Re-bordering during COVID-19: Women and children as tools for immigration control at the USA-Mexico border

Through qualitative ethnographic work at the US-Mexican border, this article analyzes three main impacts of ‘crisis’ migration governance on migrant women with children during the COVID-19 pandemic. It illustrates how a combination of migration and public health-related policies employed during this time, and presented as measures for the public good and the wellbeing of migrant communities, generated chaos and resulted in additional forms of mistreatment and violence. These included summary deportations of women and children; the denial of fundamental rights to asylum and to privacy; the threat of removal of children in order to control, restrict and undermine women’s agency and autonomy; and direct harms to unaccompanied migrant children. The paper argues that while the invocation of migration policies during the pandemic were shrouded in euphemisms of child protection and humanitarianism, the ensuing chaos of these measures imposed by US immigration authorities with the compliance of INM (Instituto Nacional de Migración) in Mexico and child-protection authorities, enabled the subjectification of women and children to further control and punishment as irregularized migrants through processes of re-bordering (Aradau and Tazzioli 2021).