Local Management of Migrant Death in South Texas: A Necropolitical Landscape

Abstract

We share the results of interviews and participant observations conducted in South Texas in spring of 2020 and summer of 2021 to understand how local authorities manage the issue of migrant deaths. Drawing on fifty-seven interviews and observations of local stakeholders from law enforcement and first responders to nonprofit organizations, United States Border Patrol (USBP) agents, and others, three experiences emerged. First, USBP both capacitates and limits local ability to respond to migrant deaths. Second, local jurisdictions feel a sense of impotence as a consequence of overwhelming migrant decedent caseloads, often leading to what we have termed an occupational paralysis. Third, failing to recognize migrant deaths as a regional phenomenon throughout South Texas hinders interior counties from receiving needed support. In our discussion we reflect on the experiences our interlocutors shared with us and the degree to which long-standing U.S. prevention through deterrence policy has configured the Texas–Mexico border into a necropolitical landscape, in the sense that U.S. Southwestern border enforcement, infrastructure, and the environment itself have a spatial arrangement that relegates migrant lives “outside the normal state of law” (Mbembe, 13), and funnels them toward death.