The History of the Border

Draw

​Draw a map of the neighborhood around your school or home. Examine its borders or boundaries.

​Border Activity

How did you decide where to stop drawing? What marks these borders (fences, roads, rivers, parking lots)? What lies beyond these borders? How is it different from what is inside your mapped area? How is it the same? Do you need to cross these borders? What happens when you cross them?

​The map provides a closer look at the geographical region of the U.S.-Mexico border. How many states in the United States does the border run along? How many states in Mexico does the border run along? What geographic features help to define the border? If you are not from the border region, obtain a map of your home city, county, or state. Discuss the borders of your own region.

Identity Definition​

• the fact of being who or what a person or thing is.​

• ​who someone is : the name of a person

  the qualities, beliefs, etc., that make a particular person or group different from others

Poll

Based on your own experience, do you agree or disagree with the meaning in the dictionary? Do the dictionary definitions cover situations that you have experienced? What would you add?

• Yes

• No

• Undecided

​Enrique Lamadrid Statement

​We continually negotiate our identity, every day of our lives, every time we open our mouths. My name is Enrique Lamadrid. I’m from New Mexico. Every time I open my mouth, I have to decide whether to talk to people in Spanish or English. When I was growing up, to some people I was Rick, to other people Enrique. It’s a dual identity, but it’s not cut in the middle. Both of these ends meet, and there is a unity to all of that. All of us have experienced that, I’m sure

Open Ended

What does the word identity mean? Write down several ideas. Can you think of other words that might come from the same root (i.e., identify, identification, identical)?

The History of the Border

Make sure you are actively participating. Failure to participate will lead to a 0 on the assignment.

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​You will be able to get extra credit for reading out loud!

The Border

Donald Trump’s decision to send National Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexican border is only the latest in a long history of U.S. militarization of its national boundaries.  

In fact, America’s southern border—which has shifted multiple times with U.S. expansion—was arguably formed through violence. Texas and American militias used force to establish that border in the 1830s and 1840s, capturing modern-day states like California, Texas, and all of the American southwest from Mexico.

Multiple Choice

Was Donal Trump the first to send Border Control?

• Yes

• No

Policing

In the decades after, the both official and vigilante groups violently regulated the movement of people across that border—be they Native Americans, escaped slaves, Chinese immigrants, or Mexicans.

This policing wasn’t always aimed at keeping immigrants out. The Native Americans forced out of Texas had lived either in the area or further east before European colonizers violently pushed them West. Enslaved people from Africa were another group of non-immigrants whose movements vigilantes tried to police. Slave catchers who monitored the border weren’t trying to keep anyone out—they were trying to keep enslaved people in.

Multiple Select

Which of the following statements are true about policing the border?

(click all that apply)

• The policing was trying to keep Mexicans from coming into the country

• The policing was trying to keep slaves from escaping

• The policing was trying to prevent all immigrants from leaving.

• The policing was to keep European immigrants out of the country

Forming the New Border

To maintain the borders of their new country, these self-declared Texans formed the Texas Rangers, also known as the Frontier Battalion. According to Miguel A. Levario, a history professor at Texas Tech, they were an early example of a group that used violence to maintain the border between Texas and Mexico. At that time, he says, “they were mostly responsible for removing Native Americans from west Texas.”

After the Mexican-American War, the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo transferred 55 percent of Mexico’s territory to the United States, establishing (more or less) the same borders that the countries have today.

Multiple Choice

What organization gets formed to help with the Border after Texas gets it's independence from Mexico?

• National Guard

• Texas Rangers

• The Brown Bureus

• Buffalo Soldiers

Multiple Choice

What event changed the US border by taking 55% of Mexico's Land?

• Texas Revolution

• WWI

• WWII

• Mexican American War

China & Mexico

The first federal law governing which immigrants could and couldn’t enter the U.S. was the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.

“You had to be part of [these] very limited exempt classes, which included people like students, merchants, the merchants’ family members, diplomats,” she says. Chinese immigrants who didn’t meet these standards began to enter the country Canada and Mexico; a type of U.S. immigration that was, for the first time, “illegal.”

These immigrants began to enter mostly through Mexico in the late 1880s, after Canada passed a tax on Chinese immigration. And because of this, the U.S. began to focus more heavily on the U.S.-Mexican border as a place where immigration officials needed to screen people to determine if they could enter.

Multiple Select

For Chinese immigrants, who do you have to be in order to enter the country?

(Click all that apply)

• Student

• Merchant

• Diplomats

• Farmers

• Family of Merchants

Multiple Choice

Which group was illegally crossing the Mexican border to get into the US?

• Mexicans

• Colombians

• Chinese

• Guatemala

Targeting Mexicans

Even with this increased attention to the border, there was no concerted effort to keep Mexicans from migrating to the United States until the Mexican Revolution broke out in the 1910s. At first, U.S. armed forces monitored the border to keep violent revolutionary conflicts from spilling over the border. However, once Mexicans began to escape the conflict by immigrating to the U.S. in large numbers, other militias formed along the border to keep them out—including the Texas Rangers, who were still an organized military force.

Multiple Choice

What event happened that changed border control

• Mexican Revolution

• American Revolution

• Mexican American War

• The Great War

Official Border Control

In 1924, the U.S. established the Border Patrol, a federally armed force specifically dedicated to policing the border year-round. Initially, these officers did more policing of Prohibition-era bootleggers than Mexican immigrants. But like the forces of the 1910s, its main goal was to impede Mexican immigration, as well as unauthorized immigration from Asian countries. 

In “almost exactly 100 years,” Levario notes, “our approach to border security with Mexico has not really evolved.” But it has expanded greatly. Policing America’s borders is now a $4 billion per-year enterprise, requiring some 20,000 Border Patrol agents.

Open Ended

How has border control and it's identity changed over the year?

5 word minimum