This interview by Todd Miller was first published in The Border Chronicle, a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support their work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
We discuss Border Patrol shadow units, the need to revitalize not militarize, and how borderlands communities could thrive if seen as the “vibrant, multilingual, and multicultural” places they are.
Sometimes discussions on the border seem stuck in a rut. The same ideas and concepts are endlessly regurgitated, keeping us from new ways of seeing and thinking, stilting new ideas and framings. This is but one of the reasons I wanted to talk with the Southern Border Communities Coalition (SBCC) and its director, Vicki Gaubeca. In the following conversation, Gaubeca underscores the importance of finding a new border vision and a narrative to hold and sustain it. In the national media, descriptions of the borderlands often range from racist to depleted to unimaginative, depending on the outlet. And all it amounts to is a perpetuation of a lethal policy.
The SBCC, founded in 2011, spans from Brownsville, Texas, to San Diego. It has, according to Gaubeca, “worked at the federal level advocating for legislative and administrative policy changes, educating congressional members of the lived experiences of borderlanders, bringing community leaders to DC to meet with policymakers and share true policy needs and the harmful effects of border militarization.” Key to the SBCC’s mission of respecting human dignity and rights is holding U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents accountable “for abusing our constitutional rights and using excessive force against members of our communities and visitors,” as Gaubeca put it. A new vision underscored her words, a vision based on the vitality of the borderlands, its people, its flora, and its fauna.
Can you give me a couple of points of analysis of what is happening on the border right now? Nationally, what do you consider the most important things for people to know?
People should stop believing the hateful and harmful rhetoric about our border communities. Texas and Arizona governors remain obsessed with the building of Trump’s vanity border wall, which is proving to be even deadlier and more harmful than we predicted. When Border Patrol came up with the idea of building border barriers and other “prevention through deterrence” tactics in 1996, they knew these were going to have deadly consequences. True to their goals, thousands of people have died who were forced to cross in more remote and dangerous regions of the borderlands. To make matters worse, since Trump built 30-foot-tall walls, we’ve seen an exponential increase of deaths and serious injuries caused by falls from these taller walls, including deaths of pregnant women. Across all border states and throughout the U.S., we’ve witnessed harmful rhetoric used by politicians seeking to be elected or reelected who use rants about a so-called invasion and the need to seal our border. But they’re wrong.
Our border communities are places of opportunity and hope. We are vibrant, multilingual, and multicultural communities with magnificent biodiversity in flora and fauna. Our communities are also welcoming and keen on providing safety for people fleeing violence or seeking to reunite with their families for a better life. Thousands of volunteers and hundreds of faith-based groups turn out to receive families seeking protection across the border. Our inspiration is driven by faith and hope, not fear.
One of the most interesting discussions I’ve had with you in the past, Vicki, is about language and how the border is framed. A slogan for your organization in the past was “Revitalize not Militarize” (a slogan I was partial to if I’m to be honest). But I wanted to ask, what do you think about how the border is described, and what language would you suggest to replace it?
We used “Revitalize not Militarize” to effectively move people toward a divest/invest paradigm for the borderlands. As we saw billions of taxpayer dollars wasted and misspent on so-called border security, we began to imagine how much better it would be to invest those billions into improving our schools, developing more sustainable job-creation models, and increasing our resources for health care—including mental health and substance use prevention services.
The goal of completely sealing the border is utterly unrealistic and plain fodder aimed at increasing fear in voters. Think about it. We could build a wall a mile deep and a mile high from San Diego to Brownsville, build a moat, and fill it with crocodiles and piranhas, add some land mines and more concertina wire and people will always figure out a way over or around it. Illicit drugs, like fentanyl and other opioids, come through our ports of entry, so a wall or any of these deterrence tactics won’t help on that matter. “Prevention through deterrence” tactics are only effective at creating more suffering and wasting a colossal amount of money. It also contributes to a highly successful business model for the cartels and a job-creation model that relies on incarcerating people who are only seeking to improve their lives.
Do you see any tangible ways that a new framing could lead to new discussions and ultimately new policy? And is there any progress happening with the present administration?
We’re calling for a “New Border Vision” that shifts the framing toward a border that should be managed or governed, instead of so-called secured. The hypermilitarization of our borderlands has not made us safe. It has made us less safe, particularly the erosion of the constitutional rights of people, mostly of color and regardless of citizenship, in border communities.
By shifting to a new framework that says our borderlands need a new vision, we’re saying that we could create a more effective, humane, and rights-respecting process at our borders that would ensure public safety for all, protect human and civil rights, and welcome all people: visitors, families, and children seeking protection, and borderlanders who cross regularly to go shopping, go to a doctor appointment, or to visit family and friends. Creating and strengthening this process would be a way better way to spend taxpayer dollars and would contribute to the vibrancy of our local and national economy.
