Gulag America

By James Moore

After we moved away from the Texas-Mexico border, I still spent a great deal of time down there as a journalist and visiting with friends. Generally, the border was my beat, which meant passing through check points operated by the federal government, and not just when crossing the Rio Grande. The U.S. Border Patrol has a special authority, authorized by Congress, to check travelers coming north away from Mexico. The law has been manifested in fixed traffic stops inside a 100-mile reach of the border. They are mostly unavoidable, too. Vehicles are diverted into a cue and drivers are asked their citizenship, and often, where they have been prior to their arrival at the inspection.

This is not the government’s business in a free country.

My view has long been that these checks ought to be conducted at the international crossing point, and leave alone those of us already within our borders. Stop illegal entry at la frontera, and do not inconvenience citizens with long, slow traffic backups in an effort to catch the rare drug trafficker or human smuggler. The technology and manpower exist to achieve those goals at ports of entry and with the thousands of agents traveling and scanning the borderline. In fact, between January and March 2025, approximately 91% of all confiscated fentanyl was intercepted at official ports of entry, primarily from vehicles driven by American citizens, not Mexican smugglers, according to U.S. Customs data. About 88% of all fentanyl and various other drugs seized by Customs were at ports of entry between 2015 and 2024. Desperate immigrants with faded nylon backpacks are rarely mules hauling contrabando.

Every time I was delayed waiting in line at the checkpoints, I grew increasingly bothered by the fragile legal framework that authorized this invasion of privacy and individual rights. Research showed that agents and officers were empowered by federal courts to pull someone over at locations away from checkpoints using only “reasonable suspicion,” a subjective judgment that also feels like an abridgment of rights, and creates wrongs. Since March of 2021, when the governor of Texas began his multi-billion dollar boondoggle “Operation Lone Star,” 106 people have died and 301 have been injured in high-speed police chases. Law enforcement claims the pursuits were connected to human smuggling. In Zavala County on the Rio Grande, eight people died in a crash, four believed to be migrants, and two bystanders, including a grandmother and her 9-year-old granddaughter out for ice cream.

Increased troopers and soldiers along the border have made everyone a suspect; especially if their skin is brown or they look even slightly Mexican. The same is true at Border Patrol checkpoints within the 100-mile limit. A 1976 U.S. Supreme Court ruling allowed the agency to stop vehicles without individualized suspicion at fixed checkpoints. No probable cause is needed, according to the U.S. v. Martinez-Fuerte judgment. There is little distinction between what happens at a check point and when police decide to pull over a vehicle just because the driver looks Mexican. The process, as everyone knows, is called “profiling.” If you approach the check point as a white person, the odds of you being detained are minimal. Traveling north while brown is more problematic.

On a drive up from McAllen several years ago, I was in a hurry and particularly peeved by the long line of cars and trucks in front of me at the checkpoint outside Falfurrias, which is about 80 miles north of the Rio Grande on U.S. Highway 281. I knew there were some Constitutional constraints on the agents but was uncertain what might happen if I refused to respond their questions. A friendly young man in the drab green uniform approached as I rolled down my window.

“Good day, sir. American citizen?”

I looked at him and smiled, but said nothing.

“Sir? Are you a U.S. citizen?”

He repeated the question one more time, and I finally said, “I’m not answering your questions.”

The traffic line behind us was extending and I am sure he was under pressure to clear me but he refused and asked me to pull out of the line and park near the office building. In a minute, an agent with a dog came up and the animal encircled my drugless Toyota, sniffing, and moved on to another vehicle. Without probable cause, there was no reason to detain me, but I spent another ten minutes waiting for a supervisor to come to my window.

“Sir, we need to know if you are a U.S. citizen.”

“Actually, no you don’t. You have no legal right to ask.”

“We’re just trying to do our jobs, sir.”

“Am I free to go?”

“Are you not going to answer my question?”

“I’ve already told you I will not. And I will not consent to any searches, either.”

He looked at me, shook his head in disgust, and waved me off. I had lost a half hour of my day to nonsensical, unnecessary garbage. Border Patrol cannot arrest you for not answering their questions at a checkpoint, but they are almost certain to delay your travel and run license plate checks. This does not mean the secondary checkpoint away from the border does not confiscate drugs and stop human smugglers. Signs confidently report those totals, though they imply the process might not be working well at the ports of entry. The drug seizures are single incidents, and not quantified beyond those numbers, which might mean a bag of weed or a thimble of powder. The number of undocumented aliens, undoubtedly, reflects the fact that any other route north through the open brush country and desert likely means death. In Brooks County, the Falfurrias location of the border patrol stop, since 2009, over 1000 bodies have been recovered from the far reaches of the desolate, sandy ranch land. The sheriff estimates the bones of 5000-10000 American aspirants are still out there desiccating in the Texas sun.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), under its new leader, Kristi “Ice Barbie” Noem, has decided, in at least one instance, U.S. citizens leaving the country also need to be stopped and have their vehicles searched without any probable cause. Beginning on May 1 and running over the course of four days, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) established temporary northbound checkpoints on the U.S. side of the border at the Peace Arch and Pacific Highway crossings in Blaine, Washington, for travelers entering Canada. Every vehicle heading into British Columbia was searched with no basis of legal justification and some people reported delays of 90 minutes. The operation resulted in the seizure of minor quantities of narcotics and about 300 rounds of 9mm and 12-gauge ammunition.

