This is the untold history of the United States Border Patrol from its beginnings in 1924 as a small peripheral outfit to its emergence as a large professional police force. To tell this story, Kelly Lytle Hernández dug through a gold mine of lost and unseen records stored in garages, closets, an abandoned factory, and in U.S. and Mexican archives. Focusing on the daily challenges of policing the borderlands and bringing to light unexpected partners and forgotten dynamics, Migra! reveals how the U.S. Border Patrol translated the mandate for comprehensive migration control into a project of policing Mexicans in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands.

Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Map of the U.S.-Mexico Border Region

Introduction

Part One: Formation
1. The Early Years of the U.S. Border Patrol
2. A Sanctuary of Violence: The U.S. Border Patrol in the Greater Texas-Mexico Borderlands
3. The California-Arizona Borderlands
4. Mexico’s Labor Emigrants, America’s Illegal Immigrants: The Rise of Mexican Emigration Control

Part Two: Transformation
5. A New Beginning: World War II and the U.S. Border Patrol
6. The Corridors of Migration Control
7. Uprising: A Farmers’ Rebellion

Part Three: Operation Wetback and Beyond
8. The Triumphs of {apos}54
9. “The Day of the Wetback Is Over”: Migration Control and Crime Control in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands

Epilogue
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index

Kelly Lytle Hernández is Assistant Professor in the Department of History and Associate Director of the Chicano Studies Research Center at the University of California, Los Angeles.

“Migra! is the first and only substantive history of the U.S. Border Patrol. Hernandez breaks new ground in this deeply researched account of its formation and development.”—George Sanchez, author of Becoming Mexican American: Ethnicity, Culture and Identity in Chicano Los Angeles, 1900-1945

Honorable Mention for the John Hope Franklin Prize, American Studies Association

Honorable Mention for the Lora Romero First Book Publication Prize, American Studies Association

William P. Clements Prize, William P. Clements Center for Southwest Studies