Abstract
U.S. political discourse has framed immigration from Mexico and Central America as a security threat, driven by political, economic, and racial motivations. American presidential administrations are able to further racialize and criminalize immigrants coming from the Global South through rhetoric in legislation and executive orders that frame migration as a national security issue. Administrations focus on this narrative to indicate that the security threat is harmful to the interests of Americans. Although few migrants do present security threats to the US, the rhetoric used by various presidential administrations generalize these populations as a political tactic to further control and militarize the border. This narrative is known in scholarly literature and political discourse as the securitization theory. Based on the securitization theory, this article analyzes the use of a militarized global separation apparatus to justify specifically excluding Mexican and Central American immigrants from the category of ‘vulnerable’ displaced people. Specifically, this project answers to what extent the Clinton, Bush, and Trump presidential administrations and their respective Congresses criminalized Mexican and Central American immigration through their border policies and executive orders. To answer this question, one immigration policy from each of these administrations will be examined to further conceptualize how they used criminalized political rhetoric to justify their securitized and militarized border patrol enforcement policies on the Southern border.
Recommended Citation
Lynch, Madeline
(2025)
"The Success of the Clinton, Bush, and Trump Administrations In Securitizing Mexican and Central American Immigration Through Border Policies,"
The Compass: Vol. 1:
Iss.
12, Article 2.
Available at:
https://scholarworks.arcadia.edu/thecompass/vol1/iss12/2
Included in
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