestic expression of the threat represented by the French
Jacobins, the proto-communist and al Qaeda-like subversive threat of
the early nineteenth century. Commenting on this threat, Samuel
Sitgreaves, a Federalist Congressman from Pennsylvania, made the
connection between internal immigrant threats and external big power
threats when he said in May 1798 " ... the business of defence would
be very imperfectly done, if Congress confined their operations of
defence to land and naval forces, and neglected to destroy the
cankerworm which is corroding the heart of the country ... there are a
great number of aliens in this country from that nation [France] with
whom we have at present alarming differences ... there are emissaries
amongst us, who have not only fomented our differences with that
country, but who have also endeavored to create divisions amongst our
own citizens."
Also considered a threat were the free and unfree blacks who elites
feared might form a "domestic army of ten thousand blacks." Other
fears of subversion by domestic interests linked to external enemies
were stoked by rampant rumors of a French-influenced "Illuminati"
conspiracy, an "internal invasion" to create a godless, global "new
world order" allegedly led by emigrants from France and St. Domingue.
The modern use of the word "terror" first enters the language when Sir
Edmund Burke gazed across the English Channel and applied it to the
actions of the Jacobin state in France.
Burke's conservative American cousins then adopted the term and
applied it to French-influenced immigrants and others considered
subversive. Such a climate aided Federalists in their efforts to
centralize and consolidate both power and nationhood. Hamilton and
then-President John Adams undertook several legal and other
institutional initiatives designed to enhance their and the state's
power while also putting their Republican critics and other opposition
in check. Laws facilitating press censorship were coupled with calls
to unify the nation in preparation for war with France. After Hamilton
and the Federalists raised taxes to pay for their expansionist
expenditures to consolidate their version of the new country, a group
of people who refused to pay taxes unleashed Fries' Rebellion. In
response, Adams, Hamilton and the Federalists seized on the unrest to
unleash heretofore unrealized state powers and nation-reinforcing
state bureaucracy.
At the core of the moves was the infamous Alien and Sedition Acts
proposed by Adams and passed in 1798. The law targeted the immigrant
threat by making it easier to put them in jail for subverting the
government.
At the same time that they passed the Alien and Sedition Acts, Adams,
Hamilton and the Federalists also implemented the first major
reorganization of government bureaucracy. Central to this
reorganization was the establishment of the Department of the Navy, a
revived U.S. Marine Corps and a "New Army" in the 1798. In the same
session in which it passed the Alien and Sedition acts, the Federalist-
dominated fifth congress passed in its first session a bill
authorizing $454,000 on defense, which, at that time represented a
large expenditure. During its second session it authorized
$3,887,971.81, an amount equal to "more than the entire 1st congress
had appropriated for all government expenditures". During its third
session it authorized $6 million for a total of over $10 million. The
end result of the anti-immigrant expenditures Federalists created what
some call the first national security state.
Immigrants, the Red Scare, and the Birth of the FBI Bureaucracy
A similar situation in which a crisis sparking immigrant activism led
to a major build-up of the government policing apparatus took place
during the Red Scare of 1919. The U.S. government faced several
economic and political pressures including the end of World War I, the
demobilization of the Army, returning troops, joblessness, depression,
unemployment and growing inflation.
The precarious situation gave rise to increased elite fear of Jewish,
Italian and other immigrant workers in the era of the Bolshevik
revolution and an increasingly powerful -- and militant -- labor
movement. Socialists, Wobblies, and other activists like Emma Goldman,
who were against the war and demonstrated high levels of labor
militancy, staged historic labor actions in 1919. That year saw 3,600
labor strikes involving four million workers, many of whom were led by
and were immigrants. Government and big business had to watch as a
full one-fifth of the manufacturing workforce staged actions. Massive
organizing by Jamaican immigrant Marcus Garvey's United Negro
Improvement Association and race riots in northern cities further
stoked elite fears and gave birth to the institutional response to
what became known as the Red Scare.
