Chillin' With My Homies, the Border Patrol

Yesterday a couple of the other Las Americas interns/law clerks went over to Border Patrol headquarters for a Border presentation.  They gave us a little powerpoint about the organization for about an hour.  Apparently, El Paso is "Where the Legend Began," as it says on like every piece of furniture in there. They've been going at it "since 1924 with Pancho Villa," (at this point, a few of the interns glance at each other).  It was all around an interesting presentation, however.   The main guy, Joe Romero, was pretty personable and brought up a lot of interesting points that you don't normally think about.  It was good to get the border patrol's perspective on the issues, even if it was from the Public Affairs guy.  They opened with a disclaimer.  'We do not make the laws, we just enforce them.  For us it is black and white.  That is our job.  When we are not on duty, we vote.  That's how we voice our opinions.'  This is pretty fair, I think.  The other interns and I decided that if anyone's going to be pinned as the 'bad guy,' it would be ICE, not border patrol.  (ICE = Immigration and Customs Enforcement).  Both are under the Dept. of Homeland Security.  

I only had two major qualms about the presentation.  First, their definition of consent.  It came up when we were talking with them about the checkpoints that you have to go through to get out of El Paso.  These checkpoints are there to try and get the people and drug trafficers that make it past border patrol (El Paso usually isn't the final destination for people and drugs.  Hence the name.).  But often when you drive through checkpoints they just wave you on through without asking questions.  How, we asked, do you decide who to question or search?  They talked about experience telling you how to spot people with something to hide.  It's not necessarily about profiling, but when you watch thousands of drivers a day, you realize they all act the same except for that one guy that's sweating too much, or whose hand is shaking, or who was adjusting something four cars back.  They said there are cameras looking at each car before they even get to the checkpoint itself.  When they do decide to question someone (and this applies for random on-the-street encounters as well), they start with a "consensual" conversation: "Hey what's your name? Where are you going? Do you mind telling me what's in your briefcase?"  You can't search someone without reasonable suspicion, so you ask them questions that every joe shmoe supposedly has the right to ask another joe schmoe.  And supposedly, if it were actually a consensual conversation, joe schmoe could refuse to answer (case in point: random guy in a red truck pulled up next to me last week and asked if he could have my name.  I said no. No consent. I walked on.)  But if you don't answer their questions, that would probably make them suspicious enough to have the right to search your car. That is not consent, that is blackmail.  That is manipulation.  Call it like it is, homeboys, but don't dirty the beautiful thing that is consent (thanks, SSIS!). 

My other problem, though understandable from their perspective, is their focus on the criminal aspect.  Basically, a mere 4 years ago, they apprehended 128,000ish people a year.  Then they started putting up the new fence, started putting more agents on the front line, made themselves more visible, etc., and the next year it dropped to 75,000.  The year following that it dropped to 30,000, and this year they're expecting that to cut in half as well.  At the same time, the percentage of those apprehended with previous felonies has steadily risen to 20%.  They were very proud of this new criminal database they have access to which puts everyone into one system with their fingerprints.  This way, when they catch someone, they can know instantly if the person has a previous immigration or criminal record.  Blah blah blah efficiency and safety. So they spent a lot of time talking about this 20% of people coming in with previous records, and thank god that they are there to save America from them.  They make a good point, I'm happy that they're out there catching the sex offenders and serial killers that are booking it across the Rio Grande.  And yes, it is significant that 1 in 5 people they take in has a felony on their record.  But what of the other 80%? They did acknolwedge people coming for economic reasons, and that people are desperate and whatnot, but they also focused more on how this desperation can quickly force them to commit petty crimes.  Examples being: You just waded through the Rio Grande and ran up the bank, landing yourself in someone's backyard down in Segundo Barrio of El Paso.  In a place where rain is nonexistant for most of the year, your wet pants will be pretty hard to explain if you're stopped.  The owner's clothes are hanging out to dry, so you take them and change.  Joe talked a lot about these folks, and how, yes, though having a 10 foot wall in your backyard might not be asthetically pleasing, at least you don't have soaking we guys jumping in your window anymore to hide in your bathroom.  And they talked about the people with pecan orchard, who lose money when people run through their orchards because the machines can't pick up the pecans that fall in footprints.  