Unfortunately, getting people to see this perspective will be a marathon, not a sprint. Politicians have turned to fearmongering to rally their base and get them to vote. They believe it is a formula for success. In addition, the fear of being labeled a supporter of “open borders” is a bit of a rhetorical bogeyman that scares moderate politicians into thinking the label will tank their election bids and any commonsense policies that would contribute to the vitality and vibrancy of communities nationwide. It’s sheer political theater and nonsense. Brokering hope doesn’t seem to have the same effect, but we remain positive and feel strongly that creating humane, rights-respecting solutions will someday be a driving force for better policies.
Can you tell us about the Border Patrol’s Shadow Units and the role that SBCC had in exposing them?
Through our relationships with former Border Patrol agents and former agency top officials, along with our own research into fatal uses of force (for example, through police reports, FOIA responsive documents, medical examiner’s reports, court documents, and so on), we learned about these so-called Critical Incident Teams—known by many other names, but what we generally call Border Patrol Critical Incident Teams (BPCITs).
These BPCITs were first at the scene after a use-of-force incident resulting in death or serious injury. The units were composed of Border Patrol agents who had no legal authority to conduct these types of investigations. Basically, they were agents investigating themselves with the sole purpose of protecting their own agents, not the public.
We found examples of when these BPCITs destroyed evidence, tampered with evidence, tampered with witnesses, did not allow local law enforcement to investigate, and did nothing to secure a scene. These nefarious BPCITs deleted videos on witness cell phones, drove cars and SUVs all over the crime scene, picked up or moved bullet casings, altered toxicology results, and inappropriately attended autopsies conducted by a medical examiner, among many other acts of malfeasance and potential obstruction of justice.
We think BPCITs are the biggest reason why agents have not been held accountable and why families have not had any closure in the loss of their loved ones. Last October, we wrote a letter to congressional oversight committees citing our documents and affidavits and urged them to investigate, which resulted in a congressional request from 10 House and Senate oversight committees and for the Government Accountability Office to investigate. Two other congressional oversight committees—the House Committee on Oversight and Reform and the House Committee on Homeland Security—also requested that CBP provide the statutory authority under which these BPCITs operate and copies of BPCIT investigations, among other items. Border Patrol has yet to cite the legal authority.
We were pleased when, a few months later, CBP commissioner Chris Magnus announced that BPCITs would be eliminated, effective October 1, 2022 (i.e., the start of fiscal year 2023). While this is a great first step that was responsive to community concerns, much more needs to be done to fully account for the harm done by BPCITs over the three decades that they have operated and to assess where they have engaged in criminal acts of obstruction of justice. Former cases that were investigated by BPCITs need to be reopened and properly investigated. For that to happen, CBP should ensure that all documents and evidence are protected and preserved.
In addition, we are concerned that CBP’s Office of Professional Responsibility, the entity that is tasked with looking into agent misconduct and which has new funding to hire 350 new criminal investigators, will hire from the ranks of former BPCIT units. We’re advocating with congressional leadership to use their oversight power to ensure that these former agents are properly vetted and trained before starting any investigative tasks on lethal or excessive uses of force. Future investigations also should be conducted by a separate and independent entity, like the FBI under the direction of the U.S. attorney general, to ensure a firewall between agents and investigators and to guarantee investigative integrity.
Last, if you could imagine the borderlands in 30 years, in your most optimistic vision what would it look and feel like?
I was born in Mexico City and came to the United States in my early 20s. Most of my life I’ve spent living in border towns: Tucson and Nogales, Arizona; Las Cruces, New Mexico; and Monterrey, Mexico. I also have family in Tijuana and Ensenada and friends and colleagues in Ciudad Juárez. I love the communities along the U.S.-Mexico border and their diversity in languages, cultures, and ecological regions.
In the future, I would love to see U.S. and Mexican governments care more about people’s rights than about an economic engine driven by fear, incarceration, and abuse. I would love to see the U.S. government care more about the environment and endangered wildlife than they care about militarizing the border with more barriers, surveillance technologies, and unaccountable border agents. I would love to see Border Patrol interior checkpoints gone, so borderlanders could travel freely to other parts of their state to access health care and court and legal services, and to see family and friends without having to be stopped and questioned by racist agents. I would love to see the awful concertina wire gone from the border walls and everywhere else—it is dangerous to our children and makes us feel like we live in a war zone, which we don’t.
I would also love—and not just for border communities but for the whole country—to see much more investment in things that would make our communities sustainably thrive and prosper, such as in green technologies, improved health services accessible to all, and innovative and free schools and colleges. This is not a tall order. It could easily be funded by shifting our priorities in how we spend billions of taxpayer dollars.
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