Citation: Inda, Jonathan Xavier. 2011.

Borderzones of Enforcement: Criminalization, Workplace Raids, and

Immigrant Counter-Conducts. In The Contested Politics of Mobility: Borderzones and Irregularity. Vicki J. Squire,
ed. Pp. 74-90. London: Routledge.

Chapter 4
Borderzones of Enforcement: Criminalization, Workplace Raids, and Migrant Counter-
Conducts
1

Jonathan Xavier Inda

On December 12, 2006, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (also known as ICE) raided
Swift & Company meatpacking plants in six states: Colorado, Nebraska, Texas, Utah, Iowa, and
Minnesota (US ICE 2006). Taken into custody were 1282 suspected undocumented migrants,
most of whom were Latino (that is, of Latin American origin). A majority of these individuals
simply faced deportation for being present in the United States without authorization (see the
essay by Susan Bibler Coutin in this volume). However, 65 were charged with criminal
violations related to identity theft or other infractions (i.e., reentry after deportation). Not only
were these migrants looking at deportation, they also potentially faced time in prison.

The arrestees were not the only ones affected by the raid. There was plenty of collateral damage.
Migrant families were particularly hard hit. Many lost their primary breadwinner. Husbands were
separated from wives, parents from children, and siblings from each other. The broader migrant
community in the towns where the raids took place also suffered. The city of Marshalltown,
Iowa, for example, witnessed a decrease in its Latino population as a result of ICEs operations
(Perkins and Piller 2007). Not only did the arrestees leave, but so did other migrants who were
2
fearful of further raids. Some left Marshalltown to pursue jobs in other states while others
returned to their home countries, mainly Mexico and various Central American nations. These
departures greatly impacted on those migrants who stayed behind. For example, Latino
businesses suffered heavily. As Marcela Hernandez, an employee at La Guadalupana bakery, put
it: [The raid has] affected the restaurants, the stores and other businesses.... People keep leaving,
even a year later.... People have fear because they don't know what will happen. They don't have
any security. Every day, they hear about more raids in other states and they are reminded of the
raid last year (Perkins and Piller 2007).

The raids that took place against Swift & Co. are not unique. In fact, raids became rather
commonplace in the United States during the presidency of George W. Bush and have continued,
to some extent, under the new Obama administration. In this chapter, I focus on the increased
salience of workplace raids in the management of irregular migrants in the US. Specifically, I
locate such raids as part of a broader practice of government that has aggressively criminalized
undocumented migrants (see De Genova, 2002; Coutin, 2005; Rosas, 2006; Inda 2006a;
Hernandez 2008; Heyman 2009). I call this practice governing immigration through crime.
Basically, to govern immigration through crime is to make crime and punishment the
institutional context under which the efforts to guide the conduct of migrants takes place. The
objective is to shape the comportment of the undocumented in such a way as to incapacitate them
and contain the threat they and their actions putatively pose to the security the nation. The most
notable form that this way of governing has assumed over the last twenty years or so is that of
intensified law enforcement at the nations borders. More recently, however, governmental
authorities have also placed a strong emphasis on the interior policing of the United States. Since
3
the early 2000s, for example, criminal prosecutions of immigration violations have increased;
local and state law enforcement agencies have become progressively more involved in policing
immigration matters; the number of undocumented migrants incarcerated in county jails, federal
prisons, and immigration detention centers has surged; and, most significantly for our purposes,
immigration raids have become commonplace. What we have witnessed, then, is the progressive
criminalization of migrants and a significant expansion in the space of policing. Essentially, the
boundaries of immigration policing have migrated inwards, turning countless spaces in the
interior of the United States from workplaces and homes to public spaces into borderzones of
enforcement where governmental authorities endeavor to regulate dangerous cross-border
illegalities.

I also want to propose, however, that interior borderzones are not simply spaces of
criminalization and policing. They are also political sites of struggle. Indeed, while workplace
raids and the policing of immigrants may have escalated, the undocumented have not simply
accepted the new status quo. Rather, the effort to govern immigration through crime has been
actively resisted by migrants and their allies. They have engaged in what could be called migrant
counter-conducts (Gordon 1991; Foucault 2007). These are acts or forms of comportment that
contest the criminalization and exclusion of irregular migrants. The counter-conducts that
migrants have been involved with include labor strikes, hunger strikes for justice, advocating for
legalization and political rights, the occupation of churches as a way of gaining sanctuary, public
demonstrations, and fighting for legal redress for unpaid wages (McNevin 2009). Here I
specifically examine anti-raid public protests and legal challenges to the criminalization of
4
migrants. Such counter-conducts, I suggest, ultimately speak to the political becoming of
irregular migrants and their enactments of citizenship.

