It would be bad enough if this scene, captured on video and shown recently on John Stossel’s Fox News special “Policing America,” had happened right at a U.S. border. But it happened far from the border. The U.S. government regards a large part of the country as close enough to a border or coast to justify treating individuals — citizens or not — as though they have no rights whatsoever. People have been beaten and had their personal belongings seized — without warrant or charge — just because they resented being treated like criminals. This should alarm anyone who thinks America is the “land of the free.”

“Imagine the once thin borderline of the American past as an ever-thickening band, now extending 100 miles inland around the United States — along the 2,000-mile southern border, the 4,000-mile northern border, and both coasts — and you will be able to visualize how vast the CBP’s [Customs and Border Protection] jurisdiction has become,” writes Todd Miller, author of Border Patrol Nation: Dispatches from the Front Lines of Homeland Security, at TomDispatch.com. “This ‘border’ region now covers places where two-thirds of the U.S. population (197.4 million people) live.… The ‘border’ has by now devoured the full states of Maine and Florida and much of Michigan.”

The ACLU calls the expanded borderlands, in which two out of three Americans live, a “Constitution-free zone.” Specifically, the Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable search and seizure appears to have been suspended.

This area is dotted with checkpoints at which anyone can be stopped, questioned, asked to exit his car, searched, and required to surrender personal belongings. Miller writes,

In these vast domains, Homeland Security authorities can institute roving patrols with broad, extra-constitutional powers backed by national security, immigration enforcement, and drug interdiction mandates. There, the Border Patrol can set up traffic checkpoints and fly surveillance drones overhead with high-powered cameras and radar that can track your movements. Within 25 miles of the international boundary, CBP agents can enter a person’s private property without a warrant. In these areas, the Homeland Security state is anything but abstract. On any given day, it can stand between you and the grocery store.

It doesn’t matter if you are an American citizen merely going about your business. If you live in a borderland, you can be stopped along an east-west route and have your daily routine interrupted. Yet, it should be pointed out, you are more likely to be harassed or arrested if you aren’t white.

The harassment has prompted people around Arivaca, Arizona, 25 miles from the Mexican border, to demand that a local checkpoint be removed. According to Miller, people

were fed up with the obligatory stop between their small town and the dentist or the nearest bookstore. They were tired of Homeland Security agents scrutinizing their children on their way to school. So they began to organize.

In late 2013, they demanded that the federal government remove the checkpoint. It was, they wrote in a petition, an ugly artifact of border militarization; it had, they added, a negative economic impact on residents and infringed on people’s constitutional rights. At the beginning of 2014, small groups from People Helping People in the Border Zone — the name of their organization — started monitoring the checkpoint several days a week.

Miller quotes James Lyall, an attorney with ACLU Arizona, as saying that “Border Patrol checkpoints and roving patrols are the physical world equivalent of the National Security Agency. They involve a massive dragnet and stopping and monitoring of innocent Americans without any suspicion of wrongdoing by increasingly abusive and unaccountable federal government agents.”

This intolerable condition should outrage every American. Have we been reduced to a society of scared children who would rather have government agents harassing us wherever we go than take our chances with freedom?

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This article was originally published at the Future of Freedom Foundation.

Few aspects of the modern state are more irritating than the control of borders. Our movements are circumscribed by the nationalistic regimentation of migration and travel. This makes it more difficult to vote with your feet. One polity may be particularly oppressive, but the entrance requirements of another can be rather repressive too. This renders it more difficult to escape unjust conditions and reside in a more just area.

I am only here on a visit, but I could very well be migrating to another country sometime in the future. It will be a nightmare to go through this again with different immigration authorities. One of my fears relates to how they will treat my computer and other valuable items. I could be stopped for my political activites too. It would be the restriction of my liberty based upon a political disagreement.

Nation-states have other major disadvantages, but the restriction of movement is definitely one of the worst. A basic human right includes the liberty to move about without arbitrary restrictions on said movement. What could be more arbitrary than imaginary lines drawn in the sand by military and police power? Not much! All such borders are political fictions that benefit ruling classes.

Border restrictions especially hurt lower class people who need to get to a better locality. Such individuals are out to create a better life for themselves and deserve our moral support. They are the ones with the least amount of resources to fight immigration laws. The laws are thus biased against lower income people. They are the most restricted and affected by them.

