Nobody Is Protected: How the Border Patrol Became the Most Dangerous Police Force in the United States

by Reece Jones

Overview

An urgent look at the U.S. Border Patrol from its xenophobic founding to its assault on the Fourth Amendment in its quest to become a national police force

Late one July night in 2020, armed men, identified only by the word POLICE written across their uniforms, began snatching supporters of Black Lives Matter off the street in Portland, Oregon, and placing them in unmarked vans. These mysterious actions were not carried out by local law enforcement or even right-wing terrorists, but by the U.S. Border Patrol. Why was the Border Patrol operating so far from the boundaries of the United States? What were they doing at a protest that had nothing to do with immigration or the border?

Nobody Is Protected: How the Border Patrol Became the Most Dangerous Police Force in the United States is the untold story of how, through a series of landmark but largely unknown decisions, the Supreme Court has dramatically curtailed the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution in service of policing borders. The Border Patrol exercises exceptional powers to conduct warrantless stops and interrogations within one hundred miles of land borders or coastlines, an area that includes nine of the ten largest cities and two thirds of the American population.

Mapping the Border Patrol’s history from its bigoted and violent Wild West beginnings through the legal precedents that have unleashed today’s militarized force, Guggenheim Fellow Reece Jones reveals the shocking true stories and characters behind its most dangerous policies. With the Border Patrol intent on exploiting current laws to transform itself into a national police force, the truth behind their influence and history has never been more important.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781640095205
Publisher:	Catapult
Publication date:	07/05/2022
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	6.40(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

REECE JONES is a Guggenheim Fellow. He is a professor and the chair of the Department of Geography and Environment at the University of Hawai'i. He is the author of three books, the award-winning Border Walls and Violent Borders, as well as White Borders. He is the editor in chief of the journal Geopolitics and he lives in Honolulu with his family.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Out of Control 3

Part I The Wild West Origins of the Border Patrol

1 Send Two Coffins 21

2 The Texas Rangers 31

3 Closing the Back Gate 43

4 They Have No Right to Go into the Interior 51

5 Unreasonable Searches and Seizures 59

6 A Reasonable Distance 69

Part II The Supreme Court

7 Law and Order 85

8 Terrorists in Suits 97

9 Change of Heart 109

10 Rank Racism 117

11 Mexican Haircuts 129

12 A Sixth Sense 141

13 Free to Stop Any and All Motorists 153

Part III The One-Hundred-Mile Zone

14 America's Frontline 163

15 Hostile Terrain 177

16 Checkpoint Nation 191

17 Somebody Speaking Spanish 211

18 The Everywhere Border 225

Conclusion 239

Acknowledgments 249

Notes 253

Editorial Reviews

03/28/2022

Political geographer Jones (White Borders) examines in this incisive legal history how the U.S. Border Patrol became a “sophisticated paramilitary force... that claims the legal right to sweep people off the streets of an American city without a warrant or even probable cause that a crime was committed.” Established in 1924, the Border Patrol’s “zone of operations” went undefined until 1947, when the Department of Justice determined that the agency’s “special authority” extended to within 100 miles of any “external boundary,” including coastlines. Noting that this area includes “nine of the ten largest cities in the United States and two-thirds of the American population,” Jones delves into the 1970s court cases that affirmed the Border Patrol’s authority to set up interior checkpoints, conduct warrantless stops, and use racial profiling, in spite of the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition against “unreasonable searches and seizures.” According to Jones, these and other court rulings have fostered an air of impunity among Border Patrol agents, who “are arrested for criminal activity at a rate five times higher than regular police officers.” Enriched by the author’s brisk prose and lucid analysis of complex legal matters, this is a troubling look at what Americans have sacrificed in the name of border security. Agent: Julia Eagleton, Janklow & Nesbit Assoc. (July)

Publishers Weekly

A 2023 Southwest Book of the Year

"Reece Jones had done us all a service in reporting on how a federal police agency has grown way larger than it needs to be, has accumulated more power than it requires to do its job, and has used that power to feed itself, to the detriment of the nation . . . It is a dark portrait, but hopefully, by Jones shining some light on it, changes might be prompted that can rein in the beast before it devours what rights we have left." —Coot's Reviews

"This eye-opening read concludes with signs of hope and suggestions for change." —Booklist

"This well-researched account is disturbing in its demonstration of the unwitting complicity between the American justice system and an organization born of racist violence . . . A provocative, necessary book about an ongoing hot-button topic." —Kirkus Reviews

