Abstract
The following creative thesis grapples with identity, immigration, and family. The first section revolves around Prevention Through Deterrence, an immigration policy which has led to thousands of immigrant deaths. Through the use of documentary poetics, I draw from news articles and first source accounts in order to explicate how these deadly and brutal policies dehumanize and murder my people. This thesis also attempts to draw upon the past, towards the present. It pivots between two times periods, the beginning of PTD, and current policies that have been implemented under the Trump administration. I spend some time focusing on Silvestre Reyes, an El Pasoan and the first Hispanic Border Patrol Chief. Reyes is responsible for implementing PTD, and in this thesis he becomes a symbol for how my community has also been complicit in perpetuating violence and supporting policies that attack members of our own community. More importantly, I use my training as a journalist, but my aim is not to report. I am very pointedly launching a critique against racist U.S. policies. My own life interweaves into all of this through my experience growing up at the border. Something I try to expand in the final two sections. Present in the thesis as a whole is the presence of the border. The joy of it, the otherness of it, the in-between of it. The liminal space occupied by la frontera.