The Fence

by Maril, Robert Lee

• ISBN13: 9780896727762
• ISBN10: 0896727769
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2012-10-25
• Publisher: Texas Tech Univ Pr

Summary

To the American public it's a 2,000-mile-long project to keep illegal immigrants, narcotics, and terrorists on the other side of the U.S.-Mexico border. In the deserts of Arizona, it's a "virtual fence" of high-tech electronic sensors, cameras, and radar. In some border stretches it's a huge concrete-and-steel wall; in others it's a series of solitary posts designed to stop drug runners; in still others it's rusted barbed-wire cattle fences. For two-thirds of the international boundary it's nonexistent. Just what is this entity known as "the fence"? And more important, is it working? Through first-person interviews with defense contractors, border residents, American military, Minutemen, county officials, Customs and Border Protection agents, environmental activists, and others whose voices have never been heard, Robert Lee Maril examines the project's human and financial costs. Along with Maril's site visits, his rigorous analysis of government documents from 1999 to the present uncovers fiscal mismanagement by Congress, wasteful defense contracts, and unkept political promises. As drug violence mounts in border cities and increasing numbers of illegal migrants die from heat exhaustion in the Arizona desert, Maril argues how the fence may even be making an incendiary situation worse. Avoiding preconceived conclusions, he proposes new public policies that take into consideration human issues, political negotiation, and the need for compromise. Maril's lucid study shows the fence to be a symbol in concrete, steel, microchips, and fiber optics for the crucible of contemporary immigration policy, national security, and public safety.

Author Biography

Robert Lee Maril is professor of sociology and the founding director of the Center for Diversity and Inequality Research at East Carolina University. The author of many books, including Patrolling Chaos: The U.S. Border Patrol in Deep South Texas (TTUP, 2006) he has testified three times on his research before the U.S. Congress, and his work has been widely cited both in scholarly publications and the national media. A resident of the Texas borderlands for seventeen years, he now lives in Greenville, North Carolina. He blogs at www.leemaril.com.

Table of Contents

Illustrations	p. xi
A Virtual American Dream
A Simple Solution	p. 3
Manny's Disguise isn't One	p. 24
Anzalduas	p. 38
Olga Rivera Garcia's Fence and Omar Sanchez's Fence	p. 60
ISIS	p. 88
Dubuque	p. 111
Crossing to Safety
More Virtual Fences	p. 135
CBP Agent Nora Muñoz	p. 179
Juliet Garcia's Fence and Michael Chertoff's Wall	p. 198
Three Different Walls	p. 230
It's Getting Crowded along the Border	p. 258
Crossing to Safety	p. 279
Epilogue	p. 301
Notes	p. 309
Bibliography	p. 341
Acknowledgments	p. 353
Index	p. 355
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