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Winner of
the William P. Clements Prize for the Best Non-Fiction
Book on Southwestern America Published in 2010
 MIGRA!
A History of the U.S. Border Patrol
(University of California
Press, 2010)
Honoring Kelly Lytle Hernandez
This is the
untold history
of the United
States Border
Patrol from its
beginnings in
1924 as a small
peripheral
outfit to its
emergence as a
large
professional
police force. To
tell this story,
Kelly Lytle
Hernández dug
through a gold
mine of lost and
unseen records
stored in
garages,
closets, an
abandoned
factory, and in
U.S. and Mexican
archives.
Focusing on the
daily challenges
of policing the
borderlands and
bringing to
light unexpected
partners and
forgotten
dynamics,
Migra!
reveals how the
U.S. Border
Patrol
translated the
mandate for
comprehensive
migration
control into a
project of
policing
Mexicans in the
U.S.-Mexico
borderlands.
Kelly Lytle Hernández is an associate professor in the department of history and associate director of the National Center for History in the Schools, both at University of California, Los Angeles.
The
judging committee wrote,
"Hernández's
cross-border research for Migra! is
substantial and impressive, revealing extensive
interaction between the U.S. and Mexico in the
policing of our borders. She moves beyond the
everyday (and seasonal) influences of agribusiness
on human cross-border migration and demonstrates how
other groups and forces shaped the policies and
enforcement of immigration controls."
"Hernández writes well and knows how to balance
sound arguments with a modicum of statistics gleaned
from massive sets of documents and government
records consulted in both the U.S. and Mexico."
"Migra!
ably represents the continuing influence of the late
David Weber's scholarship on the borderlands."
The $2,500 Clements Book
Prize honors fine writing and original research on the
American Southwest. The competition is open to any
nonfiction book, including biography, on any aspect of
Southwestern life, past or present. The William P.
Clements Center for Southwest Studies is part of SMU's
Dedman College and affiliated with the Department of
History. It was created to promote research, publishing,
teaching and public programming in a variety of fields
related to the American Southwest.
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