"How on earth did the United States end up deploying tens of thousands of armed personnel to defend a border with a friendly nation that poses no conceivable military threat and which is, in fact, a close ally and trading partner? In this fascinating case study, Timothy Dunn shows that it all began in 1992 with a successful lawsuit that Mexican Americans brought against the Border Patrol to end discriminatory enforcement practices in El Paso, Texas. The unintended consequence was a new enforcement strategy that ultimately became the model for the entire border, transforming what had been a local violation of civil rights into an massive infringement of international human rights. Dunn's brilliant analysis is essential to understanding the origins of a flawed border policy that went on to turn a relatively small, circular flow of seasonal workers going to three states into a huge population of settled families living in fifty states—all at a cost of more than 4,000 lives and billions of taxpayer dollars. This book should be required reading for policy makers and the public alike."

—Douglas S. Massey, Henry G. Bryant Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs, Princeton University; president of the American Academy of Political and Social Science and past president of the American Sociological Association; lead author of Beyond Smoke and Mirrors: Mexican Immigration in an Era of Economic Integration

"A pioneering scholar of the militarization at the U.S.–Mexico border through low-intensity conflict, Timothy Dunn analyzes troubling U.S. border enforcement policies in light of human rights concerns and unaccountable bureaucratic power. As a border scholar of the largest border metropolitan region—El Paso-Ciudad Juárez—Dunn's analysis of Operation Hold-the-Line is particularly welcome and needed. Dunn is one of the few scholars to apply human rights theories to U.S. policies—long overdue, given that these policies have contributed to thousands of deaths that are virtually invisible to the mainstream U.S. population. Accessibly written and well documented with solid scholarship, Dunn's book is a 'must read' for researchers, students, policymakers, and activists who focus on immigration, borders, human rights, bureaucratic power, and the policy implementation process."

—Kathleen Staudt, Professor of Political Science, University of Texas at El Paso

"Timothy J. Dunn's skilled method of combining field data and conceptual insights reveals the tension between structure and agency in U.S. border enforcement along the southwest borderline. This is a 'must-read' book for understanding the conflictive situations that nationally planned border policy can produce in local communities."

—Nestor Rodriguez, Professor of Sociology, University of Texas at Austin

To understand border enforcement and the shape it has taken, it is imperative to examine a groundbreaking Border Patrol operation begun in 1993 in El Paso, Texas, "Operation Blockade." The El Paso Border Patrol designed and implemented this radical new strategy, posting 400 agents directly on the banks of the Rio Grande in highly visible positions to deter unauthorized border crossings into the urban areas of El Paso from neighboring Ciudad Juárez—a marked departure from the traditional strategy of apprehending unauthorized crossers after entry. This approach, of "prevention through deterrence," became the foundation of the 1994 and 2004 National Border Patrol Strategies for the Southern Border. Politically popular overall, it has rendered unauthorized border crossing far less visible in many key urban areas. However, the real effectiveness of the strategy is debatable, at best. Its implementation has also led to a sharp rise in the number of deaths of unauthorized border crossers.

Here, Dunn examines the paradigm-changing Operation Blockade and related border enforcement efforts in the El Paso region in great detail, as well as the local social and political situation that spawned the approach and has shaped it since. Dunn particularly spotlights the human rights abuses and enforcement excesses inflicted on local Mexican Americans and Mexican immigrants as well as the challenges to those abuses. Throughout the book, Dunn filters his research and fieldwork through two competing lenses, human rights versus the rights of national sovereignty and citizenship.