Another subcategory of metaphors describes migrants as “dangerous waters threatening the nation . . . a metaphorical home.” Enforcement is represented as an effort to stanch the unwieldy flow of migration, the border as a barrier to be plugged and sealed against a rising tide. The corresponding death toll is “a ‘surge,’ and the bodies are part of a ‘flood’ of migrants that overwhelm Border Patrol agents and medical examiners.” It is here that Zavisca cites the work of Otto Santa Ana, a sociolinguist at the University of California, Los Angeles, who argues that, ontologically, such metaphors
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