Like other national governments of the period, the United States had
begun intensifying the centralization of functions formerly carried
out by the private sector, including keeping labor and other
dissidents in check. In the words of Regin Schmidt, author of The FBI
and the Origins of Anti-Communism in the United States, "In response
to social problems caused by industrialization, urbanization and
immigration and the potential political threats to the existing order
posed by the Socialist Party, the IWW and, in 1919, the Communist
parties, industrial and political leaders began to look to the federal
government, with its growing and powerful bureaucratic organizations
to monitor and control political opposition." Major expansion of the
state via the building of new bureaucracies (Bureau of Corporations,
Department of Labor, Federal Trade Commission, etc.) and bureaucratic
infighting for government resources and legal jurisdiction between the
Bureau of Investigation, the precursor of the FBI, the Department of
Labor and other agencies turned the largely immigrant-led unrest into
an unprecedented opportunity for A. Mitchell Palmer and his
lieutenant, J. Edgar Hoover. Both men saw in the domestic crisis an
opportunity to build and expand personal fortunes and what would
eventually become the Federal Bureau of Investigation. FBI historian
John A. Noakes concluded that "The domestic unrest during this period
presented the Bureau of Investigation the opportunity to expand its
domain and increase its power."
Illustrating the budgetary effects of the Bureau's power grab, he
continues, "Following the armistice, but before the Bureau's decision
to join the Red Scare hysteria, the Bureau had requested an
appropriation of $1,500,000. When the Department of Justice declared
the nation in imminent danger of a radical uprising, however, Congress
immediately increased the appropriation by $500,000; by the end of the
fiscal year the Bureau had a budget of $2,750,000."
Thousands of immigrants were surveilled, rounded up, and deported
during the Red Scare. Just five years after the Scare, Hoover went on
to found the FBI and became the most powerful non-elected official in
U.S. history. In what sounds like a precursor to the current ICE
raids, local police and federal agents collaborated around
immigration. FBI historian Kenneth D. Ackerman states, "Backed by
local police and volunteer vigilantes, federal agents hit in dozens of
cities and arrested more than 10,000 suspected communists and fellow
travelers. They burst into homes, classrooms and meeting halls,
seizing everyone in sight, breaking doors and heads with abandon. The
agents ignored legal niceties such as search warrants or arrest
warrants. They questioned suspects in secret, imposed prohibitive bail
and kept them locked up for months in foul, overcrowded, makeshift
prisons." Close to none of these immigrant prisoners had anything to
do with radical violence. And, according to Ackerman, "Palmer's grand
crackdown was one big exercise in guilt by association, based
primarily on bogus fears of immigrants being connected to vilified
radical groups such as the recently formed American Communist Party."
Drawing parallels between the Red Scare and the current "War on
Terror," Ackerman concludes, "Almost 90 years later, today's war on
terror exists in an echo chamber of the 1919 Red scare."
Conclusion
As shown in the examples from U.S. history, immigrants provide the
state with ample excuse to expand, especially in times of geopolitical
and domestic crisis. During the post-revolutionary period, the pursuit
of alleged immigrant subversives led to the massive funding of the
Department of the Navy and to the expansion of state power through
laws like the Alien and Seditions Acts. Similarly, the crisis
following the end of World War I led to the creation of the FBI and to
unprecedented government repression and expansion embodied by the
Palmer Raids. "In eliminating the Wobblies, government officials
passed legislation, evolved techniques, and learned lessons that
shaped later course of conduct." Viewed from a historical perspective,
it is no surprise that the government should respond to the
geopolitical and domestic crisis in the United States with expanded
government power and bureaucracy. Rather than view the placement of
ICE under DHS as solely about controlling immigrant labor or about
political (and electoral) opportunism disguised as government policy
(both are, in fact, part of the equation), it is important to connect
the creation of ICE and its placement under DHS to the perpetual drive
of government to expand its powers, especially its repressive
apparatus and other mechanisms of social control.
From this perspective, the current framing of the issue of immigration
as a "national security" concern -- one requiring the bureaucratic
shift towards "Homeland Security" -- fits well within historical
practices that extend government power to control not just immigrants,
but those born here, most of whom don't see immigration policy
affecting them.
One of the things that makes the current politico-bureaucratic moment
different, however, is the fluidity and increasing precariousness of
the state itself. Like other nation states, the United States suffers
from strains wrought by the free hand of global corporations that have
abandoned large segments of its workforce. Such a situation
necessitates the institutionalization of the war on immigrants in
order to get as many armed government agents into a society that may
be teetering on even more serious collapse as seen in the recession
and economic crisis devastating core components of the American Dream
such as education, health care and home ownership. Unlike the previous
periods, the creation of massive bureaucracies superseded the need to
surveil, arrest and deport migrants. Today, there appears to be a move
to make permanent the capacity of the state to pursue, jail and deport
migrants in order to sustain what some call a kind of migration-
military-industrial complex.
Several indicators make clear that we are well on our way to making
the war on immigrants a permanent feature of a government in crisis.
