The Line Becomes a River: Dispatches from the Border

“Look, I told [my mother], I spent four years in college studying international relations and learning about the border through policy and history. You can tell whoever asks that I’m tired of studying, I’m tired of reading about the border in books. I want to be on the ground, out in the field, I want to see the realities of the border day in and day out. I know it might be dangerous, but I don’t see any better way to truly understand the place. […] I don’t know if the border is a place for me to understand myself, but I know there’s something here I can’t look away from. Maybe it’s the closeness of life and death, maybe it’s the tension between the two cultures we carry inside us. Whatever it is, I’ll never understand it until I’m close to it.” 

Cantú’s conversation with his mother about his decision to join the Border Patrol provides a glimpse of his motivations. He spells out the tensions that interest him and his personal investment in border issues. For him, the job is less about arresting or deporting undocumented migrants and more about spending time seeing and experiencing the border for himself. Rather than studying the border from afar in abstract terms, Cantú recognizes that he feels a pull toward the border as a place, and that what is happening there that he is something he “can’t look away from.”

“On the way back to the station I asked Cole what would happen to the truck. He told me he’d call the tribal police to seize the vehicle, but I knew he wouldn’t. Even if he did, they wouldn’t come for it. They wouldn’t want the paperwork either.”

This interaction with Cole highlights the bureaucracy that the Border Patrol is steeped in. Cole is Cantú’s superior, and his willingness to pass off the paperwork to tribal police rather than doing it himself highlights the apathy inherent in being part of the bureaucratic government institution. Doing paperwork is useless because nothing worthwhile will happen as a result, and nothing they do with the truck will stop the influx of undocumented migrants and smuggling happening across the border.

“I felt a profound and immediate fear—not of the danger posed to us by the animal, but of the idea it might show itself to us, so many men armed and heedless.” 

Cantú expresses sympathy for the mountain lion that he and his fellow agents are facing off against. He subverts the reader’s expectations by expressing fear not of the animal itself but of the violence he and his fellow agents could do to the animal. Because Cantú is named for the patron saint of animals, he connects with them out in the desert as well as in his dreams. The reader is meant to reflect on who poses the greater danger at the border: the desert predators, the undocumented migrants, the human traffickers, or the Border Patrol, who are armed and dangerous, and who often act out of fear rather than understanding.

“There are days where I feel I am becoming good at what I do. And then I wonder, what does it mean to be good at this?” 

This question is reiterated throughout the book and prompts the reader to ask what exactly the Border Patrol’s purpose is. By posing the question of what it means to be a “good” Border Patrol agent, Cantú considers his own impact as an individual as well as the impact of the Border Patrol as an agency. What does it mean to be “good” at enforcing border-patrol policy, and who benefits from this work? This question reverberates throughout the book, especially Parts 1 and 2, which outline Cantú’s experience as a Border Patrol agent.

“But still, I have nightmares, visions of them staggering through the desert, men from Michoacán, from places I’ve known, men lost and wandering without food or water, dying slowly as they look for some road, some village, some way out. In my dreams I seek them out, searching in vain until finally I discover their bodies lying facedown on the ground before me, dead and stinking on the desert floor, human waypoints in a vast and smoldering expanse.” 

Cantú’s experiences in the field, particularly his interactions with undocumented migrants, haunt his dreams, as evidenced in this passage. The profound danger of border crossing in the desert, and the pervasive possibility of death, haunts Cantú. This is particularly upsetting for him because of his own Mexican American identity and the time he has spent in Mexico with family. Many of the migrants he encounters are “from places I’ve known,” meaning he feels a personal connection with them and their hometowns even though he knows they will most likely be deported back to Mexico.

“As I cut for sign along the border road, I watched a Sonoran coachwhip snake try to find its way into Mexico through the pedestrian fence. The animal slithered along the length of the mesh looking for a way south, hitting its head against the rusted metal again and again until finally I guided it over to the wide opening of a wash grate. After the snake had made its way across the adjacent road, I stood for a while looking through the mesh, staring at the undulating tracks left in the dirt.” 

