The Line Becomes A River: Dispatches from the Border

More accurate titles: “How I joined the murderers to help the victims”, or “a privileged college-educated US citizen joins the US Patrol to understand the pleas of migrants, which he apparently didn't learn from his international relationships and border policies college classes”, or “How I stayed for four years at the Patrol, choosing every day to participate and witness dehumanizing acts, and only decided to leave after receiving a paid scholarship to study abroad”. Is this book problematic? Yes. Is it well written? Yes. Should we listen to the voices of undocumented people instead? Yes

Note: if someone thinks murderer is too strong of a word, how would you call someone who destroys and pees on the migrants' belongings, empty their water supply (or doesn't protest when colleagues do so) and then simply drives home, leaving hidden migrants to their death in the scorching desert. Well of course the author has nightmares, and we get pages and pages of them, but are we supposed to sympathize?

If you are an American citizen, especially if you came to this country via birth to two American citizens, and especially if you live in a state that is removed from the Mexican-American border, it may be easy for you to contemplate those who are coming to America via illegal means as characterized by our current president during his election campaign: “When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best. They're not sending you. They're not sending you. They're sending people that have lots of problems, and they're bringing those problems with us. They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”

I think we need to take a closer look. One way to do that is to read this book.

Francisco Cantú worked for four years in the Border Patrol. He lived along the border. He shares stories in this book of his time working to capture and deport people. He shares the stories of the people he meets in his work, people who are trying to leave the violence of Mexico, people who want to make a better life for their families, people who are, I'm afraid, just like you and me. He shares stories of his life after he left the Border Patrol, when he befriended a fellow worker at a local coffee shop, an undocumented worker, it turns out, who returns to Mexico to see his dying mother and then cannot return home to his wife and three sons.

This book is a must-read for anyone who wants to know more about the complexities that center on immigration policies and their effects on human lives.

I think perhaps Francisco Cantu' has an interesting story to tell about why he chose to join the border patrol and why he later chose to leave it - unfortunately, for me this book wasn't it. To me this felt a bit like a rough draft - like an author just starting to organize his thoughts, waiting for an editor to help shape it into a cohesive narrative. I wish I could have read THAT story, but what I was given was this one. I picked it up because I was interested in why someone with Cantu's Mexican-American heritage would choose to enter service as a border patrol agent. I never felt like we were given the real answer to that question. The narrative certainly had interesting moments, but as a whole it never came together for me.