On October 11, 2013, twelve individuals locked themselves to two buses operated by the private contractor GEO Group (formerly Wackenhut Corporation prior to 2003). At the time, the buses were transporting 70 undocumented persons who had been apprehended by United States Border Patrol (USBP; an arm of the Department of Homeland Security) in the southern Arizona desert just north of the Mexico–US border, and were en route to the Evo A. DeConcini federal courthouse in downtown Tucson, Arizona. Meanwhile, another group of six chained themselves to the entrance of the courthouse. Those being transported were caught up in Operation Streamline, a program started in 2005 in Texas, which expanded across the southwest of the US, including to Tucson in 2008. The protesters were successful in halting the buses and shutting down hearings at the courthouse, meaning those detained that day avoided Streamline and thus a criminal conviction (though all were still immediately ‘voluntarily’ deported). Importantly, the protesters drew wider attention and visibility to this largely invisible process. Those arrested for locking-on around the wheels of the buses – comprised of local Tucson activists involved in various other campaigns, organizing around border militarization and immigration policing in the region – were faced with several charges, most of which were dropped at the first hearing. Two remaining misdemeanour charges heard in a second hearing in July 2015 resulted in a ruling of time served (Ingram 2015). Those involved in blocking the courthouse entrance were found guilty earlier and also sentenced to time served (Ingram 2014).
Zero tolerance and the further criminalization of movement
Operation Streamline, a fast track and ‘zero tolerance’ program that removes judicial discretion, seeks to prosecute individuals apprehended crossing the Mexico–US border as a form of deterrence (Lydgate 2010; NIF 2012). Through the partnership of the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Streamline operates daily to criminally prosecute individuals for the act of unauthorized border crossing, leading to a criminal conviction and a prison sentence. In 2010 the DOJ reported that Streamline costs between US$7–10 million per month to operate, while US$40 million was spent in Arizona alone in 2009 on incarcerating those prosecuted under Streamline, with US$10 million in court costs per month (NIF 2012: 2). Meanwhile, between 2005 when Streamline was first announced and 2012, the federal government spent US$5.5 billion incarcerating migrants (Grassroots Leadership, 2012: 3). In the Tucson sector of the USBP (which covers almost the entirety of the southern portion of the state of Arizona, and 262 miles of linear border with Mexico), 70 persons per day are randomly selected to be placed in Streamline, and are heard en masse, taking anywhere between 30 minutes and three hours (Santos 2014), all while shackled at the hands and feet on average for six hours at a time (Slack et al. 2015) – a startling and dismaying scene for observers entering the courtroom. The sheer size of the program, taking place daily in several locations across the US southwest, has resulted in the criminal prosecution of immigration violations outnumbering all other federal criminal cases in the US combined, yet there is little supporting evidence to suggest it has a deterrent effect on those crossing (NIF 2012; OIG 2015), many of whom have US citizen family members awaiting them (Slack et al. 2015). Prosecution ranges from a few weeks up to 180 days in the first instance of being caught within the Streamline dragnet, and results in a federal misdemeanour being placed on someone’s record, followed by a felony for those caught a second time, impacting any future efforts to gain legal residence in or entry to the US (see Casella Colombeau for analysis on EU Frontex, Chapter 2, in this volume).
Challenging Streamline – A question of procedural justice, or a need for direct action?
Streamline has been contested on a number of grounds since its inception. Perhaps most notably in September 2013, a federal appeals court found that the procedure of mass pleas used in Arizona did not follow due process (Boyce and Launius 2013). As a result, the presiding judge must now address defendants individually. Little else has changed, however, and in 2016 Operation Streamline continues apace, linked in part to an unprecedented growth in prison and detention construction, with private prison companies such as Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and GEO Group benefiting (Grassroots Leadership 2012).
The effects of Streamline are multiple: direct-aid humanitarian groups operating in southern Arizona, such as No More Deaths, have reported that many crossing will opt to continue walking when in need of hospitalization, rather than risk being placed in Streamline if USBP is contacted (Burridge 2009). Families face separation from loved ones, first incarcerated and then deported, often through a practice of “lateral repatriation” (known as the Alien Transfer and Exit Program, or ATEP) in order to frustrate attempts at reconnecting with guides to cross again, deporting individuals to remote and unfamiliar border towns where they have at times fallen prey to criminal organizations (Slack et al.2013).
