On December 4, Mark Limon, an eighteen-year-old Tucson resident, was pulled over by an Arizona Department of Public Safety (DPS) trooper near Arivaca, a small town about twelve miles north of the U.S.-Mexico border. According to the DPS, Limon was driving an SUV carrying eight people, had committed several traffic violations, and was suspected of human smuggling.
When one of the passengers tried to exit the vehicle, the trooper drew his gun. As Limon started to drive off, the trooper shot at him. Limon made it about a mile down the road with the trooper in pursuit. After the vehicle stopped, and the trooper was arresting the passengers, he realized Limon had been hit. He rendered aid, but Limon was pronounced dead at the scene.
Limon’s shocked and heartbroken parents told a Tucson TV station that DPS didn’t even notify them of their son’s death. They found out hours later when the girlfriend of one of Limon’s friends, who’d been in the vehicle, called them. They said he was a happy and loving kid who worked at Little Caesars and was attending technical school.
“Why did they shoot him? Why didn’t they go talk to the driver instead of shooting them from the back?” Limon’s father said.
Whatever the circumstances, this is yet another example of the many violations of civil and human rights and tragic loss of life that is resulting from our get-tough policies on the U.S.-Mexico border.
“Why did they shoot him? Why didn’t they go talk to the driver instead of shooting them from the back?”
On the Mexican side, the continuation and expansion of the pandemic-era restriction known as Title 42—which calls for the immediate expulsion of refugees and migrants no matter their situation—has left many in dangerous limbo in squalid conditions. Some become so desperate they feel they have no choice but to try to enter the United States “without inspection” by fording the river or crossing the desert.
On the U.S. side, a series of crackdowns on drug and migrant smuggling since the mid-1990s, and especially after 9/11, has led to the creation of what activists call a “deconstitutionalized zone.” They contend the border has become a region where the rights of humans and the environment are routinely ignored in the name of fighting the drug trade and terrorism.
The crackdown has led to a greatly increased police presence on the border, including ubiquitous checkpoints that seem designed to be invisible to white people. Canadian snowbirds, for example, get waved through, while Latinxs whose families have lived here for generations are stopped and questioned.
My twenty-year-old son went to Tucson High, and he’s told me about friends getting searched at checkpoints. He knew several undocumented classmates who had to be careful to not get caught in one.
The checkpoint on Arivaca Road near where Limon was killed had been a longstanding point of contention. Locals battled the border patrol in court for years over whether citizen groups would be allowed close enough to monitor the checkpoint for racial profiling. The border patrol eventually dismantled it.
The crackdown has led to more high-speed chases and deadly crashes, many involving teenage drivers. (After another chase in New Mexico resulted in two deaths and eight injuries on January 8, the border patrol announced it was revising its pursuit policies.)
The crackdown has also led to an increase in migrant deaths through other means, like the fifty-three who perished in a tractor trailer in San Antonio, Texas last June, or the more than 800 (another record) who died in the desert or drowned in the river in 2022. It has also led to the destruction of irreplaceable habitat and blocked essential wildlife corridors.
Activists contend the border has become a “deconstitutionalized zone”—a region where the rights of humans and the environment are routinely ignored in the name of fighting the drug trade and terrorism.
One thing it hasn’t led to is a reduction in the number of migrants arriving at the border. Studies show that factors like conditions at home and the possibility of a job in the States have far more influence over people’ decisions to migrate than whatever border security they might encounter.
The bipartisan immigration reform measure currently being proposed by Senators John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, Kyrsten Sinema, Independent of Arizona, and others will not address these underlying factors. It promises at least $25 billion for additional border security, building more processing centers, and the speeding up of asylum claims and expulsions.
While it will legalize about two million Dreamers, it won’t do anything about the many decent and hard-working people whose claims will be rejected. (Historically, the vast majority of applicants from Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean are deemed not to qualify for asylum.) The whole system needs to be reformed, not just sped up.
Another unintended consequence of our border policy is corruption, moral injury, and low morale among members of the border patrol. There have also been several suicides among Texas National Guard members assigned to border duties. Our country is sending young men and women to the border to solve huge social problems they cannot solve. Hiring more agents won’t fix that either.
Let’s try something else. Regularization of migration would be a good place to start.