Rios is director of the U.S.-Mexico Border Program, American Friends Service Committee. He lives in Chula Vista.

The Border Patrol’s San Diego Sector has a new challenge coin that features concertina wire around the Border Patrol’s badge. In its description on its website, it says the concertina wire symbolizes “a new way of thinking about border security in San Diego.”

Decorated with eight stars representing each of the Border Patrol stations in the San Diego Sector, the concertina wire imagery takes on a defensive posture. It encircles and insulates the Border Patrol crest, and rather than “a new way of thinking,” it reflects more of the same unaccountable policing about border security — glamorizing militarization at the expense of human rights.

That the Border Patrol would promote coils of razor-sharp wires made for a battlefield as its emblem to display its philosophy is concerning, given that the federal agency has a history of malfeasance and abusive practices that have sullied its public image.

During the Trump presidency, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security installed miles of concertina wire on border walls and at ports of entry in San Diego and throughout the U.S.-Mexico border, as part of a 2018 $210 million border mission that included troop deployment to install the razor wire. Meant to create an additional obstacle for people seeking shelter in the United States, the concertina wire symbolized Trump’s ruthless and restrictive border policies that rejected asylum laws and increased the anti-immigrant fervor throughout the country.

As the razor wire went up in Arizona, one City Council passed a resolution condemning it and called on the federal government to remove it. With increased obstacles and the inability for migrants to seek asylum at the ports, more people have died attempting to cross into the United States.

Then-President Donald Trump tweeted about the rows of concertina wire in San Diego’s Friendship Park in November 2019, slamming media outlets for showing migrants climbing that section of the border wall, claiming they were using “old footage.” On that same day, Customs and Border Protection temporarily closed the Otay Mesa Port of Entry to install “jersey barriers and concertina wire, to prepare for the potential arrival of thousands of people migrating in a caravan.” No large groups of migrants have ever arrived at that port.

The San Diego Border Patrol challenge coin is probably just as disgraceful as the recent unofficial coins circulating on the internet that exemplify the same old way of thinking about the Border Patrol’s take on border security.

One unofficial commemorative medallion, that was being sold on eBay but whose origins remain a mystery, praises the controversial 2021 incident in Del Rio, Texas, of a Border Patrol agent on horseback pushing back Haitian migrants by appearing to whip migrants with his reins. The shocking imagery evoked comparisons to violent slave patrols that hunted Black people who had escaped enslavement. Ten months after the investigation, the Office of Professional Responsibility concluded that Border Patrol agents unnecessarily used force, said racist and sexist comments and pushed migrants into the Rio Grande, endangering their lives. But besides the administrative discipline, no prosecution occurred to address the misconduct.

Another unofficial challenge coin for sale on eBay laments the end of Border Patrol’s unlawful Critical Incident Teams. Advocates have called them shadow units because they operated without congressional authority. Critical Incident Teams have obstructed investigations by protecting “the integrity of Border Patrol and its personnel” from criminal and civil liability. The Southern Border Communities Coalition, a border-wide group that advocates for transparency, oversight and accountability for border agencies, have called for congressional investigations because the Critical Incident Teams “withhold, corrupt, and destroy evidence.”

Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Chris Magnus ordered they be terminated this fall, and an investigation is underway for “potential violations of civil rights or civil liberties.” The Critical Incident Team challenge coin includes the phrase, “what happens in the desert, stays in the desert,” which suggests secrecy and opaqueness will still be possible even with Critical Incident Teams being gone.

The concertina wire that drapes over border walls, much like the anti-immigrant hysteria that complements it, only serves for political spectacle and posturing. The Border Patrol’s San Diego Sector does not do itself any favors by prominently adopting it as a symbol of “a new way of thinking” when the old way of doing things remains status quo.

Recycling the concertina wire, and trashing the imprudent idea of promoting militarization with it, would be a better direction for thinking of healing border communities from the decades of harm that misguided enforcement policies have caused.

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