School of Political Science, Public Affairs, Legal and Security Studies Faculty Publications
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
12-2025
Abstract
On October 12, 2022, the Biden administration abruptly changed course and announced that Venezuelan refugees would be immediately subject to Title 42—the policy that effectively means that those migrants would be summarily forced to return, or expelled, to Mexico. For FY 2022, Customs and Border Protection apprehended and/or expelled a total of 2,766,582 enforcement actions (CBP FY 2022). The resulting media spectacle illustrates another example of border securocracy—defined as the globalized border industrial apparatus oppressing the masses from the global south. We construct a case study based on Boje's narrative approach to illustrate how guided discussions of Title 42 policy changes can be understood using existing literature by Agamben and Debord. Additionally, Anzaldua's concept of nepantla shows promise as a foil for border securocracy while allowing us to maintain a nuanced understanding of the “in-between-ness” and socio-cultural identity of border crossers, mostly from Latin America, as influenced by the US policy apparatus.
Recommended Citation
Garrett, Terence Michael, and Arthur Sementelli. "Overcoming Title 42 and the 2022‐3 Venezuelan Migrant Expulsion Spectacle: A Border Securocracy Case Study." Politics & Policy 53, no. 6 (2025): e70094. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.70094
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Publication Title
Politics & Policy
DOI
10.1111/polp.70094
Comments
© 2025 The Author(s). Politics & Policy published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Policy Studies Organization.
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