GOVERNING IMMIGRATION THROUGH CRIME
Since the 1970s, crime and punishment have become an increasingly central means through
which political authorities in the United States seek to govern the conduct of individuals and
populations, a development that Jonathan Simon (1997) refers to as governing through crime.
This way of governing is intimately connected to the decline of the social and the rise of
neoliberal rule (see Inda 2006a; Pratt 2005). Put briefly, the ideal of the social-welfare state,
dominant for much of the twentieth century in the US, has generally yielded to that of the
neoliberal state. This new ideal is such that the political apparatus no longer appears obligated to
safeguard the well-being of the population through maintaining a sphere of collective security.
Social insurance as an ensemble of state mechanisms that sought to insure individuals against
the insecurities of social life has thus largely given way to the privatized and individualized
government of risk. Individuals are now asked to take upon themselves the primary
responsibility for managing their own security and that of their families. They are expected to
adopt an entrepreneurial disposition towards life and insure themselves (using market
mechanisms) against the vicissitudes of ill health, accidental loss, unemployment, and anything
else that could potentially threaten their contentment. Significantly, in placing such a strong
emphasis on individual responsibility, neoliberal rule has tended to draw a rather marked
distinction between the proper neoliberal citizen who secures his/her own well-being through
active self-promotion and the deviant anti-citizen the criminal, the homeless, the welfare
recipient who is deemed incapable of managing his/her own risks and thus lies outside the
5
nexus of responsible activity. While the government of the former has largely taken place
through the mechanisms of market and outside the formal political apparatus, the regulation of
the latter has increasingly occurred through the widening reach of the repressive arms of the
state. Indeed, law and order measures have become the preferred institutional contexts through
which the government of marginal subjects is effected.

Governing through crime in the United States has come to be instantiated in a number of specific
practices. This facet of neoliberal rule is clearly visible, for instance, in the widespread
popularity of tough on crime sentencing regimes of just desserts, deterrence, and retribution.
These regimes include such measures as quality of life campaigns and zero tolerance policing,
harsher penalties and the extensive utilization of imprisonment, three strikes and compulsory
minimum sentencing policies, redress in juvenile court and the incarceration of minors, and more
extensive parole restrictions (Garland 2001: 12). Governing through crime is further visible in
the common practice of securitizing private spaces as a way of dealing with crime risks and
insecurities. The most notable manifestations of this practice are undoubtedly fortified enclaves
(i.e., gated communities) (Blakely and Snyder 1997). These enclaves are segregated spatial
enclosures designed to provide a safe, orderly, and secure environment for those who dwell
within them. The rationale for governing through crime seems to be twofold. On the one hand,
the thinking is that irresponsible individuals must be held accountable for their misdeeds: that
they must be made to shoulder the burden of their lifestyle decisions. The calculus of punishment
thus serves to press upon the offending (and potentially offending) agent the importance of being
prudent and governing oneself responsibly. And on the other, it is that responsible citizens must
protect themselves and be protected from the hoards of anti-citizens who threaten their security
6
and quality of life. The containment of the few therefore becomes a prerequisite for the freedoms
of the many.

This neoliberal emphasis on governing through crime has had a significant impact on how
irregular migration is problematized and managed. In fact, irregular migration has come to be
seen largely as a law and order issue in the contemporary United States. Since the early 1990s,
the US has witnessed a rather strong wave of anti-immigrant sentiment a trend that has only
intensified in the post-9/11 context. From social scientists, immigration officials, and policy
analysts to immigration reform organizations and the public at large, it has been common for
individuals and groups to cast irregular migrants typically imagined as Mexican as threats to
the overall well-being and security of the social body (Inda 2006a; Chavez 2008). The
fundamental problem with the undocumented has been deemed to be their illegality. For some, to
be an illegal immigrant is to be inherently a lawbreaker. It is to be necessarily a criminal. The
criminality of irregular migrants is generally attributed to the idea that they do not have a legal
right to be in the United States. Take, for example, a basic government definition of unauthorized
persons: An illegal alien is a person who is in the United States in violation of US immigration
laws (US GAO 1995: 1). Or consider the following statements drawn from policy and mass
media documents:

Illegal aliens are of concern to law enforcement officials, urban planners, and
policymakers, first, because they are lawbreakers. (US GAO 1993: 10)

7
The effect illegal immigration has on the economy is irrelevant. Whether illegal
immigration stimulates or burdens economic growth is of no importance to the residual
fact that the law is being broken. Illegal immigration is illegal. Period. (Olson 1994:
Commentary 5)

