ABSTRACT
Since September 11, 2001 (9/11), several U.S. policy “wars” have converged-the War on Drugs, the War on Terror, and an undeclared war on immigrants-to heighten state security apparatus at the U.S.-Mexico border. In 2003, the United States consolidated major state security agencies into a mega-agency called the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The “wars,” and the fears thereby evoked, build on a long, growing tradition of security rationales to protect against external and internal threats. Tirman cites parallels between the National Security Act of 1947 that created the bureaucracy to fi ght the Cold War and the DHS: “a security culture evolved that emphasized worst-case scenarios, embedded secrecy, monitoring and occasionally harassed domestic dissenters, rewarded allies in Congress, and insisted on its primacy in U.S. governance” (2004: 10).
