Rebels with a Cause: Policing Juvenile Delinquency in the Southwest Borderlands

In 1954, members of a U.S. Special Senate Subcommittee traveled to El Paso, Texas, to study the issue of juvenile delinquency along the U.S.-Mexico border. The local paper, the El Paso Herald-Post, reported on the senators’ findings, claiming they uncovered a terrifying problem of delinquency among American teens who lived near Mexican border towns. In cities like Tijuana and Juarez, it declared, American “juveniles have been able to attain liquor, marihuana, barbiturates, heroin, and pornographic literature. Prostitution is wide open. There are steerers on every corner.” The article blamed the region’s close proximity to Mexico for the spread of delinquency among American teens: “We know the Mexican bordertowns help contribute to juvenile delinquency,” as did the growing number of “juvenile wetbacks” crossing into the U.S. The problem appeared to be so severe that senators were considering national legislation to bar anyone under the age of twenty-one from crossing the border into Mexico unaccompanied. Modeling their proposal on local policies already in place in San Diego, authorities warned that if they did not take decisive steps to control the national line, American youth would be at further risk.2 After all, American teens had become “troubled, drug-addicted, criminal oriented, and preoccupied with sex.”3 Border towns, it seems, were no place for them. This article explores national debates over juvenile delinquency as they emerged in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands during the post–World War II period. In doing so, it contributes to a robust literature that examines the rise of juvenile delinquency from multiple perspectives. As several historians have documented, postwar prosperity—when coupled with Cold War hysteria, economic transition, mass migration, and changes in family dynamics—helped spark fears that delinquency among teens was on the rise.4 Historians such as Matthew Lassiter have also detailed