“The Gunmen Guardians”: U.S. Border Patrol, Border Communities, and Competing Narratives about Shootings

Lauren D. Catterson, University of Toronto

One hundred years ago this year, the United States Congress not only passed the Immigration Act of 1924 (also known as the Johnson-Reed Act or the National Origins Act), which created new numerical limits on immigration into the U.S. overall and on immigration from different countries, but also established what was referred to then as the Immigration Border Patrol. A new branch of the U.S. Immigration Service, the Immigration Border Patrol was tasked with capturing migrants who crossed into the U.S. from Canada or Mexico without authorisation, though Border Patrol agents ended up engaging in customs and prohibition law enforcement, too. Building on the work of historians who have explored competing notions of masculinity within the early Border Patrol and examined how Border Patrol agents in the 1930s policed (especially Mexican) migrants and deployed state violence, my paper focuses on how Border Patrol agents on the ground and their supervisors in the first decade after the organisation’s creation constructed narratives about shooting incidents involving Border Patrol agents that framed the officers as innocent of any misconduct. It considers these narratives in the broader context of representations of the Border Patrol in newspaper articles and fictionalised stories and, focusing on particular incidents, discusses how such narratives were challenged by some borderlands residents who demanded greater government accountability and justice for migrants and other residents killed by Border Patrol officers.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 148. Narrating Migrant Lives