Hayek Program Podcast · Mercatus Center at George Mason University

Timothy J. Dunn on Migrant Deaths and the Human Cost of Border Militarization

August 20, 2025·1 hr 34 min·5 clips

Timothy Dunn, a professor of sociology at Salisbury University, joins Nathan Goodman. The conversation focuses on border militarization and the human costs of enforcement. Dunn's background in U.S.-Mexico border policy gives the exchange real historical weight, from Blockading the Border and Human Rights, the El Paso Operation that Remade Immigration Enforcement and The Militarization of the U.S.-Mexico Border, 1978-1992, Low-Intensity Conflict Doctrine Comes Home to the 2021 edited volume Human Security, Borders, and Migration. Goodman opens by asking how militarized border enforcement should be understood, and Dunn keeps coming back to the same point: force aimed at vulnerable people is not the same thing as effective policy. The discussion stays careful about language. It asks what militarization actually does, who it is meant to affect, and why it stays attractive within a system of political capitalism even when it does not address the underlying problem. Dunn says that is, for the most part, correct. He also stresses that targeted communities are not passive. They resist, adapt, and keep trying to build meaningful lives under conditions that are deeply uneven. That keeps the conversation from reducing everything to structure alone. The episode then turns toward social movement history, including the sanctuary movement of the 1980s. Goodman points to religious communities working in conjunction with migrants, and Dunn treats that history as organized pushback rather than symbolic protest. The exchange stays serious. It is also patiently argued. Near the end, Dunn widens the frame to the everyday importance of migrants in American life, arguing that they do essential work in ways that are easy to miss. What this leaves behind, in his framing, is a sharper standard for judging the promise of America against the treatment of people with the least power to shape policy directly. The conversation does not force a neat ending. Instead, it leaves the listener with clearer distinctions between security, power, effectiveness, and human cost. That makes it especially useful for anyone trying to understand border politics beyond the headlines.

As heard by us

Border militarization is framed through policy, power, human cost, and resistance.

Timothy J. Dunn brings real historical depth to a discussion of U.S.-Mexico border policy, and Nathan Goodman gives the conversation enough room to breathe.

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Why you'd press play

If you want U.S. border policy unpacked as power, not slogan, start here.

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