Bounded, Surveilled, and Imperiled: Spatial Dimensions of Environmental Injustice in a city on the U.S-Mexico Border

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ABSTRACT In certain circumstances, quantitative approaches to determining distributive environmental justice fail to indicate injustice when it may, in fact, exist. Furthermore, such approaches do not indicate how or why an injustice exists or persists. This is the case in Laredo, Texas, a city of approximately 260,000 people on the U.S.-Mexico border. Here, numerous environmental hazards exist: a commercial sterilizer that uses ethylene oxide, a known carcinogen; poor air quality; drinking water contamination; extreme heat; and lack of healthcare access. Using a carceral geographies approach, this study emphasizes that the practiced and reworked militarized U.S.-Mexico border constrains and traps its residents in an environmentally hazardous area. By this measure, a considerable environmental injustice becomes apparent.