Immigration and Human Rights
on the U.S. / Mexico Border
Part 4: From Taking Lands to Building Triple Fences
Interview with Roberto Martinez
San Diego, California
Roberto Martinez is director of the U.S. / Mexico Border Program, an immigration law enforcement monitoring project of the American Friends Service Committee. In 1992, he became the first U.S. citizen to be honored as an International Human Rights Monitor by the international human rights organization Human Rights Watch. He has been a Chicano civil rights and human rights activist for the past 20 years. This interview was conducted in 1997 in San Diego by Nic Paget-Clarke.
Police Powers
In Motion Magazine: How many people are in the Border Patrol?
Roberto Martinez: Right now it's estimated between six and seven thousand. Five thousand on the border at least. Here in San Diego alone we have 2,200. In San Diego we are boxed in. We have checkpoints all around. You can't leave San Diego county without going though a checkpoint. Highway 94, I-8, I-15, I-5. In San Clemente, with the new construction it's starting to look like the San Ysidro point-of-entry. Like another border crossing. You can't leave San Diego county -- not by plane, not by bus, not by car. They might as well move the whole border up to L.A.
In Motion Magazine: A special economic zone.
The Border Patrol is part of the INS, right? What is the relationship?
Roberto Martinez: They work hand in hand. Though there is movement for them to be a separate entity. And yet the new regional director is being taken up from the Border Patrol. It used to be an appointed position, you didn't have to have a law enforcement background, or immigration background. Harold Ezell was a regional director before he was the chief Border Patrol agent for San Diego. He was a businessman, in fact he owned a Weinerschnitzel franchise. (President) Reagan appointed him INS regional director. Chief McNary was the INS commissioner before Doris Meisner. He ran a shoe business somewhere in Missouri. Not anymore, Misner is a career INS, he came up through the ranks. All the regional directors (western, central, eastern) are all Border Patrol chiefs. They are really tightening it up. They don't want any more of these appointee-type people. They want people with law enforcement backgrounds.
In Motion Magazine: Are Border Patrol agents armed?
Roberto Martinez: Oh yes. All of them are armed. They all carry weapons.
In Motion Magazine: Even the non-uniformed ones?
Roberto Martinez: Even the undercover ones. They have sidearms.
In Motion Magazine: So there's 10,000 armed people running around questioning and stopping people.
Roberto Martinez: Right. and you never know when they are going to stop you.
I want to cover one more area. The police are working with the Border Patrol and enforcing immigration. I've been meeting this week with groups around this issue in Oceanside. I was telling you about the raids on the homes, police will even stop cars on the pretext of a traffic violation, ask people for their papers.
In Motion Magazine: That is unconstitutional?
Roberto Martinez: No it's not unconstitutional, it's just that in San Diego we formed a pact several years ago between rights groups -- people like myself, the ACLU (American Civil liberties Union), the Chicano Federation -- with the police department here in San Diego to not cooperate with the Border Patrol. We wanted Mexican people, Latinos, not to be afraid to call the police if they wanted to report a crime.
At the time we made the agreement, 1986, the police would investigate a crime, somebody being robbed, or something domestic, and the first thing police would do is ask them for their papers. If they said I don't have any, they'd call the Border Patrol, rather than investigate the crime.
I got fed up with it and formed a coalition. The chief formally accepted this as a writen policy. But they have been violating the agreement off and on, off and on. Now it's getting back to like they didn't even have a policy. Just harassing people.
For example, recently I had to file a complaint and threaten a lawsuit. Day laborers with papers were standing out on Linda Vista road in front of a big parking lot, a Mac Donald's and a grocery store. The police actually surrounded the day laborers and then called the Border Patrol. When the day laborers started running the police blocked the exits with their cars. It was really chaotic.
I interviewed the day laborers. I wrote a letter to the police chief. "What's happening? Why are you doing this? It's a public safety issue and a violation of our agreement. These cops don't know if these are legal day laborers or illegal day laborers. They put a stop to it. This was only a few weeks ago.
Every once in a while these guys act like cowboys. It's a daily battle. There isn't a day goes by that I don't get a complaint from somewhere.
"Even before 1848, lands were taken away ..."
In Motion Magazine: Can you tell me more about yourself and the U.S. Mexico Border Program?
Roberto Martinez: I'm director of the U.S. Mexico Border Program for the American Friends Service Committee here in San Diego. I've been doing border work for 15 years but I've been involved in Chicano rights, civil rights, for 25 years. It's always been a part of my life. I grew up, as I mentioned before, fighting for my rights, to be treated equally, which we don't feel we have. In fact we call ourselves Chicanos precisely because it's a political term, because we were neither Mexican nor treated as U.S. citizens. Our rights were never respected. We had to create our own identity. Because people like me, fifth or sixth generation, weren't born in Mexico. My great, great grandparents came from Texas and they lived there before the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was signed. In other words like we say a lot "we didn't cross the border, the border crossed us." Our rights were never respected.
They broke the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo right from day one. Lands were taken away, people were chased into Mexico. There were massacres of Mexicans in the U.S. back in the turn of the century. One of the biggest massacres was in Norias in south Texas in 1915 where over 300 Mexican U.S. citizens were massacred by Texas Rangers in retaliation for something that happened somewhere else. It's in the history books.