Cantú’s connection with animals is apparent as he assists the Sonoran coachwhip, a desert snake, in crossing a pedestrian fence. He mentions that the snake is “hitting its head […] again and again” to anthropomorphize its actions. The reader could interpret this to symbolize both Cantú’s role in deporting undocumented migrants and the fluid nature of movement between borders. Nature does not install “borders” between countries the way that humans do, as indicated by the snake’s relative freedom of movement through the fence. The only thing that stops the snake from moving completely freely is the fence, which was erected by humans for human purposes.

“I dream in the night that I am grinding my teeth out, spitting the crumbled pieces into my palms and holding them in my cupped hands, searching for someone to show them to, someone who can see what is happening.” 

Cantú’s nightmares intensify, particularly those regarding his teeth. This passage stands out for the way that it ends, with his desire to show the teeth to someone “who can see what is happening.” In his waking life Cantú struggles to express the pain and conflict he experiences as a Border Patrol agent in the field. This dream reminds the reader that, in many ways, deep down he wishes someone could see and understand the trauma he is experiencing, and perhaps intervene before he is hurt any further.

“It was as if the surveyors wished to acknowledge how the border, no matter how painstakingly fixed upon the land, could go on to endlessly change its course with the whims of a river.”

This passage demonstrates how Cantú uses historical research to illuminate ambiguities, conflicts, and tensions to define the border both as a place and as a concept. A border is not a naturally occurring phenomenon, which is something surveyors in the 19th-century struggled to understand. Because much of the border aligns with the natural landscape of the desert, the physical space is often defined by the ever-changing terrain. Cantú uses the words “whims” to emphasize the unpredictable and capricious ways the landscape can change that do not fit into a country’s rigid ideals.

“As I paused to reload [the pistol], a yellow bird landed atop the target stand. I waited for it to fly off, but the bird continued hopping across the top. I started to walk downrange to scare it off, and then I stopped. I looked around. The range was empty. It occurred to me then that perhaps I should shoot the bird, that I should prove to myself that I could take a life, even one this small. I dropped the little bird with one shot. I walked over and picked up its body and in my hands the dead animal seemed weightless. I rubbed its yellow feathers with my fingertip. I began to feel sick and I wondered, for one brief moment, if I was going insane. At the edge of the firing range I dug a small hole beneath a creosote bush and buried the bird there, covering the fresh dirt with a small pile of stones.” 

This moment is pivotal because it is the first and only time we see Cantú purposely kill a living creature during his tenure as a Border Patrol agent. Birds, which Cantú feels a kinship with throughout the book, are an especially powerful creature for him to shoot. He explicitly states his fear that he is “going insane” due to his time in the field. This event occurs not long before he is transferred to work in intelligence and is meant to signal that his work in the field is negatively affecting his psyche. We also see Cantú’s regret and compassion for the bird, as evidenced by his decision to bury it and cover the grave with stones to prevent other creatures from digging up and eating the body. Though he shot the bird, Cantú feels intense sadness and guilt over killing an animal, a sign that he has not lost all his humanity. Unlike some of the other Border Patrol agents he meets, Cantú says the action of shooting a bird makes him feel “sick,” indicating that he is far less comfortable with killing a living creature or putting one in harm’s way even after his time in the field.

“You know, my mother said, it’s not just your safety I worry about. I know how a person can become lost in a job, how the soul can buckle when placed within a structure. You asked me once how it felt looking back on my career. Well, the Park Service is an institution, an admirable one, but an institution nonetheless. If I’m honest, I can see now that I spent my career slowly losing a sense of purpose even though I was close to the outdoors, close to places I loved. You see, the government took my passion and bent it to its own purpose. I don’t want that for you.” 

Toward the end of Part 1, we see Cantú’s mother attempt to discuss her concerns with his position as a Border Patrol agent. She focuses on how her own good intentions as she entered the Park Service were often twisted and perverted by the government institution. These institutions are meant to execute policy, not help and protect the citizens who work for them. Even as an employee within an “admirable” institution, she realized that she lost a “sense of purpose.” She now sees part of herself in him: an idealistic young adult who wants to understand the place they love while at the mercy of the government. Cantú’s mother knows better than anyone the impact the job will have her son, and she wishes for him to be safe and for his passion to not be taken from him for the government’s purposes.

