cover
Vintage

CONTENTS

Cover
About the Book
About the Author
Dedication
Title Page
Prologue
I
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
II
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
III
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Copyright

ABOUT THE BOOK

How does a line in the sand become a barrier people will risk everything to cross?

Francisco Cantú was a US Border Patrol agent from 2008 to 2012. He worked the desert along the Mexican border, at the remote crossroads of drug routes and smuggling corridors, tracking humans through blistering days and frigid nights across a vast terrain.

He detains the exhausted and the parched. He hauls in the dead. He tries not to think where the stories go from there.

He is descended from Mexican immigrants, so the border is in his blood. But the line he is sworn to defend is dissolving. Haunted by nightmares, he abandons the Patrol for civilian life. And when an immigrant friend is caught on the wrong side of the border, Cantú faces a final confrontation with a world he believed he had escaped.

The Line Becomes a River is timely and electrifying. It brings to life this landscape of sprawling borderlands and the countless people who risk their lives to cross it. Yet it takes us beyond one person’s experience to reveal truths about life on either side of an arbitrary line, wherever it is.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Francisco Cantú served as an agent for the United States Border Patrol from 2008 to 2012, working in the deserts of Arizona, New Mexico and Texas.

A former Fulbright fellow, he is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize and a 2017 Whiting Award. His writing and translations have been featured in The Best American Essays, Harper’s, n+1, Orion, and Guernica, as well as on This American Life. He lives in Tucson, Arizona.

To my mother and grandfather, for giving me life and a name; and to all those who risk their souls to traverse or patrol an unnatural divide

Title page for The Line Becomes A River

PROLOGUE

MY MOTHER AND I drove east across the flatlands, along the vast floor of an ancient sea. We had come to West Texas to spend Thanksgiving in the national park where my mother worked as a ranger during the years when I formed my first childhood memories—images of wooded canyons and stone mountains rising up from the earth, the sound of wind whipping across low desert hills, the warmth of the sun beating down upon endless scrublands.

As we neared the Guadalupe Mountains we passed an expanse of salt flats and I asked my mother to stop the car. She pulled onto the shoulder and we walked out together across broken earth. We stood looking north toward the Guadalupes, towering remnants of a Permian reef once submerged beneath the inland waters of Pangaea. A cool November wind blew against our bodies like a slow current of water and I bent down to touch the ground, breaking off a piece of white crust and rubbing it between my fingers. I touched my tongue and looked up at my mother. It tastes like salt, I told her.

Inside the park, my mother and I waited at the visitor center while a uniformed woman stood at the reception desk with a pair of visitors, patiently explaining the park’s camping fees and hiking options. When the visitors turned to walk away, the woman caught sight of us and a smile spread across her face. She hurried over from behind the desk and reached out to hug my mother before taking a step back to look at me. She stood for a moment in disbelief. Ay mijo, the last time I saw you, you were barely this tall. She held her hand down at her knees. Are you still in Arizona? she asked us. Mom is, I said, but I went away for college in Washington. Her eyes grew wide. The capital? I nodded. Qué impresionante. And what are you studying? International relations, I told her. He’s studying the border, my mother added. We’re staying in El Paso on our way back so he can visit Ciudad Juárez.

The woman shook her head. You better be careful, she said, Juárez is dangerous. She stared at me with her hands on her hips and then reached out to touch my shoulder. You know, I still remember babysitting you when you were a little chamaquito. She looked down at my shoes. All you wanted back then was to be a cowboy. You would wear those little cowboy boots and that little cowboy hat and run around with my boys in the backyard, chasing each other with those little plastic guns. My mother grinned. I remember it too, she said.

The next morning, my mother and I woke early to hike through a canyon that stretched upward into the wooded backside of the Guadalupes. As we walked, my mother became a guide again, pointing at the quivering yellow leaves of a bigtooth maple, reaching out to touch the smooth red bark of a madrone tree. She bent down and plucked the dried shell of a dragonfly larva from a blade of grass and slowly turned it in her dirt-smudged hands. She looked up the trail toward the slow-rolling waters of the stream and began to speak to me of the glistening arthropod, explaining how it would have sloughed its skin to flit upon the swirling winds of the canyon. She cradled its exoskeleton in her hands like a sacred object. Dragonflies migrate as birds do, she told me, beating their papery wings for days on end across rolling plains, across long mountain chains, across the open sea.

