Migra!: A History of the U.S. Border Patrol Volume 29

Political awareness of the tensions in U.S.-Mexico relations is rising in the twenty-first century; the American history of its treatment of illegal immigrants represents a massive failure of the promises of the American dream. This is the untold history of the United States Border Patrol from its beginnings in 1924 as a small peripheral outfit to its emergence as a large professional police force that continuously draws intense scrutiny and denunciations from political activism groups. To tell this story, MacArthur "Genius" Fellow Kelly Lytle Hern ndez dug through a gold mine of lost and unseen records and bits of biography stored in garages, closets, an abandoned factory, and in U.S. and Mexican archives. Focusing on the daily challenges of policing the Mexican border and bringing to light unexpected partners and forgotten dynamics, Migra reveals how the U.S. Border Patrol translated the mandate for comprehensive migration control into a project of policing immigrants and undocumented "aliens" in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands.

Author: Kelly Lytle Hernandez
Publisher: University of California Press
Published: 05/03/2010
Pages: 336
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.10lbs
Size: 8.90h x 5.90w x 0.80d
ISBN13: 9780520266414
ISBN10: 0520266412
BISAC Categories:
- History | United States | General
- Political Science | Law Enforcement
- Social Science | Emigration & Immigration

About the Author
Kelly Lytle Hernández is Assistant Professor in the Department of History, Associate Director of the Chicano Studies Research Center at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the recipient of a MacArthur "Genius" Fellowship.