One of the most common and devastating crimes committed in America is committed by
people who are not even American citizens. To many, it is not even considered a crime,
even though its name, illegal immigration, makes it clear that it is. . . . People who enter
or stay in this country illegally are criminals by definition. (Coleman 1994: B11)

In addition to being constructed as lawbreakers, irregular migrants have routinely been linked to
a host of other problems. For example, they have been associated with such cultural, social, and
economic maladies as overpopulation, deteriorating schools, urban crime and decay, energy
shortages, and national disunity. Furthermore, they have been accused of displacing American
workers, depressing wages, spreading diseases, and burdening public services. All of these
problems are seen as compounding the fundamental problem of immigrant criminality (see
essay by Susan Bibler Coutin in this volume).

In the wake of 9/11, while irregular migrants continue to be constructed as criminals, the threat
they represent has come to be refigured in terms of homeland security (see essay by Nicholas De
Genova in this collection). Homeland security is a way of thinking and acting that developed in
the wake of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. It has been defined as a concerted
national effort to prevent terrorist attacks within the United States, reduce Americas
8
vulnerability to terrorism, and minimize the damage and recover from attacks that do occur
(OHS 2002: 2). What has basically happened is that, subsequent to the 9/11 attacks, terrorism has
generally become regarded as the greatest threat facing the nation. Focusing on the fact that the
9/11 hijackers were foreigners who somehow managed to get into the United States, the
movement of people in and out of the country has been seen as indissociable from this threat. It
is thus commonly expressed in policy and public rhetoric that there is an ever-present possibility
that foreigners might seek to enter the US in order to commit acts of terrorism. Moreover, this
discourse strongly articulates the need to protect against the threat of terrorism and safeguard the
homeland. Notably, the attitude of protecting the homeland has significantly influenced the
governing of immigration: whether terrorists or not, migrants have generally come to be seen as
threats to the security of the homeland. Protecting the nation thus not only involves preventing
terrorist attacks, but also mitigating the dangers posed by irregular migrants (defined as illegal
immigrants). Indeed, the undocumented have come be seen as threats to national security. The
homeland on this reading must be protected from these irresponsible criminals.

Given that irregular migrants have largely been constructed as criminal illegal immigrants who
harm the well-being of American citizens and threaten the security of the nation, the measures
employed to govern them have been extremely exclusionary and punitive. Put otherwise,
irregular migrants have come to be governed through crime. Governing immigration through
crime has taken numerous forms in the United States. The most notable form it has undoubtedly
taken is that of enhanced border policing (Inda 2006b). Since the early 1990s, the US federal
government has undertaken a major boundary control offensive, one that aims to shape the
conduct of illegal immigrants in such as way as to deter them from entering the US. Federal
9
authorities have essentially determined that one of the best ways to deal with the problem of
illegal immigration is through expanding its border policing operations. The expansion of the
border policing as a way of governing illegal immigration has been most conspicuous along the
US-Mexico border. It is this border that has historically been seen as the primary source of the
undocumented immigrant problem. This expansion actually dates back to late 1970s. But it really
burgeoned in the early 1990s. Thats when the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) put
into effect a broad plan to gain control of the southwest border and reduce the flow of illicit
immigration. As articulated in the Border Patrol Strategic Plan: 1994 and Beyond, National
Strategy, this comprehensive border control scheme was based on a strategy of prevention
through deterrence (US Border Patrol 1994). The objective was to increase fencing, lighting,
personnel, and surveillance equipment along the main gates (or hot spots) of illegal entry such
as San Diego, California and El Paso, Texas in order to raise the probability of apprehension to
such a high level that unauthorized aliens would be deterred from crossing the border. Now, in
the post-9/11 context, the policing of the border as a way of managing unauthorised migration
has only accelerated as the fight against immigrant illegality has become conflated with the war
on terror. A primary solution to the illegal immigration problem, then, has been to turn the US
into a fortified enclave of sorts. It has been to cast a wide net of control and surveillance over the
border in order to discourage illegal incursions and thus keep troublesome individuals out of the
body politic. As with the government of crime more generally, the rationale for managing
irregular migrants through police measures is that the public must be protected from the would-
be criminals who threaten their security and contentment.

10
While the policing of the border continues unabated, the Federal government has since the early
2000s intensified its policing of the nations interior. Indeed, interior policing, led by the
Department of Homeland Securitys (DHS) Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement
(ICE), has become a central component of the border fight against terror and illegal
immigration. What has basically happened is that the border, as a regime of security and
immigration control (Cunningham 2009), has been deterritorialized and projected into the
nations interior (Euskirchen, Lebuhn, and Ray 2009). As part of this border respatialization,
certain spaces of everyday life most notably workplaces but also individual homes and variety
of public spaces have been identified as strategic sites and become subject to intensified
policing. As such, numerous locales across the interior of the United States have been turned into
borderzones of enforcement.