My mother left the trail and sat on a rock at the edge of the stream, removing her shoes and socks. She rolled her pants to the base of her knees and waded into the water, tensing her shoulders at its coolness. She invited me to join her, but I shook my head and sat alone in the dappled sunlight on the bank. My mother stepped over rocks and fallen branches, pointing at the way the water flowed over an exposed root, the way the sun shone brightly on a clump of green grass. She bent over and touched the surface of the water, rubbing her wet hands on her face. As I collected fallen maple leaves, my mother reached down and pulled a handful of pebbled limestone from the streambed. Come, she called to me with dripping hands. Touch the water.

That night, as we sat in a backcountry research station eating precooked turkey and instant stuffing, I asked my mother why she had joined the Park Service all those years ago. She stabbed her fork at a piece of stuffing. I joined because I wanted to be outdoors, she told me, because the wildlands were a place where I could understand myself. I hoped that as a park ranger I could awaken people’s love for nature, that I could help foster their concern for the environment. She glanced up from her plate. I wanted to guard the landscape against ruin, she said, to protect the places I loved. I sat back in my chair. And how does it feel now, I asked, looking back on it? My mother set down her fork and ran her finger along the wood grain at the edge of the table. I don’t know yet, she said.

The following day, my mother and I left the park and drove west. As we came into El Paso that evening, I gazed out at the lights spreading across the floor of the desert valley, trying to make out where the United States ended and Mexico began. At our motel, a bespectacled clerk made small talk with my mother as he checked us in. What brings you to El Paso? he asked. My mother smiled. My son is researching the border, she said. The border? The man looked at us over the top of his glasses. I’ll tell you about the border. He pointed beyond the glass doors of the motel to a grassy hillside at the parking lot’s edge. You see out there? Used to be I would watch that grass move every night. Wasn’t long before I realized it wasn’t wind moving the grass, it was wetbacks sneaking across the line. The man smirked. But the grass hardly moves anymore, if you know what I mean. You don’t see wets in people’s yards these days. My mother and I nodded awkwardly as the man chuckled, handing us the keys to our room.

The next morning we parked at the Santa Fe Street Bridge and walked south toward the border. We followed a steady stream of crossers through a caged walkway that stretched over the concrete channel where the barely flowing water of the Rio Grande separated El Paso from Ciudad Juárez. As we neared the other end of the bridge, I watched as a bleary-eyed man said goodbye to his wife and son. The boy stood crying next to a groaning turnstile as his mother and father held each other in a long embrace. On the other side of the revolving gate, my mother and I were waved past an inspection table by a Mexican customs agent dressed in black. My mother turned to me. They don’t want to see our passports? she asked. I shrugged. I guess not.

We left the port of entry and made our way down Avenida Benito Juárez past throngs of taxi drivers and snack vendors. We walked by blaring speakers and brightly painted storefronts—past liquor stores and pawn shops, dental offices and discount pharmacies, past taquerías and casas de cambio and signs advertising seguros, ropa, botas. After several blocks my mother asked if we could find somewhere to sit. We crossed the street to Plaza Misión de Guadalupe, where she quickly slumped down onto a bench. I need to catch my breath, she said, my heart’s racing. Are you all right? I asked. She took in a breath and looked all around her, placing a hand on her chest. I’m fine, just a little overwhelmed. I glanced up at the sun. Listen, I’m going to get you some water. I touched her shoulder and pointed at a market across the street.

Inside the shop I stood behind two women discussing politics in the checkout line. I’m glad it will be Calderón, one woman said to the other. We need a president who will be hard on crime, someone to take on the delincuentes and clean up the streets. The other woman shook her head vigorously as she paid the shopkeeper for a carton of cigarettes and package of pan dulce. No entiendes, she said to her friend. The problem doesn’t come from the streets.

