ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that the practices such as Operation Streamline serve to criminalise vast numbers of immigrants, unnecessarily bloat federal and private prison populations and budgets, and are critical to unpacking a broader 'border regime' that is maintained along the United States' border with Mexico. It explains that individual and collective actions aimed at confronting criminalising practices such as Operation Streamline have been, can and must continue to highlight the damaging societal costs of the broader border regime. The chapter explores Operation Streamline in Tucson, Arizona, as it convicts the largest number of undocumented immigrants and has been made the subject of political grandstanding by Arizona Senators McCain and Flake and included by name in efforts to pass immigration reform. Operation Streamline as an enforcement project of the US Customs and Border Patrol appears to be an organised set of practices that one might imagine takes place all along the border.