All good points, full of heartwrenching stories of pecan farmers and whatnot, but it's dehumanizing to only think about that aspect of it.  Though I do recognize that the border patrol has one role to do, which is to deter people from crossing illegally ("funnel them into the ports of entry").  Also, how much does a decrease in apprehensions in El Paso really mean that the immigration issue is being helped? They talked a lot about Tousan, which still has HUGE numbers of people crossing illegally (like 1,000 a day).  I wonder how much of the El Paso traffic was just moved elsewhere.  And if it's not all moved elsewhere, how many people are then STUCK in Juarez at the mercy of the cartels? 

After the powerpoint, we rode around in a car with them for two hours on a border tour.  I was glad to see that we weren't going to ride in an actual border patrol car, because I wasn't sure how I would explain to the day workers why they saw me and the rest of Las Americas riding shotgun with the border patrol.  

dWe first went to a land section of the border that has the older fence up.  The Build-A-Giant-Fence intiative did not allot money to replace old fencing.  These kids knew our agents pretty well because they take tours there a lot.  They asked us for a dollar.  The kid on the left started climbing the fence while the agents were talking to us.  I thought he was going to go over for a second, but he hopped down.  I missed the photo opp, of course.

I have a bunch of pictures but I'm not sure how to make them smaller on this site, and theres like 20 pictures, so that might be a little OD for one blog entry.  So i'll just post this one for now.  Sorry about the poor quality, I only had my camera phone with me (we didn't know about the border tour until we got there).  

They took us to another spot on the border that only had some rocks and a rope separating the two countries.  There were people having picnics on the other side.  At one point, a soccer ball bounced over and a kid stepped over the rope to get it.  Again, missed photo opp.  This was also the spot where the Rio Grande becomes the border.  There were people swimming on the US side and our agents got out of the car to yell at them.  Actually, this deserves a picture as well:dI think they mostly nicely told them to go back to the other side (our agents were pretty chill.  They made lots of jokes.  One was not so funny, and it might not have actually been a joke.  When they came back in the car, they said they might have to shoot pepper spray at them. ha...ha....?).  The guys in the river shouted back at them in not-so-nice words (read: SHUT UP YOU EGGHEAD! MOTHERF***ERS! B****!) and continued to swim. You can see there is another agent on the other bank.  I think they usually let people swim just inside the US border, because the levy that separates the countries makes the water on the US side much higher than the Mexico side, and much better for swimming (though I really wouldn't recommend swimming in that river).  But these guys were pushing their luck by going further in.  

Then we drove to the downtown area border, where we found some other border patrol people dealing with a group that was trying to crawl up a drain pipe that empties into the Rio Grande.  Apparently it's really dangerous because of the lack of oxygen/noxious gasses.  People die in there, so they have a special confined-spaces rescue team that deals with it.  This area is also where the new industrial-looking fence is.  Joe was telling us that this area is where it mattered most, because they had "seconds to minutes to apprehend" someone.  So anything that bought them time was helpful. Also, you can't drive through it like you can drive through chain link fences.  Apparently cars carrying narcotics and whatnot would just charge through the old fence if they were being chased and back across the river into Mexico.  (We watched some security footage of one such happening. pretty epic, I must say).  

We went to the repatriation center last.  I didn't take any pictures, because it just felt wrong.  It was a big room with the head honcho's office in the center, computers and desks in a square surrounding it, and then the holding cells lined the walls.  You could see into the cells through the large, grey tinted plexiglass windows.  Some unhappy looking fellows watched us from behind the plexiglass as we talked to the woman at a desk eating her enchiladas.  When people get deported, they come to the repatriation center before being escorted home.  ICE has to escort the people back across into Mexico (or to the airport if they're from elsewhere).  

There's a lot more I could write about what they said, but this post is already much too long.  Overall it was a really good/informative/interesting experience.  It was good to see things from the border patrol perspective, and it also humanized them.  They aren't these bastardized faces to me anymore, but real people tryin' to do their job right (though obviously with a little more positive spin than perhaps should be granted. Sorry guys, you are not a humanitarian organization.  But hey, keep telling yourselves that if it lets you sleep at night.) They DO do some really important stuff, and ultimately, Joe is right.  They don't make the laws, they enforce them.  If the laws are f***ed up, then the border patrol will be too.