Operation Gatekeeper: The Rise of the “Illegal Alien” and the Remaking of the U.S. – Mexico Boundary

By 1994 American anti-immigration rhetoric had reached a fevered pitch, and throngs of migrants entered the U.S. nightly. In response, the INS launched "Operation Gatekeeper," the centerpiece of the Clinton administration's unprecedented effort to "regain control" of our borders. In Operation Gatekeeper, Joseph Nevins details the administration's dramatic overhaul of the San Diego-Tijauna border-the busiest land crossing in the world-adding miles of new fence and hundreds of trained agents.

About the Author :
Joseph Nevins is an accomplished journalist whose work has appeared in The Nation, The Progressive, The WashingtonPost, and The Los Angeles Times. He currently teaches at the University of California, Berkeley Mike Davis is a contributing editor to The Nation and Professor of History at SUNY Stony Brook. He is the author of four books, including Magical Urbanism and City of Quartz.

Review :
"...an exaustively researched and well-organized compendium of information on the history and making of the Mexico-U.S boundary...The book's strength lies in its conceptual emphasis on immigration policy as a political-economic process rooted in deep-seated sociocultural agendas that materialize across time and space. [This] book will be helpful in bringing the illegal immigration debate into the larger discourse about globalization and the post 9/11 future of the Mexico-U.S border." -- International Migration Review, Vol. 36, No. 4 Winter 2002 "Nevins' research is highly original...skillfully introduces academic material within a compelling narrative. The ideas are fresh, the scholarly debates are fully engaged, and the storyline never lags." -- Annals of the Association of American Geographers "Bill Clinton launched Operation Gatekeeper in 1994...Nevins demonstrates how this politcally motivated policy failed to significantly reduce unauthorized border crossings." -- Foreign Affairs "...a richly descriptive historical volume about the US Border Patrol strategy to enhance the enforcement of boundaries since 1994." -- Choice "Nevins meticulously deconstructs this political, and above all, human phenomenon in a thorough and penetrating text. Operation Gatekeeper could not be more timely: literally, there are lives on the line." -- Rubén Martínez, author of Crossing Over: A Mexican Family onthe Migrant Trail "Operation Gatekeeper gives a forensic-like analysis of the U.S.-Mexican border, and efforts to control the human resources on both its sides. Indispensable to scholars and anyone wanting to know why the border is still contested ground." -- Rodolfo F. Acuña, author of Occupied America: A History of Chicanos "An important and timely book. Not only does Nevins provide a convincing indictment of U.S. policy on the Mexican border (a policy that has increased deaths, driven down wages, and shown the U.S. to be anything but the open, tolerant society is likes to proclaim itself to be). He also provides a rich account of the historical and contemporary context that has made OperationGatekeeper central to rising American Nationalism." -- Don Mitchell, author of The Lie of the Land: MigrantWorkers and the California Landscape "Add[s] significantly to the literature on Mexican migration... free of the uninformed claims and inflammatory language that characterizes so much of the literature on this topic." -- Political Science Quarterly "Well-researched and important." -- American Historical Review