My mother drank thirstily from the bottle of water, sighing deeply as I consulted a pocket map we had taken from the hotel. We’re close to Mercado Juárez, I told her, we can sit there and get something to eat while you rest. She nodded and took her time looking up and down the street before lifting herself from the park bench. We walked slowly down the sidewalk past the brick dome of the Aduana Fronteriza and turned to make our way down Calle 16 de Septiembre. A block from the mercado we stood at an intersection choked with cars, waiting for the signal to turn green. Then, as we made our way across four lanes of traffic, my mother cried out and fell to her hands in the middle of the street. I turned in panic and kneeled down at her side with my arms around her shoulders. Are you okay? I asked. She breathed through her teeth and gestured down at her foot, twisted in a pothole. You’ve got to get up, I told her, we’ve got to get out of the street. I looked up at the signal, flashing its red hand. I tried to drag her to her feet, but she shouted and winced, breathing in short gasps. It’s my ankle, she said, I can’t move it.

I stood in the intersection as the light turned green, holding my hands out to the line of cars. I glanced toward the mercado and saw a man running from the sidewalk. In front of us, a woman stepped out of her car and came to kneel at my mother’s side. Tranquila, she whispered, tranquila.

A man in a cowboy hat stepped down from his idling truck and turned to the cars behind him, motioning for them to stand by. The man who had run from the mercado touched me on the back. Te ayudo, he told me, qué pasó? My hands were shaking as I gestured at my mother. No puede caminar. The man stood on the other side of her and made a lifting motion with his hands outstretched. We bent down together and slung my mother’s arms around our shoulders. The woman at my mother’s side reached out to touch her—vas a estar bien, she told her before turning to walk back to her car. My mother hopped up on one leg as I lifted her with the other man, and we shuffled together toward the sidewalk. We helped my mother sit against a concrete wall and I turned to watch the traffic roll again down the street.

I kneeled down and looked at my mother’s hands, smudged black from the asphalt. Do we need to call an ambulance? I asked her. She opened her eyes and tried to slow her breathing. I don’t think so, she said. Just let me sit. I looked up at the man and stood to take his hand. Gracias, I told him, not knowing what else to say. The man shook his head. It’s nothing. In Juárez we take care of one another. He patted me on the back and gestured for me to sit down with my mother. When you’re done here, he suggested, come visit my stand in the mercado. I’ll be there with my mother, we’ll make some quesadillas for the both of you. Before turning to leave he looked at me and raised his eyebrows. Aquí están en su casa.

I

IN THE DREAM I am hunched over in the darkness. The floor of the cave is covered with black shapes, arms and legs severed from the bodies that once carried them. I touch them and hold them in my hands, feeling dirt and blood and cold skin. I sort through the parts for a head, for the remnants of a face, for something to identify the people who were deposited here. I leave the cave empty-handed, emerging into a landscape devoid of color, the air still and raw. Outside, a voice tells me I must visit a wolf in a nearby cave. When I arrive there, little light is left in the sky. I walk through a stone passageway until I must squint to see through the darkness. At the back of the cave I can make out the rough shape of an animal circling in the shadows. Soon I discern the outline of a wolf walking slowly toward me, one paw placed silently before the next. As the animal approaches, my body swells with terror. I look over my shoulder and see the figure of my mother, gesturing for me to hold out my hand, to offer it to the wolf. I look forward and hold out my arm, breathing deeply as I open my palm. The wolf slowly comes near, stretching its neck to sniff my hand with its massive muzzle. The animal seems truly fearsome, but also wise. As it steps back to regard me, I sense that something is being communicated. The wolf approaches me again, this time standing slowly on its back legs and reaching for me, placing its paws on my chest. I am startled by the size of the paws, how heavy they feel against my chest. The wolf leans into me and brings its face close to mine, as if to tell me a secret. I close my eyes and feel its hot breath against my cheeks, its wet tongue on my face, licking the insides of my mouth. Then, suddenly, I awake.

WE WERE ON our way into town, speeding across the cold and brittle grasslands of New Mexico, when I heard about Santiago. Morales must have told me, or maybe it was Hart. I called Santiago as soon as I found out. You don’t have to quit, I told him, you can still finish, you should stay. I can’t, he said, it’s not the work for me. I should go back to Puerto Rico, I should be with my family. I wished him luck and told him I was sorry to see him go. He thanked me and said to finish for the both of us, and I promised I would.

