Description
Book SynopsisPolitical discourse on immigration in the United States has largely focused on what is most visible, including border walls and detention centers, while the invisible information systems that undergird immigration enforcement have garnered less attention. Tracking the evolution of various surveillance-related systems since the 1980s,Borderland Circuitryinvestigates how the deployment of this information infrastructure has shaped immigration enforcement practices. Ana Muñiz illuminates three phenomena that are becoming increasingly intertwined: digital surveillance, immigration control, and gang enforcement. Using ethnography, interviews, and analysis of documents never before seen, Muñiz uncovers how information-sharing partnerships between local police, state and federal law enforcement, and foreign partners collide to create multiple digital borderlands.Diving deep into a select group of information systems,Borderland Circuitryreveals how those with legal and political powerdeploy the specter of violent cross-border criminals to justify intensive surveillance, detention, brutality, deportation, and the destruction of land for border militarization.
Trade Review"Borderland spaces, and the people who are navigating the violence of bordering processes within them, come alive in the pages of this worthwhile book." * Jotwell: The Journal of Things We Like (Lots) *
"
Borderland Circuitry’s strength is in Muñiz’s approach to detail and carefulness. . . . The book speaks to scholars and students interested in migration studies, digital surveillance studies, and ethnographical research on border and gang databases in the United States." * Border Criminologies *
Table of ContentsContents
List of Illustrations
1. The Land Gets Tangled in Walls and Circuitry
2. You Cross a Border and the Feds Build a Database
3. California Cops Become the Tip of the Spear
4. A Lawyer Watches a Wreck Unfold
5. ICE Rigs an Algorithm
6. We Make Our Own Maps
7. A Border Bleeds Out
8. A Hand Searches for a Root
Acknowledgments
Methodological Appendix: I Demand
Some Documents
Acronyms
Notes
Bibliography
Index
