Un-civil Technoscience: Anti-Immigration and Algorithmic Systems in Boundary Making

• In Event: Networks of Empire: Borders, Racialization, and Social Reproduction through Algorithmic Systems

Abstract

The trope of a “flooded” border overwhelming US government officials is a recurring theme in debates about border and immigration enforcement, especially since the Cold War. Framing the border as “out of control,” has led diverse actors to justify investments and commitments to treat some populations as “intruders,” and “enemies” of the nation. In the 2000s, anti-­immigrant paramilitary­ organizations like the American Border Patrol (ABP) pushed the US government to expand and innovate its security operations to ­counter the mi­grant “invasion.” ABP, the Minutemen Proj­ect, and other similar nongovernmental­ organizations used algorithmic systems drawing together data streams from small unmanned aerial systems, cameras, and crowdsourced ­labor from Internet users to augment the reach of and support border enforcement.­ These ­organizations should be understood not only as paramilitary but as citizen technoscience ventures that emerge from the (neo)liberal program of the settler colonial state. Examining ABP reports, files, and operational videos on YouTube, federal government reports, and newspaper coverage, this paper traces the collaborations between the ABP, defense contractors, and the US federal government in the articulation of a border regime premised on a gradually growing, persistent technocreep—of data capture and processing, and bodily apprehension, displacement, and elimination. Building on work from feminist and critical race science and technology studies, and American studies, the paper sheds light on the limitations of citizen science, particularly in relation to citizenship and sovereignty, and questions its unanimous acceptance as a democratizing endeavor by examining its un-civil technopolitics in the exercise of racial violence.

Author

• Ivan Chaar Lopez, The University of Texas at Austin