In addition to being the largest, most-militarized component of DHS,
ICE, spends more than one fifth of the multibillion dollar DHS budget
and is also its largest investigative arm. As mentioned previously,
multibillion dollar contracts for border security from DHS have become
an important new market to aerospace companies like General Electric,
Lockheed and Boeing, which secured a $2.5 billion contract for the
Secure Borders Initiative, a DHS program to build surveillance and
other technological capabilities. That some saw in 9/11 an opportunity
to expand and grow government technological capabilities -- and
private sector patronage -- through such contracts, can be seen in the
fact that DHS was created with what the national security documents
say is a priority to "Establish a national laboratory for homeland
security" that would "solicit independent and private analysis for
science and technology research."
Like its predecessor, the "military-industrial complex", the migrant-
military industrial complex tries to integrate federal and state
economic interests through a kind of Homeland Security Keynesianism in
which increasing numbers of companies are bidding for, and dependent
on, big contracts like the Boeing contract or the $385 million DHS
contract for the construction of immigrant prisons. Also like its
military-industrial cousin, the migrant military industrial complex
has its own web of relationships between corporations, government
contracts and elected officials. Nowhere is this connection clearer
than in the case of James Sensenbrenner, the anti-immigrant godfather
who sponsored HR 4437 which criminalized immigrants and those who
would help them. According to his 2005 financial disclosure statement,
Sensenbrenner held $86,500 in Halliburton stocks, $563,536 in General
Electric and Boeing is among the top contributors to the Congressman's
PAC (Sensenbrenner also owns stocks in companies like Olive Garden
restaurants, which hire undocumented workers.)
In conclusion, the current war on immigrants is grounded in the
history of statecraft and big government bureaucracy. While critical,
the almost exclusive focus of the immigrant rights movement on the
laws and employment of workers fails to take into consideration the
need for a war on immigrants to build and maintain massive policing
bureaucracies like ICE and DHS. In their search for solutions to the
continuing crisis of immigration policy, activists might consider
focusing at least some energy on the reasons of the federal state
rather than solely on state legislatures, white voters, elections and
the immigrants.
Roberto Lovato, a frequent Nation contributor, is a New York-based
writer with New America Media.
By Roberto Lovato, Public Eye
Posted on April 14, 2008, Printed on April 14, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/81008/
"He [King George] has erected a multitude of new offices and set
hither swarms of officers to harass out people and eat out their
subsistence." The Declaration of Independence, 1776
Building Up the Domestic Security Apparatus
Most explanations of the relentless pursuit of undocumented immigrants
since 9/11 view it as a response to the continuing pressures of angry,
mostly white, citizens. The "anti-immigrant climate" created by civic
groups like the Minutemen, politicos like (name the Republican
candidate of your choice) and media personalities like CNN's Lou
Dobbs, we are told, has led directly to the massive -- and growing --
government bureaucracy for policing immigrants.
The Washington Post, for example, told us in 2006 that "The Minutemen
rose to prominence last year when they began organizing armed citizen
patrols along the U.S.-Mexico border, a move credited with helping to
ignite the debate that has dominated Washington in recent months."
Along the way to allegedly responding to "grassroots" calls about
"real immigration reform" and "doing something about illegals," the
Bush Administration dismantled the former Immigration and
Naturalization Service (INS) and created the Immigration and Customs
Enforcement (ICE) agency, whose more than 15,000 employees and $5.6
billion budget make it the largest investigative component of the
Department of Homeland Security and the second largest investigative
agency in the federal government after the FBI. In the process of
restructuring, national security concerns regarding threats from
external terrorist enemies got mixed in with domestic concerns about
immigrant "invaders" denounced by a growing galaxy of anti-immigrant
interests.
Implicit in daily media reports about "immigration reform" is the idea
that bottom-up pressure led to the decision to dismantle the former
INS and then place the immigration bureaucracy under the Department of
Homeland Security (DHS). Citizen activism contributed significantly to
the most massive, most important government restructuring since the
end of World War II. Nor do press accounts mention Boeing and other
aerospace and surveillance companies, which, for example, will benefit
as government contractors to the federal Secure Border Initiative
(SBI) that is scheduled to receive more than $2 billion in funding for
fencing, electronic surveillance and other equipment required for the
new physical and virtual fence being built at the border.
