It Could Happen Here – CZM Rewind: Title 42, Pt 4: The Border Patrol

Podcast: It Could Happen Here
Host: Cool Zone Media / iHeartPodcasts
Date: October 17, 2025
Episode Theme:
This episode offers a sweeping, critical history of U.S. border enforcement, focusing on the evolution, culture, and unchecked power of the U.S. Border Patrol. Weaving historical context, personal accounts, and in-depth analysis, it explores the entanglements of white nationalism, government overreach, the weaponization of geography, and the impacts on Indigenous communities and migrants. The narrative ultimately asks what it means for American democracy that two-thirds of the population now lives in a “Constitution-free zone” under the shadow of DHS.

Table of Contents

• Historical Roots of U.S. Border Enforcement
• The Border Today: The “Constitution-Free Zone”
• The Making and Methods of Border Patrol
• Operation Gatekeeper and the Human Cost
• Militarization of Indigenous Lands
• Internal Practices: Corruption, Cover-ups, and White Nationalism
• Border Enforcement Culture and Youth Recruitment
• The Rise of Surveillance and State Power
• Political Rhetoric, Media, and Real-World Consequences
• Personal Accounts: Mutual Aid and Repression
• Tragedy and Systemic Injustice
• Calls to Action and Resources

Historical Roots of U.S. Border Enforcement

• U.S. border history starts with colonization in 1492, through the Mexican-American War (1842), the 1853 Gadsden Purchase, and the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act ([04:45]).
  • Border enforcement always entwined with attempts to maintain a white national identity and prevent non-white immigration.
• The border as we know it was shaped by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and Gadsden Purchase, with complete disregard for the ancestral lands of Indigenous peoples like the Tohono O’odham and Kumeyaay ([08:17]).
• Early “drawing lines” between peoples often ignored on-the-ground realities and existing communities.

The Border Today: The “Constitution-Free Zone”

• The “Border Enforcement Zone” established by the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 covers 100 miles from all U.S. borders ([06:01]).
  • Two-thirds of Americans live within this zone, where CBP agents operate outside the Fourth Amendment.
  • Agents can search vehicles, set up checkpoints, and enter property within 25 miles of the border without a warrant.

“The Fourth Amendment ... doesn’t apply when you’re near the border.” (Host, [06:35])

The Making and Methods of Border Patrol

• Founded in 1924, the Border Patrol has grown into the largest, least accountable federal law enforcement agency ([07:05]).
  • Operation Hold the Line (early 1990s): Chief Silvestre Reyes deployed agents shoulder-to-shoulder along the Rio Grande, shifting tactics from random raids to a visible human “fence” ([25:30]).
  • Operation Gatekeeper (1994): Increased agents and barriers in populated zones, intentionally funneled migrants into hazardous wilderness ([28:15]).

Operation Gatekeeper and the Human Cost

• Intentional Lethality: Former agent Jen Budd explains that injury and death were seen as deliberate deterrents ([29:40]).

  “...that would push the traffic further out to the mountains, making it more difficult... Some would get injured, and we knew some would die. So it was intentional.” – Jen Budd ([29:55])

• Policy Outcomes:
  • Deaths increased: From 200/year in the early 1990s to 472 in 2005 ([33:00]).
  • Migration patterns simply shifted; deaths rose dramatically where landscape was deadliest.

Militarization of Indigenous Lands

• Tohono O'odham and Kumeyaay communities’ ancestral lands are arbitrarily split by the border ([14:45]).

  • US government encroached on sacred sites, often waiving environmental and cultural protections.
  • Trump-era emergency declarations allowed wall construction, desecration of burial grounds ([18:22]).

  “It has over the years seen violent enforcement on members of the nation, and a growing encroachment of the Border Patrol into today’s Tohono O’odham reservation...” (Host, [10:05])

• Modern tech, like surveillance towers developed in the West Bank by Elbit Systems, now dots the reservation ([37:10]).

  • Community internally divided: some members resist wall construction; others motivated by council decisions and US federal pressure.

Internal Practices: Corruption, Cover-ups, and White Nationalism

• Border Patrol Critical Incident Teams (CITs):
  • These internal groups, as journalist John Carlos Frey details, were involved in controlling the narratives and evidence after migrant deaths, facilitating cover-ups ([46:50]).
  • Even after public exposure and supposed "disbanding," SIT teams simply moved agency identity ([50:12]).

“So, what they would do is they’d get there first… get rid of witnesses, set up the scene, and tell you the narrative…” – Jen Budd ([45:50])

• White Nationalist Influence:
  • Direct connections: David Duke announced a 1977 Klan “border watch” ([56:10]).
  • Agency has a “long tradition of literally getting away with murder” and a culture that tolerates or excuses racist violence ([52:40]).
  • Racial slurs (e.g., “tonks”) and dehumanization of migrants are ingrained and defended in agent culture ([01:02:50]).

Border Enforcement Culture and Youth Recruitment

• Explorer program:
  • Recruits high schoolers, often children of immigrants, offering salaries and training in “tracking, survival, shooting, and processing” migrants ([01:14:25]).

  “I call it Border Patrol Youth because it reminds me a lot of the Hitler Youth...they are Latino dominant high schools...teach them how to be mini Border Patrol agents and we teach them to hate somebody else...” – Jen Budd ([01:17:00])

• The program extends into elementary schools, promoting a culture of militarized enforcement from a young age.

