Chapter 2: The Talk in La Línea: Transborder Latinx Youths' Protective Pedagogies

Research on the Mexico–US border and the long-lasting impacts on the communities that cross it has centered on the accounts of undocumented migrants, asylum seekers, or legally liminal migrants (Andreas, 2009; Balaguera, 2018; Inda, 2006; Jusionyte, 2018; Nevins, 2008; Slack et al., 2018). Scholars have revealed the deeply traumatic, emotional, and injurious consequences of immigrants’ contact with the US immigration regime, which extends to their interactions with interior immigration enforcement (De León, 2015; Martinez-Aranda, 2022; Menjívar & Abrego, 2012; Ramirez, 2024). However, less research has examined the complexities arising from quotidian, frequent interactions with state agents at land ports of entry, which are the legal points of entry along the Mexico–US border (Avalos, 2022; Castañeda Pérez, 2020; Chávez, 2016; Lugo, 2008). Every year, more than 160 million people with legal crossing documentation enter the United States through land ports of entry along the Mexico–US border. Transborder commuters are US citizens and non-citizens who reside in Mexican border cities but routinely cross the border to the United States for work, education, commerce, among other purposes. An important component of transborder commuting involves crossing one of the busiest, most militarized, and policed borders in the Western Hemisphere, thereby coming into contact with US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers on a regular basis, the state agents tasked with enforcing immigration laws and border security (Heyman, 2009). Through these quotidian state encounters, transborder commuters are exposed to inspections, apprehensions, interrogations, and removal proceedings, which are frequently carried out with minimal legal oversight. These actions are typically enacted at the discretion of CBP officers, who often make subjective decisions to scrutinize border entrants based on racialized and nativist beliefs of Latinx communities as inherently suspicious and criminal (Castañeda Pérez, 2020; Dorsey & Díaz-Barriga, 2015; Flores-Gonzalez et al., 2024; Núñez, 2020).