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One hundred miles south of UCLA, the desert landscape suddenly converts into a military zone, marked by permanent high-intensity lighting, 60 infrared scopes, 1200 underground sensors, a dozen helicopters and over 40 miles of fencing, which extends across the land into the Pacific Ocean. This is Operation Gatekeeper, a multi-million dollar-per-year operation designed to keep “illegal aliens” out of the Land of the Free.

Launched six years ago, Operation Gatekeeper is one of several extreme anti-immigration initiatives created by Attorney General Janet Reno and the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Like similar operations in Texas and Arizona, Operation Gatekeeper gave the California branch of the INS free reign to increase border patrol officers and to expand military infrastructure along the San Diego-Tijuana border in order to “strengthen enforcement of the nation’s immigration laws” (INS Fact Sheet May 1, 1999). According to INS officials, Operation Gatekeeper has “proven that deterrence works” and the INS has achieved “considerable success in restoring integrity and safety to the Southwest border” (INS Fact Sheet May 1, 1999).

Yet the facts show that such claims are blatant lies, spewed forth as part of a public relations campaign, which aims to mask the brutality of America’s border patrol operations and the human rights violations that are committed daily by government officials. What’s more, these operations are siphoning money away from social services like public education; in this manner, the government is perpetuating problems like underfunding and overcrowding, which are often unfairly attributed to immigrants.

Since 1994, INS border operations have resulted in a 600 percent increase in the death rate of migrating people (www.globalexchange.org). Over the same period, tens of thousands of immigrants seeking employment and refuge in the United States have been arrested and imprisoned by INS authorities.

Prison rights activists and human rights watch groups, including the Prison Moratorium Project and Amnesty International, have denounced INS prisons, citing testimonials of horrific conditions and blatant human rights abuses (“Human Rights Concerns with the Border Region of Mexico,” May 1998, www.amnesty.org). Rather than deterring immigration and increasing the apprehension of undocumented immigrants, Operation Gatekeeper is slowly killing innocent people who are desperately seeking a better life for themselves and their families.

Examining the statistics, the crackdown on “illegal” immigrants seems bizarre; according to the INS, undocumented immigrants total approximately 300,000 individuals annually, making up less than a third of America’s annual immigrant population and 1 percent of America’s total population. However, over half of these undocumented immigrants arrive in the U.S. legally and overstay their non-immigrant visas (American Immigration Lawyers Association, www.aila.org). So why is the INS devoting the vast majority of its regulating budget to enormous, inhumane border operations when the bulk of the immigration “problem” lies elsewhere?

There are many answers, but all have one common theme: exploitation. Undocumented immigrants are encouraged to enter the United States because they make up the backbone of America’s cheap labor market. As long as immigrants are handled by subcontractors, who bring cheap labor over to the U.S. to work in Californian produce farms and sweatshops for next-to-nothing wages and no benefits, the U.S. government and INS are more than happy to look the other way (“Bordering on Futility: Growers Hire Illegals the Legal Way – With Contractors” by Robert Collier, San Francisco Chronicle, 10/14/98). It’s only when undocumented workers try to come to the U.S. on their own that the INS gets militaristic, and that’s simply because such workers are perceived to be a threat to agribusiness and other business interests. After all, it’s no coincidence that undocumented workers residing in America are immediately deported only after trying to organize to improve their labor situation.

The xenophobic argument that immigrants steal American jobs is ridiculous; when was the last time someone you knew willingly woke up at 4 a.m. to stand on a street corner, hoping to be chosen as a day laborer paid minimum wage, with no benefits, working 12 or more hours under the incessant California sun or in a suffocating sweatshop?

The fact that Operation Gatekeeper and similar initiatives were launched in 1994 is also no coincidence. Only a few short months before the INS strategy went into effect, President Clinton signed the North American Free Trade Agreement into law.

NAFTA, one of the many international free trade agreements characteristic of the international globalization trend, eliminated farm subsidies in Mexico and displaced millions of rural Mexicans by removing tariffs on American corn and milk. As the Mexican market was flooded with cheap American agricultural products, Mexican farmers were left with no land and no employment.

The U.S. government, knowing that many desperate families would seek survival in America, cracked down on the border, exacerbating the crisis. Meanwhile, American companies and wealthy landowners in Mexico reaped the profits of unregulated trade (“NAFTA Gives Mexicans New Reasons to Leave Home” by Robert Collier, San Francisco Chronicle, 10/15/98).

America is not a melting pot; it is a fiery cauldron in which many immigrants must suffer from repeated attacks from xenophobic conservatives while desperately trying to survive. Besides the attacks made on undocumented immigrants along the border, government officials target legal immigrants seeking naturalization.

As an immigrant myself, I know firsthand the tedious and expensive process of naturalization in this country. All immigrants over the age of 18 are required to pay the INS $225 to apply for citizenship, regardless of income, and must wait a year or more before the process is complete.

Immigrants must take time off of work to travel to government offices, sit in waiting rooms for long hours, fill out a myriad of confusing forms, swear that they have never been affiliated with communism, and endure the endless condescension of most INS officials before they are finally sworn in. It is a ridiculous process, which ironically ends with a swearing-in ceremony that quotes the Statue of Liberty and declares America a welcoming haven for the world’s “tired, poor, huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”

Two weeks ago, I attended an immigrants’ rights march in downtown Los Angeles. Beginning in the garment district amidst L.A.’s very own sweatshops, thousands of people marched toward Staples Center, where Al Gore was accepting the presidential nomination for the Democratic Party.

As we marched, protesters carried white wooden crosses adorned with the names of some of the 600 immigrants who have been killed in America’s brutal and unnoticed War on Immigrants. Many of the crosses were simply marked “no identificado,” in honor of the memory of the unidentified dead.

As the elections approach, we are faced with a unique and crucial opportunity to stop this War on Immigrants and to restore justice to our borders. George W. Bush has come out in support of INS border operations, while Al Gore has only vaguely stated that such operations should be managed with more “compassion” (www.issues2000.org and www.guardianunlimited.co.uk).

The empty political rhetoric is too little too late; hundreds have already died in California from the brutality of Gatekeeper. We must educate ourselves about the reality of the INS, agitate to stop the militarization of the border and fight to prevent any more innocent people from dying for a better life. After all, as Americans, we are nearly all immigrants.

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