The increased preoccupation with policing the interior of the United States was notably signaled
with the DHSs publication of Endgame: Office of Detention and Removal Strategic Plan, 2003-
2012 (US DHS 2003). The Office of Detention and Removal (DRO) is the primary enforcement
arm of ICE. It is responsible for promoting public safety and national security through the
identification, apprehension, and removal of illegal aliens from the United States (US ICE
2009). Endgame essentially lays out DROs vision for a secure homeland. The stated goal is to
develop the capacity and capability to remove all removable aliens (US DHS 2003: 1.3),
focusing on those with criminal records and/or outstanding orders of deportation. The rationale
here is that striving for 100 per cent removal allows ICE to provide the level of immigration
enforcement necessary to thwart and deter continued growth in the illegal alien population
(2003: 4.4) and thus to keep American secure (2003: 2.9). This prioritization of removing
11
aliens from the country was reiterated in the DHSs master plan for controlling the border,
Secure Border Strategic Plan (US DHS 2006). This text places a strong emphasis on enhancing
interior enforcement and compliance with immigration and customs law (2006: 6) as a way to
stop the illicit flow of people into the US. In line with Endgame, one of the goals articulated in
the Strategic Plan is the need to identify, apprehend, and expeditiously remove the criminal
alien and fugitive population (2006: 6). However, this text goes further and also highlights the
importance of investigating and punishing employers who systematically employ or exploit
aliens unauthorized to work (2006: 6). ICEs targets would thus be not just individual aliens but
also places of work.

One of the main mechanisms ICE has employed to carry out its interior policing mission is the
raid. A raid is a practice whereby immigration authorities, sometimes with the help of other
policing agencies, descend en mass on homes, places of work, and other spaces with the express
purpose of apprehending individuals believed to be in the country without authorization. Like
border policing, the raid is a practice that seeks to securitize the nation through the abjection and
exclusion of individuals and populations deemed threatening to the social body. ICEs initial
targets were people whose criminal or other actions had rendered them deportable (see US ICE
2008a; Mendelson, Strom, and Wishnie 2009). But more recently it has also focused on worksite
enforcement. Indeed, over the last few years, this agency has pursued an aggressive program of
policing of the nations workplaces. Between 2006 and 2008, ICE apprehended about 14,000
irregular migrants through worksite raids (US ICE 2008b: 3). This compares to only about 2,700
arrests between 2002 and 2005 (US ICE 2008b: 3). Worksite enforcement is a priority, according
to ICE, because: Employment is a primary driving force behind illegal immigration. By working
12
with employers to ensure a legal workforce, ICE is able to stem the tide of those who cross our
borders illegally or unlawfully remain in our country to work (US ICE 2008b: 2). ICE deems
the hiring of undocumented migrants a problem for several reasons. First, the agency suggests
that: illegal aliens often turn to criminal activity: including document fraud, Social Security
fraud or identity theft, in order to get jobs (US ICE 2008b: 2). Such crimes are seen to
negatively impact the lives of the US citizens and legal residents whose identities are stolen.
Second, the need of irregular migrants for fraudulent documents is said to create thriving
criminal markets. Third, there is a perception that every job taken by an undocumented migrant
means one less job for lawful US residents. Fourth, employers are believed to exploit
undocumented workers through ignoring wages laws and safety standards. And finally, irregular
migrants are seen as easy targets for criminals who want to use them to gain access to sensitive
facilities or to move illegal products (US ICE 2008b: 2). Worksite enforcement, then, is deemed
necessary in order to stem the tide of illegality purportedly produced by undocumented migrants.
The conviction seems to be that illegal immigration generally erodes respect for authority that
the toleration of lawlessness undermines consideration for law and order. For not only do the
undocumented fail to conduct themselves responsibly, they also compel others to follow suit. As
such, they are seen to represent a danger to the social body. Their disregard for the rule of law is
understood to pose a threat to the general welfare of the population.