There's always been persecution of Mexicans in the U.S. since even before 1848. As settlers swept across the country they took away land, took over mines, took over everything. We basically ended up, our people, my great grandparents, more like indentured servants working for people on the land that they used to own. It was taken away from them by fraud, by deceit, or by legal means. My great grandparents and grandparents weren't allowed to go to school. They didn't want them to learn how to do math or speak English, and defend themselves.
We basically went through what the African Americans went through. There were signs up until the 1950s and `60s on restaurants I've seen them. Regular metal signs printed in shops said "No Mexicans or dogs allowed". Those existed way into the `60s. Segregation of schools existed up until the 1960s. Mexican schools and white schools.. We have our history.
In California the campaigns have come in cycles. The '30s, the '40s, the '50s, the '60s -- whenever they are looking for scape goats to explain all the social and economic problems, unemployment. It has continued straight through the '90s.
For example with Operation Wetback in the '60s the debate started again. Back then in the '60s and '70s the INS Commissioner, Chapman, an ex-Marine Commandant , began publicizing "massive invasions of illegals into the United States, estimated at 8 to 12 million in the U.S." He called on Congress for 200,000 troops for border patrol, equal to the amount of troops in the U.S., to be put on the border. This debate led to the Immigration Reform and Control Act in 1986 - Simpson-Mazzoli.
And here we go again in the 1990s , the same thing. Every ten years. And the Mexicans are the scape goats. Where it's all going to end? Who knows? We may end up with 10,000 troops on the border, on top of the 10,000 Border Patrol agents. On top of the local police. We could very well see occupied cities at the beginning of the next century.
Triple Fences Along the Border
In Motion Magazine: Could you talk about the triple fence they are building?
Roberto Martinez: They call it the Duncan Hunter Memorial Fence. It's an ugly sight. If you go down in front of the levee it's a pretty ugly site. It's worse than the Berlin Wall in some respects. I've seen it publicized that Duncan calls the border a DMZ zone. He compares it to the DMZ zone between north and south Korea.
In Motion Magazine: Who is he?
Roberto Martinez: Duncan Hunter, a Congressman from here in San Diego, a republican. He's probably been the most vocal for militarization of the border, triple fences. It's basically to discourage people from crossing the fence. At this point I think it's only going to be on the west side of the port-of-entry, from the levee to the ocean. It'll be about four or five miles long. That's all they've got money for, $20 million. It was incorporated in the last federal immigration bill.
In Motion Magazine: Can it work? If the border is that long and the fence is only 5 miles?
Roberto Martinez: Well, a 5 mile fence on a 2,000 mile border? There's no fences in the east county. People are still going to cross. But it's going to create more human rights problems in terms of more deaths as more people cross further east through the mountains and the desert..
We have a study that just came out collaborated on by the American Friends Service Committee and the University of Houston. It shows how many people have died crossing the border from 1993 to 1996. This study shows that 1185 people died crossing the border in that period. Over 500 in Texas alone, by drowning and desert. In California 300 to 400. The rest in Arizona and New Mexico. It's a very tragic situation on the border. It's going to get worse with the military operations and the triple fencing.
Human Rights
In Motion Magazine: What is the situation here with human rights work?
The American Friends Service Commitee / U.S. Mexico Border Program is a national project with offices all along the border, but ours is the only full-time human rights office.
Human rights is developing around the world. But human rights work is still very dangerous. I have received death threats from the Ku Klux Klan, the White Aryan Resistance, from the militia. I've had my office broken into. I've had to move my office twice, my home once.
Recently in Mexico several human rights people were executed. People are disappearing around Mexico, Columbia. The more you protest, the more visible you are, the more likely you are going to be threatened. I don't worry about myself as much as I do my staff and my family.
When you criticize people like the Border Patrol and the police ... . Even among themselves they are not safe. I have cases right now where police and Border Patrol have criticized their administrators or the way people are treated and they get death threats even among their own selves. I've gotten calls from within the Border Patrol and the INS.
I'll give you a case. Last year, five undocumented workers crossed the border and were on the border in the Tijuana River. Six Border Patrol agents caught up to them and were throwing rocks at them in the water. One of them hit a migrant in the head and knocked him out. The other migrants dragged him out of the water and they reported it to the police. The police came and reported it to the Border Patrol administrators in Chula Vista. They questioned the five Border Patrol agents and the rookie, the lowest one in seniority, turned in the others. He said "yes they did it." His life was a living hell. They slashed his tires, they wrecked his car, put dead rats in his locker, wrote death threats. This was in the paper. The chief Border Patrol agent had to transfer him to the Canadian border for his own protection. So you can imagine. If they will do that to one of their own ... what will they do to migrants?
But I do want to say that this anti-immigration legislation and campaign has really galvinized the Latino community. We're a lot more organizaed and unified nationwide, statewide, locally, to fight this campaign against immigrants.
Published in In Motion Magazine September 14, 1997.
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Part 4 - From Taking Lands to Building Triple Fences
