Some Reflections on the Gendered Nature of U.S. Border Policies and Enforcement

Guest post By Allison B. Wolf, Associate Professor of Philosophy and Researcher in the Center of Migration Studies at La Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia. Allison can be found on Instagram @ allisonbwolf10.

This is the second post from a series that summarises individual chapters from Handbook on Border Criminology, edited by Mary Bosworth, Katja Franko, Maggy Lee and Rimple Mehta and published by Edward Algar. 

Although women have traditionally constituted a smaller portion of those crossing the US Southern border, this trend has changed in recent years. According to the American Council on Immigration, there are over 23 million female immigrants in the United States. And the United Nations now reports that women comprise 50% of the world´s 272 million migrants.

The degree to which sexist practices and gender violence permeate U.S. Customs and Border Patrol practices has grown along with the numbers of female migrants. In 2019, The Plain View Project revealed the existence of a Facebook group of CBP officers called ‘I am 10-15′ where at least 70 officers (and 62 on active duty) posted sexually explicit comments attacking immigrant women. From 2016-2019, several dozen migrants reported being sexually assaulted by officers in Customs and Border Patrol Facilities. And, an Inspector General´s Report found that, “serious misconduct is prevalent within CBP and that agency leaders at all levels have shielded officers and agents from facing accountability for their actions for years.”

Even when not the direct cause of sexual assault, border enforcement policy places women in vulnerable situations where they could be victimized. A joint report from OXFAM and the Tahirih Justice Center found that, “CBP will expel women at 3 a.m. in one of the most dangerous cities in the world. So, they are completely unprotected.” And, as Aaron Steinberg astutely observes, framing the deportations as a response to unauthorized border crossings and the resulting assaults as being committed by smugglers or criminal syndicates, serves to deflect culpability “from border policies and agents to smugglers and the migrants themselves, helping justify a lack of legal protection or recourse against the state.”

LGBTQI+ migrants are uniquely vulnerable to sexual and other kinds of gender-based violence. There are countless examples of transgender migrants being physically assaulted and being continuously solicited for sex work. Moreover, Almudena Cortés Maisonave found that many attacks are happening in U.S. detention shelters where attackers make comments like, “‘I’ll teach you how to be a real woman’ when they know that the person identifies as lesbian or queer.” These are just some ways that U.S. border policies are gendered.

Gendered Border Policies

There are various ways in which border policies and their enforcement can be gendered and/or oppressive, but I will focus on two: the motivation for creating certain enforcement practices and how the policies are implemented.  First, certain border enforcement strategies are often motivated by ideas about gender. For example, in the mid 1980s and 1990s various laws were passed aimed at deporting Latino men suspected of being part of gangs or drug syndicates. When more women began crossing the border, the U.S. created border policies, such as family separation, to try to deter them, especially pregnant women and mothers, from migrating. Former Asylum Chief for the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service, John Lafferty, announced that the Department of Homeland Security was developing a plan for separating women and children crossing into the United States “to deter mothers from migrating to the United States with their children.”  Other failed initiatives (which may be attempted again in light of the recent U.S. election) have similar aims, such as the effort to revoke birth-right citizenship (or the fact that anyone born on U.S. soil automatically receives U.S. citizenship). 

In addition to motivating the creation of various border and migration policies, gender oppression is also caused by the policies and their implementation. Holland Morgan observes that in “times when national guard troops are sent to border states in attempts to regulate immigration, incidents of hate-based and sexual violence increase.” Leandra Hinojosa Hernández found widespread reproductive injustice at the U.S.–Mexico border, which includes “the deportation of parents to their respective countries, the mistreatment of pregnant migrant women currently in detention, … and the transfer of children to the American foster care system while parents are detained or deported with no guarantee of family reunification or plan in place to legally ensure family reunification will occur.” And Almudena Cortés Maisonave found that LBGTQI+ are being attacked in U.S. detention shelters where, attackers have said things like, “‘I’ll teach you how to be a real woman’ when they know that the person identifies as lesbian or queer … and many trans women get beat up because of their gender identity.” 

Even if one wanted to deny gender oppression, it is clear that migration control strategies, such as prevention through deterrence (forcing migrants into navigating harsh desert landscapes), affect people of different genders in distinct ways. The Binational Migration Institute “found that women were nearly three times more likely to die of exposure [in the dessert] than men. Some researchers have linked this imbalance to the tendency of smugglers to perceive women as liabilities while en route, which increases the likelihood of abandonment, exposing them to mortal danger in the desert.” The Women’s Refugee Commission also found that Plan Frontera Sur (where Mexico tries to prevent migrants from reaching the U.S. Southern border) exposes women to violence at the hands of Mexican border patrol officers.  For example, in August 2021, Mexican immigration authorities and the Mexican National Guard were filmed kicking migrants, violently pushing women and children into vehicles, and threatening family separation as tactics to break up large groups. And there are countless reports of how The Migrant Protection Protocols disproportionately place women in danger of rape, torture, and kidnapping. Even U.S. federal asylum officers have said that “the risk of persecution in Mexico is even higher for the most vulnerable segments of asylum seekers,” including ethnic minorities from indigenous cultures, migrant women at large, and LGBTQI+ migrants. 

Conclusion

Escaping political violence in Venezuela, Mari arrived in the U.S. in late December 2021 when she was arrested by Customs and Border Patrol after crossing the border and then quickly transferred to Stewart. Shortly after, she went into the infirmary for a routine check-up where she encountered the nurse for the first time. He was a short, middle-aged white man with a short beard who asked her to follow him into a small room and closed the door. When Mari was alone with him, she felt uneasy. After a few routine medical questions, he said she was pretty. He asked her if she had had any surgeries in the past. When Mari informed him of her breast surgery, he got excited and began staring at her breasts. And then he asked her to lay down on the examination table. “He pressed my hand against his penis. When I tried to take my hand away, he began masturbating with it.”

As this text has clearly demonstrated, Mari´s case, is not only enraging and traumatizing, but also yet another example of gendered border control and enforcement in the United States. This is a structural issue and must be understood as such. I hope these words help us do so in ways that help Mari, and all migrants and asylum seekers, get the fair chance and safe processes they deserve