Strong border controls allow rulers to pick and choose who enters a given territory. It priliveges some people at the expense of others. The individuals who have political connections are at an advantage relative to those who don’t. A base of support can thus be created and cultivated amongst the immigrant populace. Let’s work to open the borders and end nation-states.

Parlando con americani, ho notato che molti di loro non hanno simpatia per i detenuti. Appongono agli immigrati il marchio di “illegali” e usano ciò come scusa per ignorare la violazione dei loro diritti umani. Gli esseri umani non possono essere “illegali”. Chiamarli così significa disumanizzare i migranti con una tossica ideologia razzista. Le azioni possono essere pericolose, o anche criminali. Ma cosa c’è di criminale nel fatto di migrare in sé? I migranti senza documenti sono solo persone che vanno a vivere all’estero, per lavorare, mantenere le proprie famiglie e intraprendere pacificamente azioni commerciali e di collaborazione con altre persone. Questo non è un crimine. Propriamente intese, le migrazioni contribuiscono alla fioritura di una società libera. Aggiungete a ciò che la maggioranza degli immigrati nei centri di detenzione non è stata condannata per alcun crimine.

È chi imprigiona e opprime gli immigrati che commette una serie di crimini nel nome dell’autorità statale. Prendete, ad esempio, l’idea di alimentare a forza gli scioperanti della fame. L’alimentazione forzata è universalmente considerata una tortura; è stata giudicata crudele e inumana da associazioni come la Croce Rossa Internazionale, l’Associazione Medica Mondiale e le Nazioni Unite. Per definizione, alimentare a forza chi fa lo sciopero della fame significa violarne brutalmente e dolorosamente la libertà corporale al fine di sopprimerne la capacità di espressione politica.

Ma la criminalità dei centri di detenzione degli immigrati non finisce qui. C’è anche il fatto che gli immigrati vengono trattenuti indefinitamente per cosiddette “procedure civili”. Non essendo accusati di un crimine, non gli si riconosce il diritto ad essere rappresentati legalmente. Nel 2010, l’84% di loro era privo di avvocato. Questa non è giustizia. È un rapimento aprocessuale ammantato di legalità.

Spesso questa detenzione priva di accusa, giudizio e rappresentanza legale avviene per profitto. Il Northwest Detention Center, dove avviene lo sciopero della fame, è gestito in regime di “privatizzazione” dal Gruppo GEO. Come altri profittatori carcerari, quale la Corrections Corporation of America e la Management and Training Corporation, il Gruppo GEO estrae profitti osceni dal governo per tenere esseri umani in gabbia. Invece di fornire beni e servizi a chi vorrebbe comprarli, i profittatori carcerari offrono violenza di stato in cambio di denaro estorto alla popolazione attraverso l’obbligo delle tasse.

In tutto il mondo, i governi usano le frontiere come scusa per violare i diritti e fare violenza criminale. Il Canada, ad esempio, mette dentro gli immigrati per un tempo indefinito semplicemente perché sono immigrati. I detenuti sono spesso tenuti in isolamento, riconosciuto a livello internazionale come una forma di tortura.

Lo stato di Israele manda i rifugiati africani a un enorme campo di prigionia. Questi rifugiati sono soggetti a violenza e discriminazione aggressiva per via del clima di razzismo paranoico che porta a temere gli africani come “infiltrati” in grado di minare la demografia ebraica di Israele.

In tutto il mondo gli stati rapiscono, ingabbiano, torturano e deportano migranti e rifugiati, e la brutalità delle restrizioni all’immigrazione non finisce qui. Sotto governi oppressivi, le frontiere servono anche a tenere intrappolati gli abitanti, impedendo loro di scappare a violente atrocità. Molti rifugiati lesbiche, gay, bisessuali e transgender, ad esempio, sfuggono alla repressione omofobica dello stato russo solo per ritrovarsi intrappolati nella tagliola della burocrazia immigratoria.

La crisi ucraina è similmente esacerbata da restrizioni all’immigrazione, che intrappolano gli ucraini nel fuoco incrociato del conflitto. Come ha fatto notare recentemente Sheldon Richman,

“Gli ucraini che, temporaneamente o permanentemente, vogliono uscire dal loro ambiente pericoloso, dovrebbero essere liberi di trasferirsi negli Stati Uniti. Mettiamola così: Come osiamo noi americani confinare gli ucraini in una situazione da cui vorrebbero disperatamente scappare?”