The workplace raids conducted by ICE have focused on both large and small businesses. On the
larger side, I have already mentioned the raids targeting Swift and Company meatpacking plants.
But there have been plenty of others (US ICE 2008c). On April 19, 2006, for example, ICE
agents apprehended over 1,100 employees of IFCO Systems North America at more than 40
13
locations across the nation. On March 6, 2007, ICE raided Michael Bianco, Inc., a textile product
company in New Bedford, Massachusetts. This action resulted in over 300 arrests. On May 12,
2008, ICE raided the Agriprocessors kosher meatpacking plant in Postville, Iowa (Rhodes 2008).
Around 389 undocumented migrants were arrested that day. And the list goes on.... On the
smaller side, there have also been plenty of raids. David Bacon, a writer for The Nation, gives
the following snapshot of select small-scale raids that took place over a three-month period in
2008:

In June among those arrested were 160 workers at Action Rags in Houston, 32 farm
workers for Boss 4 Packing in Heber, California, and nine workers at water parks in
Arizona. In May cops and guns and badges and everything were used to detain 16
workers at San Diegos French Gourmet bakery, according to Rod Coon, company vice-
president. The same month, 25 construction laborers were picked up in Florida working
on the Lee County Jail. April saw raids detaining 28 landscapers in El Paso, 24
construction workers in Little Rock, 63 taco makers at El Balazo restaurants in the San
Francisco Bay area, 22 restaurant workers on Maui, 33 laborers on the federal courthouse
project in Richmond, Virginia, 20 workers at Shipleys Do-Nuts in Texas, and 45
workers at a Mexican restaurant chain in several states. (Bacon 2008)

Large or small, then, it appears that no worksite is safe. And thus irregular migrants cannot be
completely sure that they will escape ICEs attention.

14
Typically, irregular migrants apprehended by ICE are sent to detention centers and processed for
deportation. Depending on the particular case, an individual may spend days, weeks, months, or
even longer in custody before being removed from the United States. ICE reports that the
average stay in 2008 was 30.49 days (US ICE 2008d). Not all migrants are sent to detention
centers, however. In some cases, those arrested are placed into removal proceedings and then
released on humanitarian grounds (pending their eventual deportation). These migrants are most
often sole caregivers or women with young children. It is also important to note that while the
majority of ICE apprehensions are simple administrative arrests (meaning that individuals are
only accused with being unlawfully present in the US), some apprehended migrants have also
faced criminal charges. Until a 2009 Supreme Court decision rendered the practice
unconstitutional (see below), migrants were sometimes charged with aggravated identity theft
and Social Security fraud. In 2008, more than 960 migrants were charged with such criminal
offenses, including 306 people apprehended at the Agriprocessors meatpacking plant (US ICE,
2008b, 3). Speaking in reference to the Agriprocessors raid, Deborah Rhodes, Senior Associate
Deputy Attorney General for the US Department of Justice, articulates the rationale for
criminally charging immigrants as follows:

Most but not all of the 306 workers faced charges of aggravated identity theft because
they were using immigration or Social Security cards with a number belonging to
somebody else. These were not victimless crimes; there were real people whose identities
were stolen. The Federal Trade Commission estimates that since 2005, 8.3 million
Americans have been victims of identity theft. Even in cases in which an identity theft
victim does not suffer out-of-pocket losses, significant time and frustration can be spent
15
in re-securing ones personally identifying information. Identity theft strikes at ones
sense of security and privacy. Post 9/11, we also recognize that identity theft poses a
security risk to all of us. Because of the concern for identity theft, the harm it causes to
individuals and the risk to our security as a nation, Congress has mandated a two-year or
five-year sentence for anyone who knowingly transfers, possesses or uses the
identification of another person in relation to certain specified felonies. (Rhodes 2008:
49)

For a time, then, migrants were not simply apprehended and deported. They also faced time in
prison for using false or stolen identities.

While the number of migrants caught in worksite raids, including the figure on those who face
criminal charges, is rather small in relation to the estimated 10.8 million undocumented migrants
residing in the United States (Hoefer, Rytina, and Baker 2010), the effects of the raids have
nevertheless been rather profound. The most palpable impact of the raids has been on the
families, particularly the children, of the individuals who have been apprehended and deported.
Recently, The Urban Institute released a report titled Paying the Price: The Impact of
Immigration Raids on Americas Children (Capps et al. 2007). The report focused on the
aftermath of large-scale ICE raids in three communities: Greely, Colorado; Grand Island,
Nebraska; and New Bedford, Massachusetts. Greely and Grand Island were two of the sites hit as
part of the Swift & Company meatpacking raids. New Bedford was the location of the raid on
Michael Bianco, Inc. The authors detail how the children and families of apprehended
immigrants experienced significant hardship, including difficulty coping with the economic and
16
psychological stress caused by the arrest and the uncertainty of not knowing when or if the
arrested parent would be released (2007: 3). Moreover, they note that:

Hardship increased over time, as families meager savings and funds from previous
paychecks were spent. Privately funded assistance generally lasted for two to three
months, but many parents were detained for up to five or six months, and others were
released but waited for several months for a final appearance before an immigration
judge during which time they could not work. Hardship also increased among extended
families and nonfamily networks over time, as they took on more and more responsibility
for taking care of children with arrested parents.