Of all my classmates, it was Santiago I most wanted to see graduate. He marched out of step, his gear was a mess, he couldn’t handle his weapon, and it took him well over fifteen minutes to run the mile and a half. But he tried harder than any of us. He sweated the most, yelled the loudest. He was thirty-eight years old, an accountant from Puerto Rico, a husband and a recent father. The day before he quit, he left the firing range with a pocket full of live rounds and the instructors ordered him to sing “I’m a Little Teapot” in front of the class. He didn’t know the song, so they suggested “God Bless America.” He belted out the chorus at the top of his lungs, his chest heaving after each line as he gasped for air, thick with the smell of shit blowing in from the nearby dairy farms. We laughed, all of us, at his thick accent, at the misremembered verses, at his voice, off-key and quaking.

In town, over drinks, Hart went on about the winters in Detroit. I can’t go back there, he said, not like Santiago. Fuck that. He glared down at his beer and then looked up at us. You know what I did before this? he asked. Morales and I shook our heads. I was a clerk at a rent-a-car desk in the goddamned airport. You know how many times I handed car keys to people who wouldn’t even look me in the face? Guys who would glance at the tattoos on my arms like I was some thug, like I was some pathetic black kid part-timing outside the ghetto. Hart gripped his glass of beer. But more than any of that, I’m sick and tired of the winter.

Hart looked up from the table and mustered a smile. How about winter in Arizona? he asked. Morales laughed. You don’t have to worry about snow where we’re going, vato, that’s for sure. Hart thought it sounded nice. Sure, I said, but wait until the summer. Have you ever felt 115-degree heat? Hell no, Hart answered. Well, I told him, we’ll be out in it, fetching dead bodies from the desert. Hart looked puzzled. Who the fuck walks through the desert when it’s 115? he asked. I drank through the final gulp of another beer. Migrants used to cross in the city, I told him, in places like San Diego and El Paso, until the Border Patrol shut it all down in the nineties with fences and new recruits like us. Politicians thought if they sealed the cities, people wouldn’t risk crossing in the mountains and the deserts. But they were wrong, and now we’re the ones who get to deal with it. Hart lost interest in my rambling and attempted to flag down the server to order another beer. Morales stared at the table and then glanced up at me, his eyes dark and buried beneath his brow. Sorry for the lecture, I told them. I studied this shit in school.

On our way back to the academy, I sat in the backseat of Morales’s truck. In the front, Morales told Hart about growing up on the border in Douglas, about his uncles and cousins on the south side. Hart asked what kind of food they ate and Morales told him about hot bowls of menudo and birria in the morning, about the stands in Agua Prieta that sold tacos de tripa all through the night. Morales described how his mother made tortillas, how his grand-mother prepared tamales at Christmastime, and I sat listening to his voice with my head against the cold glass of the window, staring at the darkened plain, slipping in and out of sleep.

ROBLES ORDERED US from the mat room into the spinning room and we each took our place atop a stationary bicycle. At the front of the room, Robles climbed atop a machine that had been situated to face us and shouted for us to begin pedaling. At no point should your legs stop moving, he yelled. When I say stand, lift your ass off the seat and keep it in the air until I tell you to sit. He snapped his head toward a stout man in the front row named Hanson. Is that clear, Mr. Hanson? Yes sir, Hanson shouted, already out of breath.

As the minutes passed, Robles prodded us to work harder—sit, he shouted, move those legs, stand. Your body is a tool, he announced, the most important one you have. A baton is nothing, a Taser is nothing, even your gun is nothing if you give up on your body when it becomes tired, if you can’t hold it together when every muscle cries out for you to quit. In the Border Patrol, Robles continued, you will be tested—I can promise you that. In my time, I have taken a life and I have saved a life. When I was brand-new to the field, like all of you will be, my journeyman and I jumped a group of El Sals in the lettuce fields outside Yuma. A man ran from us and I chased after him until I thought my legs would give out. I stumbled and tripped over dirt berms and rows of lettuce, but I kept chasing him until we came to the edge of a canal and the man turned to face me. He came at me before I could react and we went to the ground fighting. If I had given up, maybe the man would have killed me. But I didn’t. I grappled with him in the dirt until I knocked him over the edge of the canal into the water. The man couldn’t swim, none of them can, and so an hour later me and my journeyman fished his dead body out of the water at a buoy line.