"Jones summons readers concerned about abuse of authority, accountability, human rights, and establishing justice to demand rethinking and revising the USBP’s expansive reach." —Library Journal

"Incisive . . . Enriched by the author’s brisk prose and lucid analysis of complex legal matters, this is a troubling look at what Americans have sacrificed in the name of border security." —Publishers Weekly

“For decades, the U.S. Border Patrol has been violating people’s civil rights in the name of national security including implementing security policies that have been responsible for the deaths of thousands. Nobody Is Protected is a page-turning deep dive into the history of America’s largest police force. In riveting prose, Jones sheds an important light on just how vulnerable citizens and non-citizens alike are to federal overreach and law enforcement abuse.” —Jason De León, MacArthur Fellow and author of The Land of Open Graves

"Reece Jones has done something here surprising, illuminating, and, frankly, terrifying. By diving deeper into an issue which has received much attention but lacked a more critical eye, he has presented us with a portrait of how our fears and prejudices about immigration have metastasized into a pressing situation that demands redress. A harrowing, necessary read." —Jared Yates Sexton, author of American Rule

“If you wondered how it could be possible for the U.S. Border Patrol to pull activists off the streets in Portland, Oregon during the summer of 2020, Nobody is Protected is the book for you. Reece Jones's rigorously researched book analyzes the Border Patrol’s extraconstitutional powers and explains the legal precedents behind it. It's also one hell of a page-turner that twists and turns from the 'Wild West' to the modern halls of power. It is a book with a purpose: always seeking to answer how the U.S.’s 'most dangerous police force' presently operates and how it impacts us all." —Todd Miller, journalist and author of Build Bridges, Not Walls

From the Publisher

05/01/2022

The United States Border Patrol (USBP) must be reined in, argues Jones (White Borders: The History of Race and Immigration in the United States). Despite attention to the ongoing U.S.-Mexico border crisis and lingering outcries at the violence of the Trump administration's "no tolerance policy," with its separated families and "kids in cages," too few Americans understand what the USBP does or the extent of its authority as the largest law enforcement body in the U.S., Jones insists. Jones details the USBP's stealthy expansion from its "anything goes," underfunded, Wild West frontier origins to the present-day paramilitary force with more than 19,000 agents, a nearly $4 billion budget, and virtually unchecked authority. With individual stories illustrating the carnage of seemingly limitless USBP stops in light of the Fourth Amendment's prohibiting unreasonable searches and seizures, Jones documents beatings, sexual assaults, kidnappings, killings, unwanted medical procedures, and other outrageous, unrestrained USBP behavior. VERDICT Jones summons readers concerned about abuse of authority, accountability, human rights, and establishing justice to demand rethinking and revising the USBP's expansive reach, with its legalized racial profiling and carved out exceptions to constitutional protections, along with the implications of an unchecked, heavily militarized police force operating throughout the U.S.—Thomas J. Davis

Library Journal

2022-04-26
A geography professor examines how the U.S. Border Patrol developed into an organization with powers that supersede the Fourth Amendment right to freedom from unreasonable search and seizure.

Officially established as a federal agency in 1924, the Border Patrol has its roots in the Texas Rangers. “Ostensibly, [the Rangers’] purpose was to protect citizens from attack by Mexican or Native American raids,” writes Jones, “but in practice they often harassed and displaced Native Americans and Mexicans who lived in the region”—not to mention peaceful non-White residents and runaway slaves traveling on the Underground Railroad to Mexico. Jefferson Davis Milton, a former Ranger who was named after the president of the Confederacy, later became the first man hired as a federal officer to patrol the U.S. border, in 1904. But the background history of the Border Patrol accounts for only part of how it evolved from a tiny, underfunded agency with “loosely defined regulations” regarding how far from the border it could operate into a “sophisticated paramilitary force” that surreptitiously made its lethal presence felt during the mass demonstrations that followed the murder of George Floyd in 2020. Jones argues that the agency's unprecedented expansion in the late 20th century was driven by two Supreme Court decisions in the mid-1970s. The first, United States v. Brignoni-Ponce (1975), made racial profiling a legal factor for federal agents roving the border to consider when stopping drivers. The second, United States vs. Martinez-Fuerte, approved the use of interior checkpoints “on highways and interstates within one hundred miles of borders and coastlines.” This well-researched account is disturbing in its demonstration of the unwitting complicity between the American justice system and an organization born of racist violence. Jones also clearly shows the specter of increased—and sanctioned—police power to transform all places within the U.S. into anti-democratic borderlands.

A provocative, necessary book about an ongoing hot-button topic.

Kirkus Reviews