An interdisciplinary group of borderlands scholars provide the first expansive comparative history of the way North American borders have been policed—and transgressed—over the past two centuries.

An extensive history examining how North American nations have tried (and often failed) to police their borders, Border Policing presents diverse scholarly perspectives on attempts to regulate people and goods at borders, as well as on the ways that individuals and communities have navigated, contested, and evaded such regulation.

The contributors explore these power dynamics though a series of case studies on subjects ranging from competing allegiances at the northeastern border during the War of 1812 to struggles over Indian sovereignty and from the effects of the Mexican Revolution to the experiences of smugglers along the Rio Grande during Prohibition. Later chapters stretch into the twenty-first century and consider immigration enforcement, drug trafficking, and representations of border policing in reality television. Together, the contributors explore the powerful ways in which federal authorities impose political agendas on borderlands and how local border residents and regions interact with, and push back against, such agendas. With its rich mix of political, legal, social, and cultural history, this collection provides new insights into the distinct realities that have shaped the international borders of North America.

Holly M. Karibo is an associate professor of history at Oklahoma State University. She is the author of the award-winning book Sin City North: Sex, Drugs, and Citizenship in the Detroit-Windsor Borderland.

George T. Díaz is an associate professor of history at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley and the author of the award-winning book Border Contraband: A History of Smuggling across the Rio Grande.

• Abbreviations
• Foreword (Elaine Carey and Andrae Marak)
• Introduction (Holly M. Karibo and George T. Díaz)
• Part I: Emerging Borders: Policing Boundaries in the Nineteenth Century
  • 1. Defining the Acceptable Bounds of Deception: Policing the Prize Game in the Northeastern Borderlands, 1812–1815 (Edward J. Martin)
  • 2. Dominance in an Imagined Border: Santos Benavides’s and Santiago Vidaurri’s Policing of the Rio Grande (Luis Alberto García)
  • 3. A Border without Guards: First Nations and the Enforcement of National Space (Benjamin Hoy)
• Part II: Solidifying States, Testing Boundaries
  • 4. To Protect and Police: Mexican Consuls in the American Borderlands at the Turn of the Twentieth Century (María de Jesús Duarte)
  • 5. Enforcing US Immigration Laws at the US-Canada Border, 1891–1940: The View from Detroit (Thomas A. Klug)
  • 6. The Roots of the Border Patrol: Line Riders and the Bureaucratization of US-Mexican Border Policing, 1894–1924 (James Dupree)
  • 7. Home Guard: State-Sponsored Vigilantism and Violence in the Texas-Mexico Borderlands (Miguel A. Levario)
• Part III: Building and Resisting a Prohibition Apparatus
  • 8. Policing Peyote Country in the Early Twentieth Century (Lisa D. Barnett)
  • 9. Skirting the Law: Female Liquor Smugglers and Sellers and Policing through Prohibition along the Rio Grande (Carolina Monsiváis)
  • 10. Building a Villain/Hero Binary: Public Rhetoric, Smuggling, and Enforcement in the Postwar Borderlands (Holly M. Karibo)
• Part IV: Expanding State Authority and Its Challenges
  • 11. Diversity and the Border Patrol: Race and Gender in Immigration Enforcement along the US-Mexico Border (Jensen Branscombe)
  • 12. Refusing Borders: Haudenosaunee Resistance, Tobacco, and Settler-Colonial Borderlands (Devin Clancy and Tyler Chartrand)
  • 13. Border Surge: Drug Trafficking and Escalating Police Power on the Rio Grande (Santiago Ivan Guerra)
  • 14. Bordering Reality: Dramatizing Policing the North American Borderlands in Reality Television (Anita Huizar-Hernández)
• Afterword: Within and Without Borders (Karl Jacoby)
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• Contributors
• Index