Gli immigrati sono spesso accusati di comportamenti criminali. Ma in fatto di politica immigratoria il vero crimine è quello perpetrato dallo stato. Lo stato rapisce, tortura e depreda, e tutto per difendere delle linee tracciate su delle mappe. E così dà la possibilità ad altri stati di opprimere brutalmente i soggetti intrappolati. Tutti gli stati sono attività criminali, e tra le armi più pericolose di cui dispongono ci sono le frontiere.

Traduzione di Enrico Sanna.

When I talk to many Americans about this hunger strike, many lack sympathy with the detainees. They brand immigrants as “illegals” and use this as an excuse to ignore violations of their human rights.  Human beings cannot be “illegal.” To refer to them as such dehumanizes migrants through a toxic and racist ideology.  A person’s actions may be harmful, or even criminal. But what is criminal about migrating? All undocumented immigrants have done is travel to a new country to live, work, support their families and engage in peaceful commerce and association with people. That’s no crime. Properly understood, migration is part of what makes a free society flourish. Moreover, the majority of immigrants held in detention centers have not been convicted of any crime.

Meanwhile, those who detain and repress immigrants engage in a litany of violent crimes enabled through state authority. Take their plot to force feed the hunger strikers, for example. Force feeding is widely considered torture and has been deemed cruel and inhumane by organizations including International Red Cross, the World Medical Association and the United Nations. By definition, force feeding hunger strikers involves brutally and painfully violating their bodily autonomy in order to suppress their political speech.

But the criminality of the immigration detention system doesn’t end there. Immigrant detainees are held indefinitely in supposedly “civil proceedings.” They are not charged with crimes nor are their rights to legal representation honored. As of 2010, 84% of detained immigrants were not represented by a lawyer. This is not justice. It is due-process-free kidnapping under the color of law.

This detention without charges, trial, or representation often occurs for profit. The Northwest Detention Center, where the hunger strikers are held, is operated in “privatized” fashion by GEO Group. Like other prison profiteers such as Corrections Corporation of America and the Management and Training Corporation, GEO Group extracts obscene profits from government for locking human beings in cages. Rather than providing goods and services people want to buy, prison profiteers engage in state violence in exchange for money plundered from the people through coercive taxation.

Throughout the world, governments use borders as an excuse to violate rights and engage in criminal violence. For example, the Canadian state cages immigrants indefinitely simply for being immigrants. They frequently hold these detainees in solitary confinement, which is internationally recognized as a form of torture.

Meanwhile, the Israeli state has been sending African refugees to a massive prison camp. These refugees are subjected to violence and rampant discrimination motivated by a climate of paranoid racism in which Africans are feared as “infiltrators” that may undermine the Jewish demographics of Israel.

States throughout the world kidnap, cage, torture, and deport migrants and refugees, but the brutality of immigration restrictions doesn’t end there. Borders trap people under oppressive governments, preventing them from fleeing violent atrocities. For example, many lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender refugees flee the Russian state’s homophobic repression only to find themselves ensnared in the coercive clutches of immigration bureaucracies.

Similarly, the crisis in Ukraine is exacerbated by immigration restrictions, which trap Ukrainians in the crossfire of the conflict. As Sheldon Richman recently put it,

“Ukrainians who want to get out of their dicey neighborhood, whether permanently or temporarily, should be free to move to the United States. Look at it this way: How dare we Americans confine Ukrainians to a condition they might desperately wish to escape?”

Immigrants are often smeared with accusations of criminality. But the real crimes in immigration policy are perpetrated by states. States kidnap, torture, and plunder in order to enforce lines drawn on maps. And in doing so, they enable other states to brutally repress trapped subjects. All states are criminal enterprises, and borders are among their most dangerous weapons.

Translations for this article:

• Portuguese, Como as fronteiras possibilitam os crimes estatais.
• Italian, Le Frontiere Incoraggiano la Criminalità di Stato.

This money will be used to create what John McCain calls “the most militarized border since the fall of the Berlin Wall,” staffed by at least 38,405 Border Patrol agents. That’s a larger force than George W. Bush had stationed in Afghanistan when he left office. No wonder it’s been called the “border surge.”

Those agents will be armed with billions of dollars worth of equipment from America’s leading war profiteers. According to the Washington Post, the bill demands “among other items, six Northrop Grumman airborne radar systems that cost $9.3 million each, 15 Sikorsky Black Hawk helicopters that average more than $17 million apiece, and eight light enforcement helicopters made by American Eurocopter that sell for about $3 million each.” As usual, militarization means obscene corporate profits at taxpayer expense.

