Book Review: Borderland Circuitry: Immigration Surveillance in the United States and Beyond

Guest post by Chiedozie Uhuegbu. Chiedozie is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor at Sewanee: The University of the South. His research interest includes the genre of autobiography, the depiction of culture, and Blackness in African-German Migration literature. He has a forthcoming publication with Reclam Verlag German titled „Unter die Deutschen gefallen. Schwarze deutsche: Identität und der literarische Kampf um Anerkennung“ in Erinnerungskämpfe: Neue deutsche Identität(en), neues deutsches Geschichtsbewusstsein. Edited by Jürgen Zimmerer. Reclam. 2023. Pp. 381-403.

Review of Borderland Circuitry: Immigration Surveillance in the United States and Beyond by Ana Muñiz (University of California Press, 2022).

Borderland Circuitry: Immigration Surveillance in the United States and Beyond contributes to studies on the development of surveillance-related systems since the 1980s while examining the relationship between race and alleged criminal alien or gang membership in the United States. Muñiz employs ethnographic research, interviews, and the analysis of previously undisclosed documents to deconstruct data systems and the relationship between digital surveillance, immigration enforcement, and gang control. The author explores the concept of “Borderland circuitry” as a term that describes how the United States targets mostly purportedly dangerous immigrants and to speak to three dynamics, namely: “geographies of surveillance, expanding criminalization and the spread of precarity” (11). Muñiz’s Borderland Circuitry makes a vital contribution to the concept of borders, not only as a wall that prevents immigrants from crossing over to the United States but also as the formation of mass digital borderlands through information-sharing collaborations among other law enforcement agencies and international partners that extend detention of alleged criminal aliens and prioritize deportation.

Each chapter focuses on a specific aspect of immigration surveillance, providing a comprehensive and in-depth analysis of the logic of state surveillance, control, and its trauma for alleged criminal aliens. The author was conscientious in explaining their use of ‘alleged’ to emphasize the problematic nature of US gang labeling infused with racial stereotypes for immigrants of color. In addition to the alleged, Muñiz makes a note on language to expound on the term criminal alien as a reference to non-citizens who come in contact with the US Department of Justice and federal immigration enforcement agencies. Moreover, the second chapter focuses on border policing and technology, data policing and surveillance, examining the role key federal immigration data systems vis-à-vis Treasury Enforcement Communications Systems (TECS), Enforcement Integrated Database (EID), and Enforcement Case Tracking System (ENFORCE) play in border securitization. On the one hand, it is essential to note the TECS knows more about Americans and immigrants than one can imagine, the data repository serves as a targeting tool to screen incoming and outgoing travelers and cargo in and out of the United States. On the other hand, the establishment of the EID facilitated the exchange of information between the U.S Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Nevertheless, ENFORCE “maintains information on federal investigation, arrest, booking, detention and removal operations” (27). It is not surprising that Muñiz criticizes the creation of these digital surveillance databases because they give law enforcement agencies the technological capacity to feed their information-gathering compulsion in a manner that frames immigrants as criminals.

The author employs a clear and logical progression of ideas, effectively guiding readers through the complexities of immigration surveillance. Along the lines of databases and their creation, chapter three examines the California Gang Database (Calgang), an information storage system that maintains information of alleged gang members, mostly immigrants, who should be criminalized, rendered foreign, detained or forcibly removed from the United States. For Muñiz, Calgang boosted immigration surveillance as a data-driven policing system since federal agencies such as ICE maximized interoperable information sharing to target alleged gang members who were non-citizens. The author invites readers to attorney spaces, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) application processing outcomes, and how the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) leverage Calgang to arrest and deport suspected gang members. Like any other database, USCIS exploited DACA applicants and their applications as border enforcement, intelligence gathering, and surveillance mechanisms under the auspices of gang policing. Muñiz argues that adding specific questions about gangs further solidified the racially biased and untrustworthy act of profiling immigrants based on gang affiliation within the immigration administration (62). This raises questions about the privacy and security of DACA applicants, as their confidential information was used for purposes beyond the scope of the program. These allegations highlight the potential vulnerabilities DACA recipients face and the need for safeguards to protect their rights and privacy.

One thing I find revealing about the book and digital surveillance is the manner in which USCIS perpetuates this pursuit. Using Law Enforcement Notification System (LENS), Muñiz stresses that immigrants are still being monitored even after they left detention sites since USCIS leverages LENS notification to alert law enforcement agencies of the presence of ‘just-released’ immigrants in their states. While this demonstrates the endless monitoring of criminal aliens within US territory, it further complicates the lives of deported alien gang members, as they are subjected to social stigmatization and labor market exclusion in their home country (117). ICE’s decision to send information on deported immigrants to their home country enables this complication, keeping them “landlocked within the borders of their home countries” (119). Nevertheless, information sharing never ends in the US for deported immigrants as authorities in Mexico, Central America or the Caribbean use US-based criminal history of their deported citizens to incarcerate, incapacitate or restrict their contact with the larger community.

These well-structured chapters allow readers to navigate through different themes and topics effortlessly. The author’s decision to organize the book in this way helps maintain a coherent narrative and ensures that readers gain a holistic understanding of digital surveillance and border militarization within the United States. Readers with a law background would find Borderland Circuitry engaging since the book provides information on immigration systems like “ICE level analysis and the Risk classification that automate data collection and processing” (79). Given that this system relies on machine analysis, it reveals the unreliability of the accusations, charges, and suspicions of alleged alien criminals. This finding demonstrates that immigration and law attorneys can take case studies from this book to fight the racial and biased US immigration system for their clients.

Borderland Circuitry’s strength is in Muñiz’s approach to detail and carefulness. The ethnographic, research, and interview approaches divulge a broader approach to the technological circuitry of migration and the usage of race as a digital surveillance tool in border enforcement. The author attends to the complexity of racial categorization and immigration while relying on a robust theoretical framework. 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. In summary, Muñiz’s Borderland Circuitry reminds me of the significance of well-crafted writing.

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