Viviendo Bajo Fuerza Policial
- Ralph Villanueva
- Jan 27
- 7 min read
Two new documentaries released on HBO within the last week and a half demand our attention. Critical Incident and The Alabama Solution cover and contribute to the ongoing conversation around the Border Industrial Complex (BIC) and the Prison Industrial Complex (PIC) respectively. Their connecting chain is excessive force—one of several major points I want to draw out while highly encouraging everyone to make time to view them.
As I was outlining this piece on the afternoon of Wednesday, January 7th, a woman named Renee Good was killed in Minnesota by officers in an incident that has now garnered international attention. This killing occurred roughly a mile away from where, just five years ago, another Minnesotan—George Floyd—lost his life.
Another notable marker: January 6th was the four-year anniversary of the insurrection at DC, where roughly 1,500 people have now been pardoned. Some folks from high up are challenging that narrative or even rewriting it. In other words, the powerful are penning history.
"This is where we are during the first few days of this new year: a woman dead, a President abducted, and the Uvalde trial—where the law waited 77 minutes to do their job—has just begun in Corpus Christi, Tejas."
One question comes to mind: should we embrace this very "great" fati con amor?
The Border Patrol agency has been in operation for just over a century, having gotten its initial start through the Labor Appropriation Act of 1924. The act dealt with immigration but also looked to address the smuggling of alcohol during the era of Prohibition.
This agency has been handled differently under various presidential administrations, receiving attention, funding, and praise for the job that its personnel carry out daily to ensure that its roughly 2,000-mile southern border—we forget the northern border and its problems—is patrolled and protected.
Its sister agency, the one operating in various major cities throughout the nation while wearing masks and driving vehicles without markings—as well as ramming into other cars or folks who are in their own vehicles—and snatching up folks, is known as ICE. They have been encouraged and applauded by the current presidential administration for their "tactics and strategies."
Both BP/ICE and their affiliates, through legislation and political scapegoating, have gotten an increase of capital as well as performative leniency to continue their work. This has transformed the entity over decades into a burgeoning, brutal BIC.
"Force is a welcome response to 'threats' which are 'perceived' by agents as they see fit. It is not only a 'mindset' problem—it is more so 'the standard' when it comes to dealing with folks at the border, in cities, or within prisons."
What transpired with the killing of Renee Good has been something that many dreaded would happen. There is tremendous fear in these cities, and the very "tactics and strategies" used by these officers—as they have been reported on and recorded—has been seen as a slow escalation of violence that has already had similar encounters where a gun was used against folks.
In the past few months in Los Angeles and Maryland, undocumented folks were shot. In Chicago, another undocumented person was fatally shot. Though there has been outrage by communities and folks across the nation—and beyond—by how ICE has been operating, this more direct response of using deadly force is hugely lamentable but not surprising given the history and nature of these agencies.
Defining excessive force can be tricky. A cursory search online renders the following description: "Excessive force refers to the use of more physical power by law enforcement than is objectively reasonable or necessary to control a situation, make a lawful arrest, or protect themselves and others from harm."
Examples included in the documentaries: using tasers or batons without justification; physical beatings or strikes during an arrest when a lower level of force would suffice; unjustified shootings or discharges of firearms.
It is uncertain whether anyone will be held "accountable" in this ongoing investigation with Renee Good. Recall that we have seen in the past how folks have evaded accountability and the hand of justice across these types of incidents or other related abuses of authority and power, whether in war, finance, or elsewhere.
These are some of the aspects that the first documentary, Rick Rowley's Critical Incident: Death at the Border, examines when it comes to how BP/ICE do "business." This could not have been released at a more suitable moment.
In 2010, a man by the name of Anastasio Hernández-Rojas was detained by ICE agents and never made it out of their custody. This is a harrowing tale that presents some of what has gone on within the BP agency for some time—pointing not simply to the behaviors of some individuals, but to what might be a kind of "cultural" attitude within the ranks of Border Patrol.
"As we have seen in countless examples involving officers and the public, the handing out of justice is usually dealt to the lowest common perpetrator and remains there, leaving the full force of justice unable to carry itself upward."
Now that things have ramped up at the border and within major cities, now that there have been massive deportations, now that many communities have been dealing with this terror, and now that we know how this organization operates, there is a lingering question: In the near future, might there be more of these cases coming out for the public to be made aware? Or will confidentiality and secrecy win out, limiting public knowledge and further eroding trust?
One of the points I want to emphasize as you view this documentary is the use of "excessive force" and how it is explained by agents and their superiors. Like many agencies, there is a chain of command. What is sometimes overlooked when it comes to questions of authority and accountability: Why is it that those placed a bit higher in the pecking order are not held accountable?
Those left behind trying to make sense of it all—determining if some form of justice was meted out—are usually the families. Families torn apart, injured, and abused by these legal mechanisms, as is the case with Anastasio and his family.
Maria, his wife, and their children have kept up the fight of seeking and attaining justice for Anastasio—and for others who have had run-ins with BP/ICE that have affected or worse. This documentary takes us through their story as well as the shortcomings and lack of oversight within Border Patrol.
These types of questions, incidents, and shortcomings do not exist only within BP. As the next documentary illustrates, they are to be found inside the prison system as well.
The 13th Amendment has two sections. The first: "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the US, or any place subject to their jurisdiction." The second: "Congress shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation."
This was a significant piece of legislation, long overdue. Yet the nasty and bloody Civil War left a fetid mark in some, and in others inspired optimism. As the Reconstruction period demonstrated, the relations between those recently emancipated and the Anglos have been nothing but strained, and this so-called "reform" period did not really help re-balance the national playing field.
Centrally, once slavery had been abolished, labor became the problem to solve—not just for the recently emancipated located in the North and South (notwithstanding the Latinx community or other immigrants to be found for labor throughout the nation), but for the Anglos primarily. Who would do the work? How would they compete for jobs, housing, and education?
"The slave codes, the rise of the KKK, and the subsequent jails and legalities implemented around this inter-related issue of capital, labor, liberty, race, gender, and power led to what has come to be known as the Prison Industrial Complex, where the majority of its inhabitants are brown, Black, and poor Anglos."
The Alabama Solution (directed by Andrew Jarecki and Charlotte Kaufman) makes clear that not only is the PIC alive and well, but that thousands of inmates within Alabama and adjacent southern states are basically surviving under inhumane conditions. They face physical and psychological assaults—in several cases enduring "excessive force" raids—and are dealing with a nightmarish reality that even a Bentham or Foucault could not imagine.
It is estimated that the jails in Alabama are 200% over capacity and have about a third of the overall staffing necessary to run and supervise the jails.
Inmates such as Robert E. Council and Melvin Ray have been witness to much of the violence that occurs within their jail, themselves having gone through their own "disciplinary" moments. Yet they continue to chronicle and get the word out on what is happening within these systems of abuse and control.
Without their work and the risks taken in order to distribute this critical inside look within the prisons—or the work of journalists such as John C. Frey, or Andrea Guerrero who is a part of the Southern Border Communities Coalition, or Professor of Law Roxanna Altholz amongst dozens of others who helped the wife of Anastasio throughout her ordeal—these stories would not get told.
The excessive force chain that links these two documentaries cannot be overstated. Each of them, in their time allotted, covers a lot of ground, presents serious problems, and looks for ways to help address these inter-related complexes that have a vice grip on the nation.
"Though it doesn't appear that these complexes will vanish anytime soon—why would they, given their ties to capital and control?—the most distressing part is that we may be in the midst of a project of massive de-humanization which extends not simply from sea to shining sea, but across 'flat' mother earth."
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