Moreover, increasing “border security” funding means expanding an agency whose members routinely violate civil liberties and have even committed murder. John Carlos Frey has documented 10 instances where Border Patrol agents have shot innocent Mexicans on Mexican soil. In one case, 16-year old José Antonio Rodríguez was shot eight times when he went to buy a hot dog in the border town of Nogales.  In another incident, Frey explains, “a husband and wife were celebrating the birthday of their two daughters. The husband got shot and killed, shot in the heart.” This is what Border Patrol agents do to peaceful people who haven’t even crossed the border.

When immigrants cross the border, they are subjected to further violence. In 2010, 42-year old migrant worker Anastasio Rojas was tased and beaten to death by a dozen officers. These sorts of murders are rarely prosecuted. And while such overt murders are relatively rare, the Border Patrol has caused still more deaths indirectly. Migrants travel across dangerous deserts, and often die of heat exhaustion and dehydration. Activists with No More Deaths regularly leave water on travel routes to try to save immigrants’ lives. Border Patrol agents have slashed open, kicked over, and dumped out these water bottles, effectively condemning immigrants to suffering and death.

The Senate bill would spend billions of dollars to support war profiteers and murderers, and for what? The stated goal is to “secure the border.” This is an utterly unjustifiable goal. The border between the US and Mexico was drawn through violent conquest and the theft of indigenous lands. Ultimately, border security is not a protection of property rights, but a violation of property rights. If you want to invite a friend from Mexico to work with you or visit you on your own personal property, the state’s border agents use force to prevent that.

Moreover, “securing the border” particularly means hurting indigenous people. The Tohono O’oodham Nation has members on both sides of the border. As Eileen Luna-Firebaugh explains, “Those who continue to use traditional border crossing areas are in danger of being shot by U.S. Border Patrol personnel, U.S. military, or vigilante citizen groups. For a young Texas shepherd named Ezequiel, U.S. military personnel who opened fire while he tended his goatherd along the Texas-Mexico border cut life short.” Should indigenous communities be split apart by militarized violence so that an imaginary line in the sand can be “secure?”

Ultimately, “border security” means violence and brutality. It means financing murderers and war profiteers. It means impeding freedom of movement, violating individual rights, and dividing indigenous communities. Let’s stop this violence. Instead of securing the border, let’s abolish it.

What is the setting for this story? It could be any number of places, but in this case it’s Buffalo, New York in 2010.

The New York Times recently published an article about United States Border Patrol sweeps on trains and buses traveling near, but not crossing, the US-Canada border (“Border Sweeps in North Reach Miles Into U.S.” August 29, 2010). Agents board trains, question people about their citizenship status, and detain those who do not produce documents that satisfy them. Those without the bureaucratically-correct papers can be placed in administrative detention, strip searched, sent to county jail, transferred to unmarked detention facilities around the country without notice to their families, and eventually see a judge weeks later.

In theory, passengers can decline to answer questions, but it is not clear how much agents will let the rules get in the way of exercising power.

Readers who are unfamiliar with immigration detention procedure should read about the secretive nature of detention centers not designed for long-term human habitation, as described in the Nation article “America’s Secret ICE Castles.” People unfortunate enough to not be able to get their government forms in order may face the pervasive abuse noted in the New Jersey Civil Rights Defense Committee report “Voices of the Disappeared.”

The “papers, please” checkpoint image is frequently invoked to convey the idea of a police state or totalitarian regime. It’s a visible reminder of how far government will go to keep things under control, and that government considers all the people within its grasp to be its things. The lasting effects of producing documents at any time to prove to state agents that you are worthy to draw breath on their turf are real.

Social control is of course big business. Not only is there an entire offshoot of the military-industrial complex based on domestic control, but the individuals who administer government programs certainly profit when they expand their own power. The Rochester Border Patrol unit has grown tremendously as a result of its papers-please arrests on trains and buses.

There is a cost that cuts deeper than tax dollars. The costs to freedom affect everybody. Freedom of action is limited when freedom of association is usurped. Precedents are set for law enforcement and the power they come to assume over the rest of us. When targeted individuals are pressured out of the above-ground economy and avoid mass transit by pooling transportation resources, the state will counter by demanding new powers to monitor more areas of life.

The long-term solution requires raising the demand for freedom and the capability to meet that demand. The extent to which liberty is valued is the extent to which society operates for the benefit of all individuals who don’t value power above all else.