Empire of Borders: The Expansion of the US Border around the World

Description

The twenty-first century has been an era of hardening borders-increased borderland patrols, surveillance and militarization are widening the chasm between those who can vacation (or do business) where they please, and others whose movements are restricted by armed guards. But as journalist Todd Miller finds in Empire of Borders, the US border is also becoming increasingly fluid, expanding thousands of miles outside of US territory often to protect Washington's interests. In places like Argentina, Kosovo, Honduras, Jordan and Afghanistan, US border patrol works alongside local agents to block migrants, terrorists, drug runners and smugglers from ever approaching the US. Empire of Borders traces the rise of this border regime, along with practices of "extreme vetting" and the vast global industry for border and homeland security. But in visiting the Jordan/Syria border, as well as Puerto Rico, Guatemala, Kenya, Palestine, Mexico and the Philippines, Miller finds instead a global war against the poor.

TODD MILLER is the author of Border Patrol Nation and Storming the Wall, which was awarded the 2018 Izzy Award for investigative journalism. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, TomDispatch, Mother Jones, The Nation, Al Jazeera English, and Salon.

Empire of Borders reveals how the United States has effectively extended its borders throughout the globe, giving rise to a worldwide enforcement network that is highly militarized and profoundly dehumanizing. At a time when more people than ever before find their lives thrust against violent lines of separation, Todd Miller helps us understand the omnipresence of borders as an imminent threat to our shared humanity - a collective sickness that must be reckoned with before it forever reshapes our world. -- Fransisco Cantu, author of The Line Becomes a River: Dispatches from the Border Joining meticulous documentation and vivid on-the-ground research in multiple border hot spots around the planet, Todd Miller pulls the veil off the layers of borders and their policing that shape our world, revealing a stunning and terrifying reality. The artificiality of borders, and the commitment of the world's wealthy and powerful to preserve their wealth and power through them, have never been so clearly laid out. -- Aviva Chomsky, author of Undocumented: How Immigration Became Illegal Todd Miller's Empire of Borders is an indispensable guide to our bunkered, barb-wired world. For more than a decade, well before Donald Trump landed in the White House, Miller's reporting has revealed the conceits of globalization, documenting the slow, steady garrisoning of U.S. politics behind ever more brutal border policies. Now, with Empire of Borders, he looks outward, to a world overrun with so many border walls it looks more like a maze than a shared planet. If there's a way out, Miller will find it. -- Greg Grandin, author of The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America Todd Miller takes the reader on a global journey following the ever expanding and violent border enforcement regime. Empire of Borders is an erudite and engaging expose of the global war against the poor that is increasingly carried out through restrictions on the right to move. Highly recommended. -- Reece Jones, author of Violent Borders: Refugees and the Right to Move Todd Miller's Empire of Borders: The Expansion of the U.S. Border Around the World couldn't have come at a better time. -- Belen Fernandez * Jacobin * While exploring the deep historical roots of the oppression wrought by the borders of modern nation-states, Miller's book is also forward facing. In a world where more people than ever are on the move, this is an urgent, crucial proposal that demands a change not only in policies, but in systems and the oppressive structures that drive them. -- Los Angeles Review of Books * Laura Weiss *