Jonathan Xavier Inda 
Targeting Immigrants 
Government, Technology, and Ethics

This book is concerned with the government of ‘illegal’
immigration since the passage of the U.S. Immigration Act of 1965,
exploring how certain mentalities and intellectual machineries have
rendered illegal immigrants as targets of government.

* * Examines how various authorities have created knowledge about
and constructed ‘illegal’ immigration as an ethical
problem.

* Analyzes the tactics that have been deployed to govern
immigration, particularly at the US-Mexico border.

* Using an ethnographic approach, draws on primary source
materials – including government publications, archival
documents, newspapers, and popular magazines.

* Studies measures (e.g. Operation Gatekeeper and Operation
Hold-the-Line) for reforming the conduct of ‘illegal’
immigrants in order to forestall illicit border crossings.

* Frames the study of immigration within Foucauldian theories of
governmentality.

* Highlights the role of numbers and statistics in constructing
the ‘illegal’ immigrant.

Table of Content

Acknowledgements.

Introduction: Government and Immigration.

Part I: Ethopolitics and the Management of
In/security.

The Ethos of Responsibility.

Making Ethical Subjects.

The Government of the Marginal.

Racing the Unethical.

Part II: Producing ‘The Illegal, ‘ or Making Up
Subjects.

Government and Numbers.

Legislating Illegality.

Practices of Enumeration.

Surveying Routines.

Ethical Territories of Exclusion.

After 9/11.

Part III: Anti-Citizenship Technologies and the Regulation of
the Border.

Governing Through Crime.

Interlude.

Assembling an Anti-Citizenship Technology.

Interlude.

Securitizing the Border.

Interlude.

The Aftermath of ‘Terror’.

Interlude.

Surfeit of Dead Bodies.

Interlude.

Dying in Abandonment.

Conclusion: Iterations.

Notes.

Index.

About the author

Jonathan Xavier Inda is Assistant Professor in the
Department of Chicana/o Studies, University of California, Santa
Barbara.