After the arrest or disappearance of their parents, children experienced feelings of
abandonment and showed symptoms of emotional trauma, psychological duress, and
mental health problems. Many lacked stability in child care and supervision. Families
continued hiding and feared arrest if they ventured outside, increasing social isolation
over time. Immigrant communities faced the fear of future raids, backlash from
nonimmigrants, and the stigma of being labeled illegal. The combination of fear,
isolation, and economic hardship induced mental health problems such as depression,
separation anxiety disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, and suicidal thoughts.
However, due to cultural reasons, fear of possible consequences in asking for assistance,
and barriers to accessing services, few affected immigrants sought mental health care for
themselves or their children. (2007: 3-4)

17
By removing a parent and breadwinner from the home, then, worksite operations have significant
consequences for families and children. Not only does the removal of a breadwinner reduce a
familys income and increase their material hardship, it also creates a rather unstable home
environment. Moreover, the fear and stigma produced by a raid can lead to the social isolation of
immigrant families and have an adverse psychological effect on children.

Worksite raids, and the broader anti-immigrant climate that has spawned them, have also had a
significant impact on the larger migrant community in the United States, Latinos in particular. A
recent survey by the Pew Hispanic Center paints a rather grim picture of the psychological state
of US Latinos legal residents, US citizens, and irregular migrants alike (Lopez and Minushkin
2008). Latinos generally report feeling anxious and discriminated against amid public immigrant
bashing and enhanced immigration enforcement. Among the surveys general findings were the
following: that one-in-ten Latinos reported being stopped by the police or other authorities in the
past year to be asked about their immigration status; that one-in-seven said that they have had
trouble finding or keeping a job because they are Latino; and that one-in-ten reported difficulties
finding or keeping housing. Significantly, the survey also found that a majority of Latinos worry
about deportation. Approximately 40 per cent report being worried a lot that they, a family
member, or a close friend could be deported, while 17 per cent say they worry some. Not
surprisingly, immigrants are particularly concerned about deportation, with 72 per cent reporting
being worried either a lot or some. Immigrant raids, then, and immigration enforcement more
generally, have helped to create a sense of unease among Latinos, and Latino migrant
communities in particular. As such, the effectivity of raiding, as well as of other policing
mechanisms deployed against migrants, resides not in the number of migrants being arrested but
18
in the creation of apprehension and fear amongst migrant communities. This is a policy of
attrition through enforcement. It is aimed at wearing down the will of immigrants to live and
work in the United States (Immigration Policy Center 2008).

MIGRANT COUNTER-CONDUCTS
There is no doubt that the respatialization of the border, that is, the expansion of immigration
policing into the interior of the United States, has had a negative impact on the conduct of
irregular migrants. Indeed, it is clear that one of the effects of raiding has been to incapacitate
undocumented migrants through expulsion, the induction of fear, and so forth. But interior
borderzones of enforcement cannot be reduced to mere spaces of policing. They are also most
certainly sites of political struggle, as indicated in the introductory chapter to this volume.
Migrants have not stood idly by and accepted the highly punitive treatment to which they have
been subjected. Rather, they and their allies have actively sought to challenge the practice of
raiding and the governing of immigration through crime. In his Collge de France lectures on
security, territory, and population, Michel Foucault suggests that there is a strategic reversibility
to power relations such that any governmental effort to shape the conduct of individuals and
populations is interwoven with dissenting counter-conducts (Gordon 1991: 5), that is, with
struggle[s] against the processes implemented for conducting others (Foucault 2007: 201). This
is precisely the case with respect to the government of immigration through crime. This way of
governing immigrants has elicited dissenting counter-conducts or what I have called migrant or
immigrant counter-conducts. These struggles against the punitive practices employed to direct
the conduct of migrants range from street protests and marches to legislative interventions and
19
court challenges. Such counter-conducts seek to call into question the criminalization and
marginalization of irregular migrants.