Nowhere in the more popular explanations of this historic and massive
government restructuring of immigration and other government functions
do the raisons d'etat -- the reasons of the state, the logic of
government -- enter the picture. When talking about immigration
reform, what little, if any, agency ascribed to the Bush
Administration usually includes such mantra-like phrases like
"protecting the homeland," "securing the border," and others. And even
in the immigrant rights community few, for example, are asking why the
Bush Administration decided to move the citizenship processing and
immigration enforcement functions of government from the more
domestic, policing-oriented Department of Justice (DOJ) to the more
militarized, anti-terrorist bureaucracy of the Department of Homeland
Security.
Little, if any, consideration is given to the possibility that
immigrants and immigration policy serve other interests that have
nothing to do with chasing down maids, poultry workers, and
landscapers.
Failure to consider the reasons of state behind the buildup leading to
the birth of the ICE, the most militarized branch of the federal
government after the Pentagon, leaves the analysis of, and political
action around, immigration reform partial at best. While important,
focusing on the electoral workings of the white voter excludes a
fundamental part of the immigration bureaucracy equation: how
immigrants provide the rationale for the expansion of government
policing bureaucracy in times of political crisis, economic distress,
and major geopolitical shifts. Shortly after the attacks and the
creation of DHS, the Bush Administration used immigrants and fear of
outsiders to tighten border restrictions, pass repressive laws and
increase budgets to put more drones, weapons and troops inside the
country.
Government actions since 9/11 point clearly to how the U.S. government
has set up a new Pentagon-like bureaucracy to fight a new kind of
protracted domestic war against a new kind of domestic enemy --
undocumented immigrants. While willing to believe that there were
ulterior motives behind the Iraq war and the pursuit of al Qaeda, few
consider that there are non-immigration-related motives behind ICE's
al Qaeda-ization of immigrants and immigration policy: multi-billion
dollar contracts to military-industrial companies like Boeing, General
Electric and Halliburton for "virtual" border walls, migrant detention
centers, drones, ground-based sensors, and other surveillance
technology for use in the Arizona desert that were originally designed
for war zones like the deserts of Iraq; the de-facto militarization of
immigration policy through the deployment of 6,000 additional National
Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexico border; hundreds of raids in
neighborhoods and workplaces across the country; the passage of
hundreds of punitive, anti-migrant state and federal laws like the
Military Commissions Act, which denies the habeas corpus rights of
even legal residents who are suspected of providing "material support"
to terrorist groups.
In the same way that private companies like the Pinkerton Detective
Agency provided highly profitable policing, surveillance, and other
government services targeting immigrants and citizens in the 20th
century, companies like Halliburton, Blackwater, the Corrections
Corporation of America, Boeing, and others are reaping profits by
helping build the government's immigrant policing bureaucracy today.
Contrary to the electoral logic prevailing in "pro-immigrant" and
mainstream media explanations of the current buildup of the
(anti)immigrant government bureaucracy, ICE's war on immigrants is not
solely, nor even primarily about shoring up support for the
Republicans and other prowar political and economic interests as most
analysts and activists would have us believe. A look at precedents for
this kind of government anti-immigrant action yields the conclusion
that using immigrants to build up government policing and military
capabilities is, in fact, a standard practice of the art of
statecraft. The historical record provides ample evidence of how
national security experts, politicians, elected officials, bureaucrats
and other managers of the state have used immigrants and anti-
immigrant sentiments and policies as a way of normalizing and
advancing militarization within the borders of the United States (the
"homeland").
At a time when the mortgage and banking crises make obvious that the
American Dream is dying for most, a time in which even its illusion is
hardly tenable as revealed in polls that found that less than 18
percent of the U.S. population believes it is living the "American
Dream," the state needs many reasons to reassert control over an
increasingly unruly populace by putting more ICE agents and other gun-
wielding government agents among the citizenry.
Focusing on non-citizens makes it easier for citizens to swallow the
increased domestic militarism inherent in increasing numbers of
uniformed men and women with guns in their midst. Constant reports of
raids on the homes of the undocumented immigrants normalize the idea
of government intrusion into the homes of legal residents. Political
scientists, investigative journalists, and activists have long
reminded us of how elites are constantly concerned with creating the
structures that may be needed to control a potentially unruly
population, especially one protesting for its rights like the millions
of immigrants who marched in 2006.
History and present experience remind us that, in times of heightened
(and often exaggerated) fears about national security, immigration and
immigrants are no longer just wedge issues in electoral politics; they
magically morph into "dangerous" others who fill the need for new,
domestic enemies required by an economy, a political system, a
citizenry, a country created, nurtured and dependent on civilizational
warfare and expansionism. Historians write about the geopolitical
contours of the U.S. empire that began with the stealing of Mexican
land. But little to no attention is paid to how, today, the domestic
contours of empire -- and the infrastructure that supports it -- are
also being reinforced by targeting Mexicans and other immigrants
actually living inside this now very troubled land.
