At least seven thousand migrants are believed to have died along the US–Mexico border from 1998 to 2017. More than thirty-three thousand migrants died at sea trying to enter Europe between 2000 and 2017. People who disrupt this cycle of violence are accused of human trafficking and smuggling because they chose to preserve life. This should not surprise us. When laws encode violence and law enforcers maintain it, those who attempt to prevent this violence are indeed breaking the law and challenging its enforcers. Such is the perversion of “violence” under imperial and colonial rule: the
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