Robles’s eyes seemed to detach from his surroundings, as if his gaze had turned inward. A year after that, he continued, I chased another man to the banks of the Colorado River. He ran out into the water and was swept away by the current like it was nothing. And I’ll tell you what I did. I swam into the river and I battled to keep him afloat even as I inhaled mouthfuls of water, even though I can’t remember ever having been more tired. I saved that man’s life, and still, there’s not a single day I don’t think about the one I took before it.

As Robles fell silent, we stood sweating over our bikes, our legs pedaling weakly. In the front row, Hanson dropped his head, his ass falling to the seat. Robles snapped his gaze from the middle of the room and turned his head toward Hanson. Get back up there, he roared. Don’t give up on me, Mr. Hanson. Do not give up.

As the sound of our labored breathing settled back over the room, I thought briefly of the man from El Salvador and wondered how the news of his death might have arrived to his family, floating in the air like a corpse in black water. At the front of the room I watched Robles standing tall atop his bicycle, sweat dripping from his brow as he thrust his shoulders downward with each stroke of his legs. I wondered at his unwavering exertion, if his body was still being driven to make good for the life he had seen blink out in the swift currents of the canal. I wondered if he thought of his body as a tool for destruction or as one of safekeeping. I wondered, too, about my body, about what sort of tool it was becoming.

BEFORE WE TOOK to the range one afternoon, the firearms instructor gave the class a PowerPoint presentation in a darkened room. Agents arrested more than 700,000 aliens on the border last year, he told us. If you think that’s bad, when I first got to the field eight years ago, back in 2000, that number was over one and a half million. And I’m here to tell you that not everybody coming across that line is a good person looking for honest work.

Our instructor beamed images of drug war victims onto a screen, grisly photos of people killed by the cartels in Mexico. In one image, three heads floated in a massive ice chest. In another, a woman’s body lay discarded in the desert, her feet bound, a severed hand stuffed into her mouth. The instructor paused on an image of a cattle truck with twelve dead bodies stacked in the back, all of them blindfolded and shot execution-style. These twelve weren’t gangsters, he told us, they were migrants kidnapped and killed for some meager and meaningless ransom. The next image showed a group of Mexican policemen shot dead in the street, and then an image of a bloodied body slumped in a car seat—a newly elected mayor who had promised to clean up the drug violence in his town, shot dead on his first day in office.

This is what you’re up against, our instructor told us, this is what’s coming.

SO FAR SEVEN have quit, whittling our class down to forty-three. Sullivan left exactly one week after Santiago. I didn’t know him but his roommate said he complained a lot. Serra, one of only three women in the class, quit two days later and no one knew why. She kept to herself, everyone said. Golinski went next, taking indefinite medical leave for a hairline fracture around his left knee. When I saw him at the computer lab the night before he left, I asked him what he would do when he got back home. He looked at me as if he didn’t understand the question. I’ll wait for my knee to heal and come back to the academy, he told me. I’ve had two tours in Iraq—I know I can do this job.

Hanson quit after receiving a job offer from his hometown police department in Illinois. It pays almost as well, he told us, and I won’t have to move my wife and kids. On Hanson’s last day at the academy, Robles lined us up at the start of PT and had us stand shirtless while he measured our body fat percentage. Hanson stood next to me in formation and I saw for the first time the loose skin that hung from his waist. When Robles came to take his measurements he glanced at the extra skin and then up at Hanson’s face. How much weight did you lose? Robles asked. A hundred eighty pounds in a year and a half, Hanson said, staring straight ahead. Robles nodded. Let’s hope you never put it back on.

Dominguez, Hart’s roommate, was next to quit, dropping out after failing his third law test. For days I wondered if I could have done more to help him pass. One night Hart and I sat eating dinner together at a cafeteria table. Why didn’t you invite him to study with us? I asked. He was your roommate, you should have looked after him. Hart looked at me incredulously. Fuck you, he said, tossing his dinner roll onto his plate. Dominguez could have passed if he wanted to. He was too busy talking on the fucking phone all night. Listen, he said, Dominguez was smart enough to pass the U.S. citizenship test in high school and he was smart enough to earn a bachelor’s degree in construction management after that. You’re not the only one who went to college. Hell, he was even smart enough to run his own construction business before the housing market went to shit, did you know that? Hart picked the dinner roll off his plate and ripped off a bite. Instead of studying, he continued, Dominguez spent all his free time talking to his family, and it’s sure as hell not my fault or anyone else’s. I sat thinking for several moments. What did they talk about? I finally asked. Hart shrugged his shoulders. How should I know, he said, I don’t speak Spanish.