The question is why? Is the Trump administration trying to turn the entire country into their gulag and keep Americans from leaving? The rationale behind the Washington-Canada stop was that such procedures are only temporary and are prompted by security concerns. Maybe rumors were afoot that ol’ Joe Don’s bag of weed was so big he could get lost in the north woods or was planning on sharing it widely, which would take Canadians to dangerously chill levels. There was, of course, no real reason to create the road block across a friendly and mostly unrestrained border between two historically cordial countries other than to exercise control. ICE Barbie and Trump are clearly not content with terrorizing the public by snatching people off the street, legally within the country, and disappearing them as if we are living in 1980s El Salvador and Guatemala.

Noem is concentrating on what matters most to her, however, which is flying around the country cos-playing, wearing a cowboy hat, swinging guns and riding horses, posing in front of Salvadoran inmates at a horrid, inhumane prison, wearing her $35,000 Rolex watch. The long flights must be draining her, though, since she has asked Congress for a new $50 million dollar jet, in one of the many “are-you-effin-kiddin’-me” moments of this administration’s first 100 days. Trumpublicans want to cut Medicaid and food programs for the poor, and summarily fire hundreds of thousands of people for no other reason than Elonald says they must go, yet ICE Barbie gets a new jet?

She also wants her own reality TV show, and might just get it. Canadian-born TV producer Rob Worsoff, who created Duck Dynasty, has a proposal before the feds to develop an unscripted show called The American. The basic concept is that selected immigrants perform insulting American tasks and challenges to win and get expedited processing to become U.S. citizens. The Department of Homeland Security is presently vetting the 35-page proposal and claims nothing has been decided, but the Daily Beast is reporting ICE Barbie digs the idea. She’s probably already planning costumes for guest appearances on what she will delightedly call The Homeland Games. The basic nonsense, though, of asking people to demean themselves by balancing on logs in one state or building a toy rocket in another, is disgusting. What if we simply had a just and legal process to become citizens?

Immigrants, of course, have made greater sacrifices than their dignity in a quest for U.S. citizenship. What Trump’s Herman Goering, Stephen Miller, missed in U.S. history classes is that 500,000 Mexican-Americans served in the U.S. armed forces in WWII, and many went ashore under the guns at Normandy. In fact, 109,000 noncitizens fought for a country where they did not yet have the rights they were protecting with their lives. One of them was named Marcario Garcia, from a family with ten children, destitute Mexican cotton farmers who came to Sugarland, Texas to try for a better life. He enlisted in the Army and landed at Normandy, was injured, and earned a Purple Heart and Bronze Star. When he returned to service, Garcia was a squad leader in a battle near Grosshau, Germany in November of 1944. His company was pinned down by fire from two machine gun nests. Even though he had been injured in the firefight, Garcia crawled forward and took out both enemy positions with grenades before capturing four prisoners and saving the lives of his platoon. He became the first Mexican immigrant to receive the Medal of Honor.

Back in Texas, a month after taking his honors from the president, Garcia was denied service at a restaurant just outside Houston. The owner beat him unconscious with a baseball bat just for asking. The story gained national attention, which brought charges, not against the restauranteur, but against Garcia. The controversy lingered long enough that a touch of sanity took hold and the case was dropped, though the man who beat the hero with the bat was never charged. Garcia’s story ought to horrify Americans because his treatment delivers a sense that we are heading back in that direction. We admit white Afrikaners from South Africa into our country while we deport children with brain cancer back south of the Rio Grande because their parents brought them here illegally while hoping for a better life. They also brought them here while brown.

And they brought them here while Trump’s evil was loose across the land.

This article was originally published on Texas to the world.

 

James Moore is the New York Times bestselling author of “Bush’s Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush Presidential,” three other books on Bush and former Texas Governor Rick Perry, as well as two novels, and a biography entitled, “Give Back the Light,” on a famed eye surgeon and inventor. His newest book will be released mid- 2023. Mr. Moore has been honored with an Emmy from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences for his documentary work and is a former TV news correspondent who has traveled extensively on every presidential campaign since 1976.

He has been a retained on-air political analyst for MSNBC and has appeared on Morning Edition on National Public Radio, NBC Nightly News, Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell, CBS Evening News, CNN, Real Time with Bill Maher, and Hardball with Chris Matthews, among numerous other programs. Mr. Moore’s written political and media analyses have been published at CNN, Boston Globe, L.A. Times, Guardian of London, Sunday Independent of London, Salon, Financial Times of London, Huffington Post, and numerous other outlets. He also appeared as an expert on presidential politics in the highest-grossing documentary film of all time, Fahrenheit 911, (not related to the film’s producer Michael Moore).

His other honors include the Dartmouth College National Media Award for Economic Understanding, the Edward R. Murrow Award from the Radio Television News Directors’ Association, the Individual Broadcast Achievement Award from the Texas Headliners Foundation, and a Gold Medal for Script Writing from the Houston International Film Festival. He was frequently named best reporter in Texas by the AP, UPI, and the Houston Press Club. The film produced from his book “Bush’s Brain” premiered at The Cannes Film Festival prior to a successful 30-city theater run in the U.S.

Mr. Moore has reported on the major stories and historical events of our time, which have ranged from Iran-Contra to the Waco standoff, the Oklahoma City bombing, the border immigration crisis, and other headlining events. His journalism has put him in Cuba, Central America, Mexico, Australia, Canada, the UK, and most of Europe, interviewing figures as diverse as Fidel Castro and Willie Nelson. He has been writing about Texas politics, culture, and history since 1975, and continues with political opinion pieces for CNN and regularly at his Substack newsletter: “Texas to the World.”