The ICE's media and policy framing of the issue of immigration as a
kind of "war" complete with "most wanted" lists of terrorists, drug
traffickers, and immigrants like Elvira Arellano, the undocumented
immigrant leader deported after seeking and gaining sanctuary in a
Chicago church, follows clearly the directives outlined in a couple of
critical documents developed just after 9/11.
A Key Moment After 9/11
In order to understand how and why ICE now constitutes an important
part of the ascendant national security bureaucracy, we must first
look at the intimate relationship between National Security policy and
"Homeland Security" policy. One of the defining aspects of immigration
policy and the current attacks on immigrants is the fact that they are
being shaped by elite priorities of the post-9/11 climate.
Shortly after 9/11, the Bush Administration had, in July 2002,
introduced its "National Strategy for Homeland Security," a document
that outlines how to "mobilize and organize our Nation to secure the
U.S. homeland from terrorist attacks." Two months later, the Bush
Administration released the more geopolitically focused "National
Security Strategy of the United States of America," whose purpose is
to "help make the world not just safer but better." 9/11 provided the
impetus to create a bureaucratic and policy environment dominated by
security imperatives laid out in two of the most definitive documents
of our time, documents which outline strategies that, we are told,
"together take precedence over all other national strategies,
programs, and plans," including immigration policy. Immigration policy
nonetheless receives considerable attention, especially in the
Homeland Security Strategy. The role of the private sector is also
made explicit on the DHS website, which says, "The Department of
Homeland Security is responsible for assessing the nation's
vulnerabilities" and that "the private sector is central to this
task."
By placing other government functions under the purview of the
national security imperatives laid out in the two documents, the Bush
Administration enabled and deepened the militarization of government
bureaucracies like the ICE. At the same time, immigrants provided the
Bush Administration a way to facilitate the transference of public
wealth to military industrial interests like those of Halliburton,
Boeing and others through government contracts in a kind of Homeland
Security Keynesianism.
For example the two documents called for DHS to "Establish a national
laboratory for homeland security" that solicits "independent and
private analysis for science." This materialized through the budget of
ICE, which has resources for research and development of technologies
for surveilling, capturing, detaining, and generally combating what
politicos and Minutemen alike paint as the Malthusian monster of
immigration. Again, immigrants help the state justify massive
expenditures like those for the creation and maintenance of ICE,
which, in turn, have led to a major reconfiguration and expansion of
the state itself.
Perennial complaints of the former INS's infamous inefficiency in both
its border enforcement and citizenship processing functions, and the
9/11 catastrophe, combined to create the perfect political storm that
swept in another historic bureaucratic shift. Hidden behind what some
call the "anti-immigrant hysteria" characterizing periods like ours
are the political crises, economic earthquakes and geopolitical crises
that drive history.
The Lessons of History
History provides several precedents that illustrate how immigrants
have consistently provided elite political and corporate interests the
rationale for major government restructuring that often has little to
do with migration and much to do with other things, like: bureaucratic
patronage (think big government contracts for military industrial
firms); deploying and displaying power; controlling the populace and
rallying different sectors of society round the idea of the nation
(nationalism).
Long before the Patriot Act, DHS and ICE, policies linking immigrants
to the security of the country have formed an important part of U.S.
statecraft. The period before and after the passage of the Alien and
Sedition Acts of 1798, which gave then-president John Adams the
authority to remove any immigrant he deemed a threat to national
security, is one example. During this time, the Bush-like enumeration
of "Seditious Acts" was linked to the elite need to control the
populace, and militarize the society in times of profound instability.
Another example is the period of the Red Scare of 1919, when millions
of mostly-immigrant-led strikers provided the political impetus
leading to the creation of the domestic policing bureaucracy known as
the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). History has shown that, in
times of extraordinary instability, governments go to extraordinary
lengths and spend extraordinary amounts of money to create and
reinforce the ramparts of their policing apparatus and of nationhood
itself. Current efforts by the U.S. government to instrumentalize
immigrants as a means of buttressing itself in times of domestic and
geopolitical crisis follows a logic tried and true since the
establishment of the country amidst the global and internal turbulence
around the turn of the 18th century.