MY MOTHER FLEW in from Arizona to see me for Christmas. She picked me up from the academy on Christmas Eve and we drove through the straw-colored hills, leaving behind the trembling Chihuahuan grasslands as we climbed into evergreen mountains. We stayed the night in a two-room cabin, warm and bright with pinewood. We sat in chairs around the living room table, decorating a miniature tree with tiny glass bulbs. Then, wrapped in blankets, we laughed and drank eggnog with brandy until the conversation finally descended into a discussion of my impending work.

Listen, my mother said, I spent most of my career as a park ranger, so I’ve got nothing against you working for the government. But don’t you think it’s sort of below you, earning a degree just to become a border cop? When people ask about you back home and I tell them you’re in law enforcement, they give me the strangest looks. I realize I don’t know what more to tell them, I don’t really understand what you want from this work.

I took a deep breath. Look, I told her, 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 ugly, I know it might be dangerous, but I don’t see any better way to truly understand the place.

My mother stared at me, blinking rapidly. Are you crazy? she asked. There are a hundred other ways of knowing a place. You grew up near the border, living with me in deserts and national parks. The border is in our blood, for Christ’s sake—your great-grandparents brought my father across from Mexico when he was just a little boy. When I married, I insisted on keeping my maiden name so that you’d always carry something from your grandfather’s family, so you’d never forget your heritage. How’s that for knowing the border?

I lowered my voice. I’m grateful for those things, I told her, but having a name isn’t the same as understanding a place. I gestured toward the window. I want to be outside. Not in a classroom, not in an office, not sitting at a computer, not staring at papers. Do you remember, I asked my mother, how you joined the Park Service because you wanted to be outdoors, because you felt you could understand yourself in wild places? My mother narrowed her eyes at me as if I had suddenly changed the subject. It’s not that different, I said. 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 desert, 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 unless I’m close to it.

My mother shook her head. You make it sound like you’ll be communing with nature and having heartfelt conversations all day. The Border Patrol isn’t the Park Service. It’s a paramilitary police force. I glared at her. You don’t have to tell me that, I said—I’m the one getting my ass kicked at the academy.

Listen, I know you don’t want your only son turning into a heartless cop. I know you’re afraid the job will turn me into someone brutal and callous. Those people who look at you funny when you tell them I’m in the Border Patrol probably imagine an agency full of white racists out to kill and deport Mexicans. But that’s not me, and those aren’t the kind of people I see at the academy. Nearly half my classmates are Hispanic—some of them grew up speaking Spanish, some grew up right on the border. Some went to college, like me. Some went to war, some owned businesses, some worked dead-end jobs, some are fresh out of high school. Some are fathers and mothers with their own children. These people aren’t joining the Border Patrol to oppress others. They’re joining because it represents an opportunity for service, stability, financial security—

My mother interrupted me. But you could work anywhere you want, she said, you graduated with honors.

So what? I asked. This isn’t necessarily a lifelong career choice. Think of it as another part of my education. Imagine what I’ll learn—imagine the perspective I’ll gain. Look, I know you’re not an enforcement-minded person, but the reality of the border is one of enforcement. I might not agree with every aspect of U.S. border policy, but there is power in understanding the realities it creates. Maybe after three or four years I’ll go back to school to study law, maybe I’ll work to shape new policies. If I become an immigration lawyer or a policy maker, imagine the unique knowledge I’ll bring, imagine how much better I’ll be at the job because of my time in the Border Patrol.

My mother sighed and looked up at the ceiling. There are ways to learn these things that don’t put you at risk, she said, ways that let you help people instead of pitting you against them. But that’s just it, I offered—I can still help people. I speak both languages, I know both cultures. I’ve lived in Mexico and traveled all across the country. I’ve seen towns and villages that were emptied out by people going north for work. Good people will always be crossing the border, and whether I’m in the Border Patrol or not, agents will be out there arresting them. At least if I’m the one apprehending them, I can offer them some small comfort by speaking with them in their own language, by talking to them with knowledge of their home.

