Islamic State Replaces al-Qaida in Anti-Immigration Discourse in US

The United States has been intervening militarily in the Middle East for almost 11 years in small intervals. More than a decade has passed since the campaign was declared against terrorist organizations and the governments that fund and support them. Part of this has been sustained by the hazy existence of al-Qaida, which became a rhetorically powerful umbrella term.

This concept enabled the supply of resources and led to extraordinary actions, like the intervention in this region, but also allowed the domestic initiatives that facilitated the strengthening of the gigantic U.S.-Mexico border fence project sponsored by the Department of Homeland Security.

The insecurity in the Middle East as well as the perception of domestic insecurity in the United States is becoming complicated in the context of new contingencies and challenges. It’s no longer about terrorist organizations and the “Axis of Evil” states that support them, but rather a single organization, the Islamic State, which is trying, with some significant success, to create a caliphate.

At the same time, the feeling of fear and insecurity among the U.S. population over the last decade has remained very high, despite astronomical amounts of money and extraordinary measures aimed at public security.

The border wall erected against the broad group of clandestine transnational actors— a category that encompasses migrants, traffickers and terrorists — has been one of these measures in which numerous human and material resources have been invested.

Nevertheless, this has been in vain. The holes in the wall are appearing in proportion to the attempts to strengthen it, and by those who cause damage to domestic security as they reach the United States not by foot, but on international flights.

Three years after the death of Osama bin Laden, al-Qaida — at least through the media — has disappeared off the radar. Its strength as a rhetorical tool has also worn off, because resources run out when they are applied in large doses and achieve notorious results. However, what we now recognize as the Islamic State group has grown from the heart of al-Qaida and, in certain horrifying aspects, has managed to overcome the fearsome image of the organization that formed it. Nowadays, it has replaced al-Qaida in the discussion of politics and discourse by politicians in the media.

Conservative leaders and Republican politicians have found a window of opportunity and make political use of the Islamic State group, like the Ebola virus, declaring them threats to internal security.

Republicans have been warning people for some time about the existence of a secret plot by the Islamic State group to reach the U.S. through the Mexican border. They exhort these warnings on “Wake Up, America,” pointing how porous and highly permeable the southern border is. Congressman Duncan Hunter even stated in an interview with Fox News that “at least 10 ISIS fighters have been caught coming across the Mexican border in Texas.”

Even though the Department of Homeland Security has denied it and strongly refutes the existence of any type of plot, what’s said is said. And the media coverage has instilled fear when they report that resources have been invested to build higher walls and increase sealing the border. Politicians that speak of the threat do so keeping this factor very much in mind.

As a result, a favorable climate has been created for tougher immigration and border security policies. Securitization discourse is already paving the way.

As Democrat Beto O’Rourke from Texas said, “There’s a longstanding history in this country of projecting whatever fears we have onto the border.”

The Islamic State group is real and frightening. But to suppose that they will come across the Mexican border seems to be almost a psychological maneuver to placate uncertainty and place the enemy somewhere on the map. Fear as a political resource is cheap as well as efficient, but nobody can repair the collateral damage that it produces in the long run. Trust and security are easily lost, but they are hard to recover.

The border, sealed as it is now, is becoming a true monument to political shortsightedness and a series of international and domestic political errors.