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“Traitors” to race, “traitors” to nation: Latina/o immigration enforcement agents, identification and the racial state

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Abstract

Latina/o immigration enforcement agents, who represent 52 per cent of all US Border Patrol agents, are often confronted with the accusation “traitor.” Drawing on ethnographic observation and in-depth interviews, I argue that this term reinscribes the boundaries of a normative Latina/o identity constituted, in part, by a transnational racial solidarity. At the level of identification, “traitor” draws at least two responses from Latina/o agents. Some assert that their “connection” to the migrants they police leads them to engage their work more humanely than their fellow agents. Other Latina/o agents, by contrast, profess a primary commitment to the inviolability of US national boundaries. Both approaches, however, buttress the hegemonic racial state. The racial and ethnic diversity of the ranks of US immigration enforcement, combined with the adoption of a more humane approach by some agents, underpins the racial project of immigration enforcement. This study illuminates the multiplicity of Latina/o racial identities and the functioning of the contemporary racial state in a supposedly “post-racial” era of diversity and nominal inclusion.

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Notes

  1. Interpellation, as defined by Althusser (1971), refers to the process by which particular subjects are “hailed” or called into being through interaction in specific contexts.

  2. While I use the term “identification” nearly synonymously with “identity,” the term identification specifically flags the processual quality of identity, that is, identity is less a state of being and more a process of becoming that is inflected by social location. This distinction is informed by Barvosa’s (2008, 64–65) notion that identity is (i) socially constructed, (ii) adaptive and (iii) collective.

  3. I have chosen to use the word Latino to refer to my respondents since it is a useful, albeit overbroad term to describe the respondents in this study, the majority of whom are of Mexican descent. In addition, the kind of pan-ethnic solidarity that seems to be assumed in the accusations, like “traitor,” that my respondents confronted do not make reference to nationality, but to a broader pan-ethnic solidarity connected to immigration histories shared across nationalities.

  4. Respondents’ Latino heritage is defined as follows: First generation respondents are of foreign birth, second generation respondents have at least one parent of foreign birth and third generation respondents are of native birth and native parentage (Portes and Rumbaut, 2006).

  5. The Border Patrol does not allow ride-alongs with “line agents,” but will permit visits with public relations officials, making this research particularly difficult. I learned of these new restrictions after speaking with several public relations officials, as well as two senior scholars who have done previous ethnographic work on the border.

  6. Notably, women make up only 5 per cent of all Border Patrol agents, falling well behind other federal enforcement agencies (Witman, 2012).

  7. In earlier work, Heyman (1995) elaborates a more diverse set of “worldviews” among immigration enforcement agents that may reflect the attentiveness to hybridity and contradiction that Ribeiro calls for.

  8. Pseudonyms used to refer to all respondents.

  9. Among gays and lesbians (Miller et al, 2003), as well as African Americans (Bolton and Feagin, 2004), the experience of marginalization informed these officers’ humane approach to the job and uniquely positioned them to work with other marginalized people.

  10. The terms “inmate lover” or “alien lover” bear a clear resemblance to the racist term “nigger lover” that emerged during slavery and the Jim Crow period to reinforce racial boundaries.

  11. Urrea (2005) details other dehumanizing monikers the Border Patrol uses to refer to migrants, including “bodies,” “wets” and “tonks” (so named for the “sound of a flashlight breaking over a human head”) (16).

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Acknowledgements

This research was supported by the University of California Diversity Initiative for Graduate Study in the Social Sciences (UC DIGSSS). With sincere gratitude, the author would like to thank Professors John Mohr and John Park, and especially Josiah Heyman, Lee Maril, Jennifer Earl and Howard Winant whose feedback shaped this article. Thanks are due to Carly Rush for her research assistance and to Katrina Kimport and Michelle Emery for their very useful comments. Finally, I extend my deep appreciation to the respondents who participated in this research; their contributions made this work possible.

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    Greg Prieto

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Prieto, G. “Traitors” to race, “traitors” to nation: Latina/o immigration enforcement agents, identification and the racial state. Lat Stud 13, 501–522 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1057/lst.2015.42

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