Nobody Is Protected: How the Border Patrol Became the Most Dangerous Police Force in the United States

The United States Border Patrol (USBP) must be reined in, argues Jones (White Borders: The History of Race and Immigration in the United States). Despite attention to the ongoing U.S.-Mexico border crisis and lingering outcries at the violence of the Trump administration’s “no tolerance policy,” with its separated families and “kids in cages,” too few Americans understand what the USBP does or the extent of its authority as the largest law enforcement body in the U.S., Jones insists. Jones details the USBP’s stealthy expansion from its “anything goes,” underfunded, Wild West frontier origins to the present-day paramilitary force with more than 19,000 agents, a nearly $4 billion budget, and virtually unchecked authority. With individual stories illustrating the carnage of seemingly limitless USBP stops in light of the Fourth Amendment’s prohibiting unreasonable searches and seizures, Jones documents beatings, sexual assaults, kidnappings, killings, unwanted medical procedures, and other outrageous, unrestrained USBP behavior.