The three border wars -- A tale with two sides -- The meaning of the border -- The frontier era -- The customs era -- The law enforcement era -- The national security border -- The closing of the border -- Our lives in the hands of others -- A democratic deficit -- Conflating the issues -- Planning to secure the border: same old, same old -- Are the three border wars justified? -- The scope of the book -- The drug war on the border -- A bird's eye view -- Economics and geography -- It's economics -- The explanatory power of a standard map -- The beginning of the war -- Between business and war -- Bureaucrats versus drug cartels: unequal enemies -- Modus smugglandi -- The port of entry versus the non-port of entry axis -- The people versus the vehicles axis -- The NAFTA connection -- The C-TPAT -- The narco-tunnels -- Corrupting the warriors -- The protective shield of the border police -- Victimizing the criminals with bribes -- Violence and the drug trafficking business -- Competition: violence between cartels -- Competition: intra-cartel violence -- Taking sides: the Mexican government -- Plata o plomo: silver or lead -- Disciplining the workforce -- Random violence: the exception to the rule -- The Sicarios -- Handling the disloyal -- Money and drugs: north and south -- The media and the drug war -- The wealth of drugs: on narco mansions and narco juniors -- The big cartels versus the small time players -- The border geographic of the drug war -- Conclusion -- Immigration and the U.S.-Mexico border -- The scene at the border -- The beginning -- The breaking point: 1986 -- A failed logic for a failed war -- The balloon effect -- The dead -- Build it and they will come -- The backside of economic development -- It's economics, stupid! -- The legal side -- Mothers and their babies -- How they come -- The old crossers: how times change -- Humpty dumpty and the border -- The more things change, the more they stay the same -- Operation hold the line -- Good fences make good neighbors -- Empowering the coyotes -- The crossing card trick -- NAFTA and undocumented immigration -- OTM: other than Mexicans -- Other modus operandi -- The militarization of the border -- Law enforcement and escalation -- Deterrence and escalation -- The illegal document industry -- The attrition argument -- The U.S. military and the border -- All the border's a stage -- The American public -- The minutemen -- Border political grandstanding -- A new approach is needed -- Homeland Security and the border -- The war on terror comes to the border -- The border and the immediate aftermath of September 11 -- Diagnosing the failure of September 11 -- Immigration failure -- Economic integration, trade and border security -- Arizona and New Mexico -- Damn those bureaucrats! -- Intelligence failure and the border -- Conflating the issues -- Reorganizing for border security -- A nagging question -- New immigration procedures -- Consequences of the new immigration procedures -- New trade procedures -- The consequences of the new trade system -- The value added by the new trade procedures -- The inordinate burden on border residents -- The costs of Homeland Security at the border to the taxpayer -- Back to normalcy? -- The treatment of border crossers -- The panopticon border -- Technology and the panopticon border -- Militarization of the border -- The border as a symbol of a reluctant partnership -- Agent González and the problem with the problem -- The definition of border security -- The construction of security -- Unhelpful rhetoric -- Talking past each other at the border -- A new approach is needed -- The North American Free Trade Agreement and the border -- The North American solution -- Defining a North American community -- The North American security bubble -- Bureaucratic politics and the border -- The border reinstated -- The border is the future of America -- No end in sight.