Immigrants and the Establishment of the National Security State
Like many of the newly established countries suffering some of the
political and economic shocks of economic and political modernization
in the late eighteenth century, the fledgling United States and its
leaders needed to simultaneously consolidate the nation state
established constitutionally in 1787 while also maneuvering for a
position on a global map dominated by the warring powers of France and
England. Central to accomplishing this were immigrants who provided
both a means of rallying and aligning segments of the populace while
also legitimating massive expenditures towards the construction of the
militarized bureaucracies meant to defend against domestic threats to
"national" security which linked external enemies real and perceived.
At the turn of the 18th century, the United States was much weaker
than and still very vulnerable to the power of Britain and France,
which were engaged in a war that defined political positions inside
and outside the new country. Like many of their elite and more
imperially inclined Federalist peers, Alexander Hamilton and President
John Adams were fearful of the French revolution. Developments in the
revolutionary republic pushed people and states around the Atlantic
world to take positions for and against the revolution at that time.
In addition, some Federalists like Hamilton also wanted to push out
the French and conquer Florida, Louisiana, and South America.
Immigrants and immigration policy of the post-revolutionary period
became ensnared in the battle for power between Federalists, who
advocated a more urban and mercantile route to nationhood, and the
anti-Federalist Republicans led by Thomas Jefferson, whose romantic
proto-capitalist path to consolidation of the nation was paved by
agrarian expansion. The battles between the Federalists and anti-
Federalists played themselves out in relation to France and the ideals
of the French revolution, as elites tried to cope with the instability
wrought by capitalist expansion on the rural majority.
The political, economic and geopolitical crises inherent in the
modernization process had a profound impact on how elites and the
state viewed the large immigrant population in the United States. In
response to the devastating effects of economic transformation,
thousands of French, German, Irish and other immigrants led uprisings
like the Whiskey Rebellion and Shay's Rebellion, which were viewed as
threats by elites, especially the Federalists.
In the face of both popular unrest and Republican competition for
political power, and in their efforts to consolidate the state and the
globally oriented mercantile and pre-industrial capitalist economy,
Hamilton and then-President Adams did what has, since their time,
become a standard operating procedure in the art of U.S. statecraft:
build the state and insert its control apparatus in the larger
populace by scapegoating immigrants as threats to national security.
In the words of historian John Morton Smith, "The internal security
program adopted by the Federalists during the Administration of John
Adams was designed not only to deal with potential dangers from
foreign invasion growing out of the "Half War" with France, but also
to repress domestic political opposition." In this context, immigrants
became the domestic expression of the threat represented by the French
Jacobins, the proto-communist and al Qaeda-like subversive threat of
the early nineteenth century. Commenting on this threat, Samuel
Sitgreaves, a Federalist Congressman from Pennsylvania, made the
connection between internal immigrant threats and external big power
threats when he said in May 1798 " ... the business of defence would
be very imperfectly done, if Congress confined their operations of
defence to land and naval forces, and neglected to destroy the
cankerworm which is corroding the heart of the country ... there are a
great number of aliens in this country from that nation [France] with
whom we have at present alarming differences ... there are emissaries
amongst us, who have not only fomented our differences with that
country, but who have also endeavored to create divisions amongst our
own citizens."
Also considered a threat were the free and unfree blacks who elites
feared might form a "domestic army of ten thousand blacks." Other
fears of subversion by domestic interests linked to external enemies
were stoked by rampant rumors of a French-influenced "Illuminati"
conspiracy, an "internal invasion" to create a godless, global "new
world order" allegedly led by emigrants from France and St. Domingue.
The modern use of the word "terror" first enters the language when Sir
Edmund Burke gazed across the English Channel and applied it to the
actions of the Jacobin state in France.
Burke's conservative American cousins then adopted the term and
applied it to French-influenced immigrants and others considered
subversive. Such a climate aided Federalists in their efforts to
centralize and consolidate both power and nationhood. Hamilton and
then-President John Adams undertook several legal and other
institutional initiatives designed to enhance their and the state's
power while also putting their Republican critics and other opposition
in check. Laws facilitating press censorship were coupled with calls
to unify the nation in preparation for war with France. After Hamilton
and the Federalists raised taxes to pay for their expansionist
expenditures to consolidate their version of the new country, a group
of people who refused to pay taxes unleashed Fries' Rebellion. In
response, Adams, Hamilton and the Federalists seized on the unrest to
unleash heretofore unrealized state powers and nation-reinforcing
state bureaucracy.
At the core of the moves was the infamous Alien and Sedition Acts
proposed by Adams and passed in 1798. The law targeted the immigrant
threat by making it easier to put them in jail for subverting the
government.