One of the most visible counter-conducts that irregular migrants and their allies have engaged in
is public protesting (see the essays by Nicholas De Genova, Sandro Mezzadra, Peter Nyers and
Enrica Rigo in this volume). Across the country, unions, religious institutions, immigrant rights
groups, Latino organizations, and the general public have banded together in varying
assemblages to publically protest the raids and their drastic effects on migrants and their
communities. Irregular migrants themselves have played an active role in these acts of protest.
Take the case of Postville, Iowa, for example. Postville was the site of the raid on the
Agriprocessors kosher meet packing plant. At that raid, ICE apprehended about 389 suspected
undocumented migrants, mainly of Guatemalan and Mexican origin (Rhodes, 2008). A lucky
few, mostly mothers, were released on humanitarian grounds pending their removal from the
United States. The vast majority however, 306 people, were detained on criminal charges. They
were accused of using fraudulent Social Security documents and false or stolen identities.
Ultimately, most of these individuals pleaded guilty to Social Security fraud and were sentenced
to five months in prison. Following their jail sentences, they were to be deported. The effects of
the raid proved to be highly disruptive. Not only were the lives of numerous migrants shattered,
but the larger community of Postville also suffered. In the immediate aftermath of the raid, the
town (with a population of 2,273) lost about a third of its population. As a consequence,
businesses were virtually empty, schools littered with unfilled seats, and those still left were
asking themselves, What happened? A whole community was in shambles. As one observer put
20
it, The humanitarian impact of this raid is obvious to anyone in Postville. The economic impact
will soon be evident (Cited in Camayd-Freixas, 2008).

A couple of months after the raid, on Sunday, July 27, 2008, over 1,000 people marched down
the streets of Postville to protest against ICEs actions. The protestors were mainly Latino
migrants, local citizens, immigrant rights advocates, and members of the Jewish, Catholic, and
Lutheran communities (AFP 2008; Standing Firm 2008). They were marching in Postville not
only to speak out against the raid, which tore apart the local community and devastated migrant
families, but also to call for the just treatment of workers and for comprehensive immigration
reform legislation that included a path to citizenship for irregular migrants (Bobo 2008). They
marched carrying signs saying, An injury to one is an injury to all. Immigrant Rights Now!,
Born in the USA. Why are you taking our families away?, and Stop destroying families. And
they chanted, No more raids!, No justice, no peace, and Yo no soy terrorista, ni criminal. Y
ningun ser humano es illegal. Basta, basta! Im neither a terrorist nor a criminal. And no
human being is illegal. Enough, enough! Significantly, among the marchers were 43 women
who had been apprehended during the raid but released on humanitarian grounds to take care of
their children (APF 2008). Still under house arrest, these women wore electronic monitoring
bracelets around their ankles. Two of them spoke at a rally. Maria L. Gomez bore witness to the
post-raid suffering of her family: of her sisters detention and the painful trips to visit her in
prison (Cullen 2008: 1). And Cruz Rodriguez asked everyone to Stand together for our families,
be a voice for those who cannot speak, who are detained.... Remain with us through this process
(Cullen 2008: 1).

21
As well as being involved in such protests, migrants have been engaged in legal challenges to the
practice of raiding and the criminalization of the undocumented. Examples of such counter-
conduct abound. For instance, as a result of the Swift & Co. raids, the United Food and
Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW) filed a lawsuit on behalf of several members,
including migrants, to put a stop to workplace raids. The complaint contended that during:

the December 12th raids workers were denied access to telephones, bathrooms and legal
counsel. Citizens and legal residents also were deprived of the opportunity to retrieve
documents to establish their legal status. Some workers were handcuffed. Others were
shipped out on buses. Families, schools and daycare centers could not be contacted to
make arrangements for the children of detained workers. Families were left divided and
scared not knowing where or when they might see a missing family member again.
(UFCW 2007)

At a press conference announcing the lawsuit, UFCW International president Joe Hansen
stressed the importance of protecting the constitutional rights of workers. Work is not a crime,
and workers do not leave their constitutional rights at the plant gate, Hansen said. To inflict this
kind of enforcement on innocent workers to arrest and illegally detain massive numbers of
people against their will, to treat them as criminals is not just unacceptable, it is un-American
(UFCW 2007). At the time of writing this lawsuit was still pending.