“Victims’ faces were frozen in death, reverberating outward from the computer screen without identity or personal history, severed from the bodies they had inhabited and the human relations that sustained them.” 

Cantú’s new position working in intelligence, while meant to be a “break” from the chaos of field work, proves to be just as traumatic and terrifying. The blood, gore, torture, mutilation, and death that Cantú sees from afar continues to traumatize him, albeit in a different way than it did in person. Cantú’s imagination animates the photos he sees onscreen, as evidenced by their tendency to “reverberate outward” from the screen. He also introduces the troubling fact that his work in intelligence means the victims he researches or learns about are depersonalized and dehumanized by a lack of “identity or personal history.” Unlike in the field, where he could get to know the migrants he arrested, this job requires little human contact while taking in the deluge of consequential violence along the border.

“Thank God for Saint Francis, [my cousin] said, saving you from that terrible name. I nodded. I’d be a different person. She put her arm around my shoulder as we began to walk toward the rest of the group. That’s right, she said. A name is everything.” 

Throughout Part 2 Cantú returns to the idea of “naming” as an important and defining action. In addition to the story of his own namesake, Cantú’s family reminds him that if his mother had given him a “white” name, it would be entirely wrong for him, and he would be a different person. Cantú views San Francisco, his namesake, as a guide in understanding his life’s work. San Francisco’s compassion and drive for improving the lives of both humans and animals is informative of, and in tension with, Cantú’s work with the Border Patrol, which often dismisses the fluidity of nature and human movement/identity. For Cantú, a name is “everything” because it points him in the direction of human compassion and a love for nature, which eventually leads him to resign from his position.

“The number of border deaths, just like the number of drug war homicides, or the numbers that measure the death toll of the Mexican Revolution or the War of Independence, does little to account for all the ways that violence rips and ripples through a society, through the lives and minds of its inhabitants.” 

Cantú points to the difficulty of personalizing and humanizing the violence that happens along the border, particularly when the media or scholars mention large, seemingly intangible numbers. By mentioning not only border deaths but also drug war homicides, the Mexican Revolution, and the War of Independence, Cantú shows how violence “ripples” outward in our contemporary society, the same way it always has. Violence may not be new, but his project is to make these numbers more tangible for the reader. Even if he cannot identify, understand, or tell the stories of every person who has fallen victim to the violence along the border, his book on the whole is a step in that direction, one informed by history, sociology, psychology, and personal experience.

“Early in the afternoon, sitting in boredom, before the dual monitors of my workstation, I looked up to behold the massive image of a prairie falcon in one of the camera feeds at the front of the room. The bird had landed atop a distant surveillance tower somewhere in the rolling grasslands of eastern Arizona and was looking directly into the lens of the camera, as if to peer into the fluorescent airlessness of the office. I stood up from my chair and walked closer to meet the bird’s interrogating gaze. What cowardice has caused you to retreat from the desert? Why not return to the border’s smoldering edges, why not inhabit the quiet chaos churning in your mind? I took several steps toward the screen, as if to reach the bird. I’m afraid to come any closer, I wanted to whisper, I’m afraid the violence will no longer shake me.” 

Once again, Cantú is forced to interrogate his own mindset and values when confronted by a bird—in this case, a prairie falcon. The last time Cantú had a profound experience with a bird was the yellow one he killed at the shooting range in Part 1. In this passage Cantú does not see the bird in person but on a computer screen, which rattles him even more. Whenever he sees a bird, Cantú is reminded of the accountability and responsibility he must take for his own actions as a Border Patrol agent. If Cantú moves to El Paso, as Hayward has recently offered, he must reckon with the cold, distant, and jaded attitude he has adopted during this time as a Border Patrol agent and decide if he can live with this callousness. Cantú’s internal conversation with the falcon is meant to reveal his continued fear of what he is capable of as a Border Patrol agent and foreshadow that whatever happens in El Paso will determine his future as both an agent and a person.

