And, an expansion of surveillance infrastructure stokes white ethnonationalism--- that reinvigorates racial tropes of immigrants as burdens and promotes forcibly sterilizing migrants.

In a parallel fashion, the United States saw the development of its immigration detention infrastructure coincide with the implementation of aggressive birth control measures targeting immigrant and women of color. The current wave of sterilization violence is the latest manifestation of anti-immigrant sentiment, leading to the coercive management of reproductive rights and the expansion of immigration control infrastructure. In the late 1960s, public debates about the perils of unauthorized immigration from the southern border gained traction amidst the backdrop of the “conservative-led war on drugs” (Nevis & Dunn, 2008, 22) and its anti-Black and anti-civil rights movements suppression efforts. During the Carter administration (1977–1981), the construction of a “10-foot-high chain-link fence” began along the California/Mexico border (Nevis & Dunn, 2008, 22). Simultaneously, unconsented sterilizations were imposed on women of Mexican descent in California, driven by mounting fears about population shifts and the “Latinization of California” (Gutierrez, 2008, 4. See No más bebes Tajima-Peña & Espino, 2016. For a discussion on earlier eugenics in California, see Lira, 2021 and Mina-Stern, 2016) and the broader United States.

This scenario resurfaced with former president Donald Trump's attempt to secure the border with the expansion of the infrastructure of exclusion shaped by a white ethnic-nationalist agenda. What was once a fringe ideology has gained mainstream traction, as evident in Stern's (2019) observation that the white ethnostate's pursuit of “cleansing and separation” has become normalized (Kindle 149). During his presidential campaign, Trump pledged to build a “great wall” on the southern border with the assurance that Mexico would bear the cost. Fences and walls are a boundary-making technologies barriers against external threats that involve “two layers of ‘reinforced fencing.’” (Nevis & Dunn, 2008, 22). I contend that reproductive technologies, including unconsented sterilizations and other invasive gynecological procedures are part of the second layer that involves cameras, sensors, or radars. This argument resonates with Elise Andaya's (2019) call to consider walls and uteruses together, allowing for a renewed understanding of sterilization practices and their connection to infrastructures of exclusion and surveillance.

The policing apparatus is strikingly mobile, at times extending beyond the physical border with Mexico (Miller & Nevis, 2017), while other times retracting within to apprehend those who traverse it. Consequently, even hospitals can serve as borders and checkpoints, as Renee Tajima-Peña highlights when she asks, “was the maternity ward at Los Angeles County hospital a border checkpoint for unborn babies?” (Tajima-Peña, 2013, emphasis added). The current practices of unconsented sterilization of immigrant women in detention centers evoke parallels with a similar context in the 1970s alluded to by Tajima-Peña. The election of Donald Trump in 2016 reanimated racial animosity against Latinx communities (Stern, 2019), who were subjected to his “zero tolerance” policy that led to family separation (Briggs, 2020) and hardened asylum procedures (Stern, 2019). The Irwin sterilization abuse adds to this list as a “solution” to perceived social problems associated with immigration, including high fertility rates, criminality, and loss of ethnonational cohesion.

The violation of women's reproductive freedom serves to render “controllable” a situation that the Trump administration portrayed as chaotic and dangerous. Sterilization and other invasive gynecological practices were instrumental in upholding the fragile narrative of white ethnonationalism. As articulated by Sarah Franklin and Faye Ginsburg, this narrative involves a “reproductive grammar” that seeks to “make America great again, white again, and right again” (Franklin & Ginsburg, 2019, 4). Even though Trump did not explicitly reanimate the racist trope of Latinx women as hyper breeders, he disparaged their children as “anchor babies” (Chavez, 2017) and stoke a sexual panic embodied in the “Mexican rapist.” As a form of displacement, these statements on sexually deviant Mexican men and unlawful citizens were re-oriented towards women's bodies to materialize the MAGA slogan and “reassure his constituency of his conservative credentials” (Andaya, 2019, 12). Subjecting immigrant women to forced sterilizations and other degrading gynecological procedures was a means of solving the perceived problems with immigration: “undeserving citizens,” a burden on medical care and social services, and a racial threat through the “browning of America” (Chavez, 2017)