At the same time that they passed the Alien and Sedition Acts, Adams,
Hamilton and the Federalists also implemented the first major
reorganization of government bureaucracy. Central to this
reorganization was the establishment of the Department of the Navy, a
revived U.S. Marine Corps and a "New Army" in the 1798. In the same
session in which it passed the Alien and Sedition acts, the Federalist-
dominated fifth congress passed in its first session a bill
authorizing $454,000 on defense, which, at that time represented a
large expenditure. During its second session it authorized
$3,887,971.81, an amount equal to "more than the entire 1st congress
had appropriated for all government expenditures". During its third
session it authorized $6 million for a total of over $10 million. The
end result of the anti-immigrant expenditures Federalists created what
some call the first national security state.
Immigrants, the Red Scare, and the Birth of the FBI Bureaucracy
A similar situation in which a crisis sparking immigrant activism led
to a major build-up of the government policing apparatus took place
during the Red Scare of 1919. The U.S. government faced several
economic and political pressures including the end of World War I, the
demobilization of the Army, returning troops, joblessness, depression,
unemployment and growing inflation.
The precarious situation gave rise to increased elite fear of Jewish,
Italian and other immigrant workers in the era of the Bolshevik
revolution and an increasingly powerful -- and militant -- labor
movement. Socialists, Wobblies, and other activists like Emma Goldman,
who were against the war and demonstrated high levels of labor
militancy, staged historic labor actions in 1919. That year saw 3,600
labor strikes involving four million workers, many of whom were led by
and were immigrants. Government and big business had to watch as a
full one-fifth of the manufacturing workforce staged actions. Massive
organizing by Jamaican immigrant Marcus Garvey's United Negro
Improvement Association and race riots in northern cities further
stoked elite fears and gave birth to the institutional response to
what became known as the Red Scare.
Like other national governments of the period, the United States had
begun intensifying the centralization of functions formerly carried
out by the private sector, including keeping labor and other
dissidents in check. In the words of Regin Schmidt, author of The FBI
and the Origins of Anti-Communism in the United States, "In response
to social problems caused by industrialization, urbanization and
immigration and the potential political threats to the existing order
posed by the Socialist Party, the IWW and, in 1919, the Communist
parties, industrial and political leaders began to look to the federal
government, with its growing and powerful bureaucratic organizations
to monitor and control political opposition." Major expansion of the
state via the building of new bureaucracies (Bureau of Corporations,
Department of Labor, Federal Trade Commission, etc.) and bureaucratic
infighting for government resources and legal jurisdiction between the
Bureau of Investigation, the precursor of the FBI, the Department of
Labor and other agencies turned the largely immigrant-led unrest into
an unprecedented opportunity for A. Mitchell Palmer and his
lieutenant, J. Edgar Hoover. Both men saw in the domestic crisis an
opportunity to build and expand personal fortunes and what would
eventually become the Federal Bureau of Investigation. FBI historian
John A. Noakes concluded that "The domestic unrest during this period
presented the Bureau of Investigation the opportunity to expand its
domain and increase its power."
Illustrating the budgetary effects of the Bureau's power grab, he
continues, "Following the armistice, but before the Bureau's decision
to join the Red Scare hysteria, the Bureau had requested an
appropriation of $1,500,000. When the Department of Justice declared
the nation in imminent danger of a radical uprising, however, Congress
immediately increased the appropriation by $500,000; by the end of the
fiscal year the Bureau had a budget of $2,750,000."
Thousands of immigrants were surveilled, rounded up, and deported
during the Red Scare. Just five years after the Scare, Hoover went on
to found the FBI and became the most powerful non-elected official in
U.S. history. In what sounds like a precursor to the current ICE
raids, local police and federal agents collaborated around
immigration. FBI historian Kenneth D. Ackerman states, "Backed by
local police and volunteer vigilantes, federal agents hit in dozens of
cities and arrested more than 10,000 suspected communists and fellow
travelers. They burst into homes, classrooms and meeting halls,
seizing everyone in sight, breaking doors and heads with abandon. The
agents ignored legal niceties such as search warrants or arrest
warrants. They questioned suspects in secret, imposed prohibitive bail
and kept them locked up for months in foul, overcrowded, makeshift
prisons." Close to none of these immigrant prisoners had anything to
do with radical violence. And, according to Ackerman, "Palmer's grand
crackdown was one big exercise in guilt by association, based
primarily on bogus fears of immigrants being connected to vilified
radical groups such as the recently formed American Communist Party."