“How’s your job? [my uncle] asked. I chewed an apple, thinking of how to reply. I wanted to tell him that I had reached a point at which I could barely sleep, a point at which my mind had become so filled with violence that I could barely perceive beauty in the landscape around me. I wanted to tell him I feared there was nothing for him here, that he would find no peace in these borderland deserts. I breathed a deep breath and looked over at the water held back by the sagging dam. The job is good, I finally said.” 

Cantú still struggles to share how the job weighs on him with those closest to him. The reader can see from Cantú’s syntax, specifically the longer sentences, his anxious line of thinking while debating how much to tell his uncle. The depth of his suffering feels too difficult to communicate to other people, and so he merely says that “the job is good.” While Cantú might, in theory, feel more comfortable confiding his difficult feelings with his uncle, a male familial role model who might understand the machismo inherent in serving for an agency like the Border Patrol, he still hesitates. This passage also reveals the evolution of Cantú’s feelings about the desert as a place of refuge as well as violence. Rather than a landscape of natural beauty and splendor, it has become a place “filled with violence,” where his uncle will find “no peace.” This is a stark difference from the attitude Cantú expressed at the beginning of the book.

“I held Juárez in my mind, and I felt a pull to go there, to walk confidently through its parks, its sidewalks, its market halls. I felt the city’s pull even as I knew, with sinking certainty, that I would not go, that something I had chosen now kept me from crossing over.” 

This passage reveals how Cantú’s time as a Border Agent changed his attitude about the border, especially during his time in El Paso and Ciudad Juárez. While Cantú felt comfortable going to Juárez before joining the Border Patrol, he now knows that his status as an agent puts him in danger if he does decide to visit. Even so, he still feels the “pull” to go to Mexico. Cantú sees El Paso and Ciudad Juárez perhaps as manifestations of the two sides of his heritage. The “pull” that Mexico has on him indicates that he still feels pulled toward his Mexican heritage, something that is in direct conflict with his work to arrest and deport migrants who risk their lives crossing the border. This inner turmoil will eventually influence his decision to resign.

“When I made the decision to apply for this job, I had the idea I’d see things in the patrol that would somehow unlock the border for me, you know? I thought I’d come up with all sorts of answers. And then working here, you see so much, you have all these experiences. But I don’t know how to put it into context, I don’t know where I fit in it all. I have more questions now than ever before. Beto sat glancing at me with short turns of his head. Damn, he finally said, that shit runs deep.” 

The reader finally sees Cantú confiding his conflicted feelings about the job with Beto. He admits that rather than finding answers during his time in the Border Patrol, he only has more questions, and he is unsure how to process everything he’s witnessed. This is important because it will influence Cantú’s decision to leave the Border Patrol to study abroad and pursue graduate school. Beto can’t engage with this confusion much more than to say “shit runs deep”—an acknowledgement of how serious these concerns are for Cantú as well as Beto himself.

“I often recognized subtle marks left by the crossing of the border, an understanding of its physical and abstract dimensions, a lingering impression of its weight. I sensed this knowledge in José as well, but there was little way to speak of something so imprecise, and so we regarded each other with nods and silences, with glances and gestures, with something that soon became friendship.” 

Cantú’s experience as a former Border Patrol agent allows him to understand José’s likely circumstances without being explicitly told his undocumented status. Cantú can recognize these “subtle marks” not only because he was an agent but because he has taken on some of these “marks” himself. The border has traumatized him like it has traumatized José. While they don’t discuss their experiences at first, they can understand it within one another, which creates a foundation for their friendship.

“I realized I had never before seen so many men and women in shackles, that I had never laid eyes on a group of people so diminished. I had apprehended and processed countless men and women for deportation, many of whom I sent without thinking to pass through this very room—but there was something dreadfully altered in their presence here between towering and cavernous walls, lorded over by foreign men in colored suits and black robes, men with little notion of dark desert nights or the hard glare of the sun, with little sense for the sweeping expanses of stone and shale, the foot-packed earthen trails, the bodies laid bare before the elements, the bones trembling from heat, from cold, from want of water.” 