Those who are potentially eligible to claim asylum are unlikely to be told of this right. Thirty minutes (though typically much less) with a court-appointed legal representative and a mass hearing provides little opportunity to articulate such a request. Further, a recent inquiry by the DHS Office of the Inspector General (OIG) found that USBP agents do not have guidance on how to deal with those who express a fear of persecution on return, or claims for asylum made under Operation Streamline (2015). Meanwhile the quality of defense attorneys and their legal counsel, who represent several people per hearing, has been repeatedly questioned, as shown through a study of 1,100 persons who went through Streamline. Within this study it was found that only 40 per cent of those interviewed had been informed about their rights by their lawyer; 40 per cent stated that “their lawyer simply informed them they needed to sign their deportation and plead guilty,” while 7 per cent reported that their lawyers had not informed them of anything. Perhaps of more concern, only 2 per cent of those interviewed had been informed of their right to denounce abuses, while in 1 per cent of responses it was found that a lawyer had “checked for legal migration options due to family connections, which is generally the first and most important duty of an immigration attorney” (Migrant Border Crossing Study, Slack et al. 2013: 29).
Activists in Tucson have also attempted to work with lawyers involved in representing those detained, in the hope of challenging the process from within the courtroom, reminding the lawyers that they were:
the grease on the wheels of this criminalization machine. Their willingness to limit their arguments, encourage their clients to accept plea deals, and avoid making arguments to reduce detainee sentences is necessary for moving the seventy or so men and women through the system each day. (Borderlands Autonomist Collective 2012: 197)
While Operation Streamline continues to have a significant impact in Arizona, there is an older and ongoing history of border militarization, immigration policing, and prison and detention expansion within this region (Loyd 2012a; Boyce and Launius 2013). A now well-documented outcome of fencing roughly 700 miles of the international boundary between Mexico and the US, beginning in the mid-1990s and continuing until 2008, has been the massive death toll of those crossing undocumented through the Sonoran desert of southern Arizona (Goldsmith et al., 2006; Nevins 2010). Around 2004, the growing presence of media-savvy citizen border patrols, such as the Minutemen (not to mention the continual presence of less publicly visible militias; Doty 2009; Shapira 2013), and the continued targeting and racial profiling of migrant communities by Pima County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, have drawn considerable attention to this region. Humanitarian aid groups providing direct aid to undocumented migrants lost, ill, or injured in the desert began to form in the late 1990s and early 2000s, including No More Deaths, Samaritans, and Humane Borders, who subsequently have been opposed, and at times threatened or prosecuted, by the US government, Border Patrol, and anti-immigrant groups for their often life-saving work. Recent years have seen a continuing pernicious creep of border and immigration policing into local communities, such as through Senate Bill 1070 (2010), which required police officers to take on the role of immigration policing, but have also seen a number of grassroots and community-led campaigns against such measures, including the use of sanctuary in local churches and community response networks (Loyd 2012b; Williams and Boyce 2013; see Houston Chapter 14, in this volume).
The ongoing churn of detention and deportation under streamline
Although ongoing protests in relation to Streamline – employing a diversity of tactics from legal challenges, to court watching programs, marches, vigils, and civil disobedience (Burridge 2009; Borderlands Autonomist Collective 2012: 197–198) – have drawn attention to this program of criminalization and provided much needed solidarity, those caught within Streamline’s web are typically reluctant or unable to challenge its existence, as the prospect of a lengthy wait in prison to appeal a case that is unlikely to succeed is understandably unappealing, and relies in part on lawyers advocating effectively for their client (McNeil 2013). There is difficulty also for activists and supporters in providing solidarity or forming any direct relationship with those caught in Streamline, as persons apprehended while crossing the border will be detained and have their hearing within 72 hours, before being deported or incarcerated (and later deported) immediately thereafter.
Yet the ongoing challenging of this system – in part through recognition of its connections to the wider border and migration securitization infrastructure, and to practices of racial profiling, criminalization and incarceration of undocumented migrants – is essential in making the invisibility of Streamline visible and contested. As the Tucson-based activist group Borderlands Autonomist Collective deftly noted, reflecting on efforts to challenge the courtroom procedure of Streamline:
while activists’ efforts have by no means ended Streamline or the injustices involved, slowing down the system by insisting that defendants be granted due process is a first step toward broader legal and political strategies to fight the expansion of this program. (Borderlands Autonomist Collective 2012: 197)
References
- Borderlands Autonomist Collective (2012) ‘Resisting the security-industrial complex: Operation Streamline and the militarization of the Arizona–Mexico borderlands’. In LoydJ. M.MitchelsonM.BurridgeA. (eds) Beyond Walls and Cages: Prisons, Borders, and Global Crisis. Athens: University of Georgia Press, pp. 190–208.
- Boyce, G. and Launius, S. (2013) ‘Warehousing the poor: How federal prosecution initiatives like “Operation Streamline” hurt immigrants, drive mass incarceration and damage U...