Drawing parallels between the Red Scare and the current "War on
Terror," Ackerman concludes, "Almost 90 years later, today's war on
terror exists in an echo chamber of the 1919 Red scare."
Conclusion
As shown in the examples from U.S. history, immigrants provide the
state with ample excuse to expand, especially in times of geopolitical
and domestic crisis. During the post-revolutionary period, the pursuit
of alleged immigrant subversives led to the massive funding of the
Department of the Navy and to the expansion of state power through
laws like the Alien and Seditions Acts. Similarly, the crisis
following the end of World War I led to the creation of the FBI and to
unprecedented government repression and expansion embodied by the
Palmer Raids. "In eliminating the Wobblies, government officials
passed legislation, evolved techniques, and learned lessons that
shaped later course of conduct." Viewed from a historical perspective,
it is no surprise that the government should respond to the
geopolitical and domestic crisis in the United States with expanded
government power and bureaucracy. Rather than view the placement of
ICE under DHS as solely about controlling immigrant labor or about
political (and electoral) opportunism disguised as government policy
(both are, in fact, part of the equation), it is important to connect
the creation of ICE and its placement under DHS to the perpetual drive
of government to expand its powers, especially its repressive
apparatus and other mechanisms of social control.
From this perspective, the current framing of the issue of immigration
as a "national security" concern -- one requiring the bureaucratic
shift towards "Homeland Security" -- fits well within historical
practices that extend government power to control not just immigrants,
but those born here, most of whom don't see immigration policy
affecting them.
One of the things that makes the current politico-bureaucratic moment
different, however, is the fluidity and increasing precariousness of
the state itself. Like other nation states, the United States suffers
from strains wrought by the free hand of global corporations that have
abandoned large segments of its workforce. Such a situation
necessitates the institutionalization of the war on immigrants in
order to get as many armed government agents into a society that may
be teetering on even more serious collapse as seen in the recession
and economic crisis devastating core components of the American Dream
such as education, health care and home ownership. Unlike the previous
periods, the creation of massive bureaucracies superseded the need to
surveil, arrest and deport migrants. Today, there appears to be a move
to make permanent the capacity of the state to pursue, jail and deport
migrants in order to sustain what some call a kind of migration-
military-industrial complex.
Several indicators make clear that we are well on our way to making
the war on immigrants a permanent feature of a government in crisis.
In addition to being the largest, most-militarized component of DHS,
ICE, spends more than one fifth of the multibillion dollar DHS budget
and is also its largest investigative arm. As mentioned previously,
multibillion dollar contracts for border security from DHS have become
an important new market to aerospace companies like General Electric,
Lockheed and Boeing, which secured a $2.5 billion contract for the
Secure Borders Initiative, a DHS program to build surveillance and
other technological capabilities. That some saw in 9/11 an opportunity
to expand and grow government technological capabilities -- and
private sector patronage -- through such contracts, can be seen in the
fact that DHS was created with what the national security documents
say is a priority to "Establish a national laboratory for homeland
security" that would "solicit independent and private analysis for
science and technology research."
Like its predecessor, the "military-industrial complex", the migrant-
military industrial complex tries to integrate federal and state
economic interests through a kind of Homeland Security Keynesianism in
which increasing numbers of companies are bidding for, and dependent
on, big contracts like the Boeing contract or the $385 million DHS
contract for the construction of immigrant prisons. Also like its
military-industrial cousin, the migrant military industrial complex
has its own web of relationships between corporations, government
contracts and elected officials. Nowhere is this connection clearer
than in the case of James Sensenbrenner, the anti-immigrant godfather
who sponsored HR 4437 which criminalized immigrants and those who
would help them. According to his 2005 financial disclosure statement,
Sensenbrenner held $86,500 in Halliburton stocks, $563,536 in General
Electric and Boeing is among the top contributors to the Congressman's
PAC (Sensenbrenner also owns stocks in companies like Olive Garden
restaurants, which hire undocumented workers.)
In conclusion, the current war on immigrants is grounded in the
history of statecraft and big government bureaucracy. While critical,
the almost exclusive focus of the immigrant rights movement on the
laws and employment of workers fails to take into consideration the
need for a war on immigrants to build and maintain massive policing
bureaucracies like ICE and DHS. In their search for solutions to the
continuing crisis of immigration policy, activists might consider
focusing at least some energy on the reasons of the federal state
rather than solely on state legislatures, white voters, elections and
the immigrants.
Roberto Lovato, a frequent Nation contributor, is a New York-based
writer with New America Media.