When Cantú goes to the courthouse to help José’s family locate him during his hearing, he is confronted by what happened to the many migrants he arrested for deportation. The site of them in shackles, clearly beaten down by their journey, drives home the difficult consequences of Cantú’s work as a Border Patrol agent. He uses syntax here again to highlight the long, complicated, physically and emotionally taxing journey that these migrants took to cross the border, only to be caught and sent back. This is evident in the last sentence, a run-on that uses lyrical language to illustrate what some of these migrants likely endured before being arrested and deported. One interpretation of this could be that the magnitude of the arrests Cantú made fully hits him in this moment. Another interpretation might be that he wishes to repeatedly continue humanizing these migrants to ensure the reader does not grow apathetic or callous about what undocumented migrants go through to arrive in the United States.

“I smiled and nodded, wondering if that’s what this really was, if I was merely being driven to make good for the lives I had sent back across the line. If I was seeking to dole out some paltry reparation. If I was seeking redemption, I wondered, what would redemption look like?” 

Throughout Part 3 Cantú wonders if he is seeking redemption and what redemption for his work with the Border Patrol would look like. Cantú questions the notion of redemption throughout the book, and one could argue that recording his experiences and publishing them is inherently a nod toward redemption or “making good” on actions he now deems as “bad.” Though he arrested many undocumented migrants, Cantú focuses in on helping José, Lupe, and their sons. While this cannot make up for the people he deported, he sees assisting the family with translation and transportation as a small acknowledgement of the part he played in many deportations. This does not assuage his guilt or pain, however.

“You are no longer severed from what it means to send someone back across the border. You know what’s keeping [José] away, what keeps him from his family. It’s something close to you, something that’s become a part of you.” 

Cantú’s mother says this when he informs her that José was deported. She spells out the uncanny and unsettling pain that Cantú feels now that he has both deported migrants and watched a migrant he befriended go through the deportation process. This experience informs Cantú’s understanding of the border as he wished to experience it at the beginning of the book. José’s deportation forces Cantú to personalize and humanize the experiences of migrants he arrested as a Border Patrol agent, the pain of which Cantú has repressed for a long time. His mother forces him to reckon with this and the ways it has become a part of him.

“The part of you that is capable of violence, [my mother] said, maybe you wish to be rid of it, to wash yourself of it, but it’s not that easy. I sat back in my seat and stared up at the ceiling, listening to my mother’s voice. You spent nearly four years on the border, she said. You weren’t just observing a reality, you were participating in it. You can’t exist within a system for that long without being implicated, without absorbing its poison. And let me tell you, it isn’t something that’s just going to slowly go away. It’s part of who you’ve become. So what will you do? All you can do is try to find a place to hold it, a way to not lose some purpose for it all.” 

This passage, spoken by Cantú’s mother, is aimed as much at the reader as it is at Cantú. Cantú must accept the part of himself that was capable of violence as a Border Patrol agent; the reader is also likely a citizen “participating” in a violent and racist government system. Both must question what violence they may have inflicted, witnessed, or been complicit in, even from afar. As Cantú’s research show, trauma and violence can be inflicted indirectly and from a distance, which implicates our larger society that allows deportations and family separation to happen. The “poison” that Cantú has absorbed is guilt, which manifests as the pain, trauma, and stress that plagues him in his nightmares and beyond. Cantú’s mother suggests that rather than fighting the guilt, he must make peace with his actions and decide how he will repurpose his experiences in the Border Patrol and with José’s family to do something good in the future.

“They are sending people to commit suicide. I will do anything to be on the other side. To be honest, I’d rather be in prison in the U.S. and see my boys once a week through the glass than to stay here and be separated from my family. At least I would be closer to them.” 

Cantú allows José to speak in his own voice. In addition to humanizing and personalizing José’s story by allowing him to have the last word, this ensures the reader understands José’s determination to cross the border again and the stakes of this choice. By stating that he would rather be incarcerated or dead than permanently separated from his family, José makes clear that he will never give up trying to cross.