Similarly, we can take the case of Ignacio Flores, an undocumented migrant from Mexico. In
2000, he used a false name, birth date, Social Security number, and alien registration card in
22
order to secure employment at a steel plant in Illinois (Liptak and Preston 2009). Neither the
Social Security number nor the alien card belonged to real people. A few years later, however, in
2006, Flores informed his employer that he wanted to use his real name and provided a new
Social Security number and alien registration card. The employer reported this change of name
request to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement. ICE discovered that Floress new
documents actually belonged to other people. The United States government consequently
indicted Flores with, among other things, aggravated identity theft. Flores was charged under
Federal statute 18 U. S. C. 1028A (a)(1), which imposes a mandatory two-year prison term on
any person convicted of certain predicate crimes if, during or in relation to the commission of
those other crimes, the offender knowingly . . . uses, without lawful authority, a means of
identification of another person (Fernandez 2009). The law was meant to stop credit card
thieves and would-be terrorists, but the Bush administration interpreted it broadly and used it to
criminally charge migrants caught using a Social Security number or identity belonging to
someone else. They were charged regardless of whether or not they had intent to defraud another
individual. Rather than accepting the identity theft charge, Flores fought be acquitted. He argued
that the US government needed to prove that he knew the numbers on his documents belonged to
other people. Flores was initially convicted of identity theft. But he appealed his case all the way
to the US Supreme Court. The Court determined that it was not okay to eliminate the element of
intent in the law. In other words, it was not enough to simply catch a person with a stolen
identity or Social Security number. The government also had to show that migrants were
knowingly (and with the intent to defraud) using someone elses identity. As a consequence,
Flores was acquitted of the aggravated identity theft charge. And since most migrants who use
false Social Security number are simply looking to procure a job and are not out to defraud
23
others, ICE is no longer able to indiscriminately charge undocumented migrants with identity
theft.

The counter-conducts migrants and their allies have engaged in are significant in various
respects. First, they speak to the political becoming of irregular migrants. As Peter Nyers (2006)
has pointed out, there is an expectation of docility on the part of refugees and the undocumented.
Their life tends to be represented in popular and legal discourse as the inverted image of political
life. Whereas the citizen is expected to speak and act politically, the irregular migrant is
supposed to remain silent. But in the context of the raids, irregular migrants have refused to be
quiet. They have spoken out against the dehumanizing effects of raiding. And they have
demanded dignity and recognition, asking to be seen not as criminals who harm the larger
society but as human being who contribute to it (Beltrn 2009). The fact that irregular migrants
stand up and speak thus represents an important act of symbolic resistance. They are speaking
out in a context that does not recognize migrants, in particular irregular or undocumented
migrants, as legitimate speaking subjects. Second, migrant counter-conducts amount to non-
citizen acts of citizenship (Nyers 2003; Isin and Nielsen 2008). Irregular migrants are not
simply speaking out, they are actually claiming and exercising rights. A main message of the
anti-raid public protests, as well as of the legal challenges to the criminalization of migrants, is
that irregular migrants are legitimate members of US society and deserve the right to work, to
raise families, and to be free from the fear of persecution (see also essays by Sandro Mezzadra
and Enrica Rigo in this volume). In other words, they are asking to be recognized as legitimate
political subjects with social, civil, and political rights. In making such claims, irregular migrants
are, in effect, enacting citizenship. Indeed, through their engagement in a variety of democratic
24
processes, from collective protesting and campaigning for rights to court battles, the
undocumented are basically acting as citizens. In the process, citizenship is transformed from a
strictly juridical condition to a practice one can engage in regardless of legal status.

CONCLUSION
To the extent that irregular migrants have been constructed as subjects who harm the well-being
of American citizens, the measures employed to govern them have become extremely
exclusionary and punitive. Much like the government of the poor and of other anti-citizens,
undocumented migrants have increasingly been regulated through crime and police measures.
Indeed, crime and punishment have become the occasions and the institutional contexts in which
the undocumented are governed. Irregular migrants, in short, have effectively been criminalized
and treated as delinquent subjects with rather unfortunate (if not downright horrific)
consequences for many migrant families and communities.

The picture is not all bleak however. Migrants and their allies have forcefully fought back
against the practice of raiding and the expanded boundaries of enforcement. For one, they have
gone to court and filed lawsuits to stop ICE from conducting large-scale raids like the ones that
took place at Swift & Company, as well as to end the practice of charging undocumented
workers with identity theft. Furthermore, irregular migrants themselves have taken to the streets
and marched to claim rights and voice their rejection of the dehumanizing effects of workplace
raids. While the border might have been respatialized and the enforcement climate stepped up,
then, migrants and their allies have kept hope alive and mounted political campaigns bent on
gaining rights and recognition for the undocumented. The workplace as a borderzone of
25
governing immigration through crime is, in other words, also a site around which exclusionary
and punitive techniques of control are subject to resistance and contestation.

26

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34

1
Special thanks go to Leo Chavez, Julie Dowling, the anonymous reviewers at Routledge, and
my colleagues in Latina/Latino Studies at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. They
all, in different ways, contributed greatly to this chapter. I would also like to thank audiences at
the institutions and conferences where I presented versions of this work: the Department of
Womens and Gender Studies at the University of Missouri; the 2008 American Anthropological
Association Annual Meeting; and the 2010 International Studies Association Annual
Convention. Finally, many thanks go to Vicki Squire for her wonderful suggestions and for all
her hard work in putting this volume together.