The Rise of Surveillance and State Power

• Department of Homeland Security (DHS):
  • Move after 9/11 to DHS from DOJ marks rhetoric shift from justice to “security” ([01:29:21]).
  • CBP and ICE have ballooned to a combined $24 billion budget – with more guns, drones, and surveillance.
  • 20,000 Border Patrol agents by 2020, concentrated on the southern border ([01:38:10]).
  • Legal apparatus for “suspicion-free” digital and physical searches in the border zone ([01:39:00]).

Political Rhetoric, Media, and Real-World Consequences

• Decades of Progressive Deterioration:

  • 1980s: Both Reagan and Bush Sr. spoke about migrants as neighbors and essential workers ([21:55]).

  “I don’t want to see a whole think of six and eight year old kids being made ... totally uneducated and made to feel that they’re living outside the law. These are good people, strong people. Part of my family is a Mexican.” – Reagan ([22:40])

  • 1990s–2010s: By the time of Prop 187 and Fox News, the narrative becomes overtly hostile.
  • Trump-era: Open demonization of migrants as “invaders” ([01:47:02]); widely adopted in right-wing media and exploited to mobilize hate ([01:49:00]).

• Violence Stoked and Mirrored by State:

  • Mass shooter at Tree of Life Synagogue was obsessed with “the caravan” narrative ([01:53:20]).
  • White supremacist militias (Minutemen, Arizona Border Recon) act with impunity and occasionally commit fatal violence ([01:10:00], [01:12:25]).

Personal Accounts: Mutual Aid and Repression

• Host’s Experience During 2018 Caravan Crisis:
  • Describes working to provide food and aid in Tijuana amid government demonization ([01:57:25]).
  • Mutual Aid = Solidarity: Working with churches, anarchist kitchens, and ordinary people to help migrants after state hostility and “invasion” rhetoric ([02:00:00]).
• Surveillance and Harassment of Journalists/Activists:
  • DHS created watchlists; individuals repeatedly detained or scrutinized at the border ([02:10:20]).
  • Journalist Brooke Bin Cassie details being flagged and subjected to invasive searches ([02:13:40]).

  "I say this, and they bring over some guy and he goes, 'ma'am, can I help you?' I'm like, yeah, why are you treating me this way? ... [He says] your name's on a list somewhere. You've been flagged." – Brooke Bin Cassie ([02:16:15])

Tragedy and Systemic Injustice

• Deadly Consequences:

  • Stories like Juana Margarita and Paula Santos Arce, who died of exposure attempting to cross into the US ([02:27:10]).
  • “The desert doesn’t kill people on its own. It’s the border that forces people deep into the desert that kills them.” (Host, [02:29:00])
  • Family separation policies are a logical extension of a state that has long criminalized and destroyed Indigenous families.

• Normalization of Surveillance & Violence:

  • The tools wielded against migrants – cell phone interceptors, drones, militarized raids – are now being deployed in protests and across American society at large ([02:32:35]).
  • “If you tolerate this, then your children will be next”: A warning about the consequences of suppressing human rights at the border ([02:34:45]).

Calls to Action and Resources

• Listeners are encouraged to support local and border-based organizations working for migrant rights and Indigenous sovereignty, including:
  • Asian Solidarity Collective
  • alotrolaro
  • American Friends Service Committee
  • Border Kindness
  • Borderlands Relief Collective
  • Haitian Bridge Alliance
  • Partnership for the Advancement of New Americans
  • Prevencasa ([02:43:20])
• Acknowledgment of continued struggles at the border – as of the episode’s broadcast, hundreds were still being turned away and failed by aid apps like CBP One.

Notable Quotes & Moments

• On living in the border zone:

  "If you’re listening to this in the United States, the chances are that you live in the Border Enforcement zone. This swath of territory outside the Constitution has been established ..." (Host, [06:01])

• On deliberate policy of death:

  “The death and the injuries, according to management, would deter future crossings. But of course that's not the case.” – Jen Budd ([29:55])

• On Border Patrol’s internal investigations:

  “We would call them first... they get rid of the witnesses, set the scene up the way we want, and they tell you the narrative you’re going to stick with ... all this giant cover-up.” – Jen Budd ([45:50])

• On white supremacist patrols’ legacy:

  "He claimed the illegal aliens take jobs away from US Citizens. 'We feel this rising tide washing over our border is going to affect our culture.' ” ([56:45])

• On the cost of demonizing migrants:

  “The desert...might be part of the story, but the desert doesn’t kill people on its own. It's the border that forces people deep into the desert that kills them. The desert is just a tool for a system that uses death as deterrent.” (Host, [02:29:00])

• Final call:

  “Because for two decades we've allowed the Border Surveillance industrial complex to grow...unless people show up and take action, things are going to get considerably worse regardless of who you vote for or what they say in order to get you to vote for them.” (Host, [02:36:18])

For Listeners

This episode is an urgent, deeply researched critique of U.S. border policy, threaded with personal experience, expert testimony, and harrowing stories of those crushed by the system. It tracks the rise of the Border Patrol from its racist and militarist roots, through massive post-9/11 expansion, to its present role surveilling, detaining, and sometimes killing with impunity—while engineering a society where such abuses are continually normalized and exported. The episode closes with a plea: small actions matter, and it is the sum of those actions, not the bluster of politicians, that can begin to turn the tide.