Fine, my mother said, fine. But you must understand you are stepping into a system, an institution with little regard for people.

I looked away from her and a silence hung between us. I glanced down at my hands and weighed my mother’s words. Maybe you’re right, I replied, but stepping into a system doesn’t mean that the system becomes you. As I spoke, doubts flickered through my mind. I smiled at my mother. The first job I ever had was bussing dishes with migrants from Guanajuato, I reminded her. I’m not going to lose sight of that. I’m not going to become someone else.

Good, my mother said. I hope you’re right.

We hugged, and my mother told me she loved me, that she was happy I’d soon be working back in Arizona, closer to her. Before bed, we each opened a single present, as we had done every Christmas Eve since I could remember.

In the morning we ate brunch at the town’s historic hotel, feasting on pot roast by a crackling fire. Afterward we climbed the stairs to a narrow lookout tower where people huddled together in jackets, walking in slow circles to take in the view. Below us, a sunlit basin stretched westward from the base of the mountains. I watched as the landscape shifted under the winter light. Behind me, my mother placed her hand on my shoulder and pointed to a cloud of gypsum sand in the distance, impossibly small, swirling across the desert below.

AT GRADUATION WE stood before friends and loved ones in our campaign hats and full-dress uniforms with iron-creased pant legs and shirtsleeves, our boots and brass buckles polished to shine under the fluorescent light of the academy’s auditorium. Our instructors made speeches about the value of our training, about the importance of our pending duties. We received awards, badges were pinned to our chests. We stood side by side and turned to face our audience, holding up our right hands as we stared steely-eyed at the room’s pale walls. I do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.

WE CAUGHT OUR first dope load only two days after arriving at the station. We were east of the port of entry when a sensor hit, just three miles away. At the trailhead, Cole, our supervisor, pointed to a mess of footprints stamped in the dirt. He followed the prints up the trail and after several minutes motioned for us to pile out of the vehicles. We’ve got foot sign for eight, he told us, keep quiet and follow me.

For five miles we walked toward the mountains with Cole leading the way. He called us up one by one to watch us cut the sign. Keep your vision soft, he told us, scan the ground about five or six yards out. Try to cut with the sun in front of you, never at your back, so that the sign catches the light. If a trail gets hard to cut, look for small disturbances—toe digs, heel prints, kicked-over rocks, the shine of pressed-in dirt, fibers snagged on spines and branches. If you lose the sign, go back to where you last had it. Learn to read the dirt, he said, it’s your bread and butter.

We found the first bundle discarded among the boulders at the base of the pass. They must have seen us coming, Cole said. He directed us to spread out to comb the hillsides, and after ten minutes we had recovered two backpacks filled with food and clothes and four additional bundles wrapped in sugar sacks spray-painted black. Those ought to be about fifty pounds each, Cole told us. He kicked one of the bundles with his foot. Two hundred fifty pounds of dope—not bad for your second day in the field. I asked Cole if we should follow the foot sign up into the pass, if we should try to track down the backpackers. Hell no, he said, you don’t want to bring in any bodies with your dope if you can help it. Suspects mean you have a smuggling case on your hands, and that’s a hell of a lot of paperwork—we’d have to stay and work a double shift just to write it up. Besides, he said, the prosecutors won’t take it anyway. Courts here are flooded with cases like this. He smiled. Abandoned loads are easy though. You’ll see.

Cole had us dump the backpacks and I watched as several of my classmates ripped and tore at the clothing, scattering it among the tangled branches of mesquite and palo verde. In one of the backpacks I found a laminated prayer card depicting Saint Jude, a tongue of flames hovering above his head. Morales found a pack of cigarettes and sat smoking on a rock as others laughed loudly and stepped on a heap of food. Nearby, Hart giggled and shouted to us as he pissed on a pile of ransacked belongings.

As we hiked with the bundles back to our vehicles, the February sun grew low in the sky and cast a warm light over the desert. At the edge of the trail, in the pink shade of a palo verde, a desert tortoise raised itself on its front legs to watch us pass.

AT NIGHT WEAfter