Why Immigration Agents Don’t Quit in Protest
The New Yorker · Francisco Cantú ·
Former Border Patrol officer Francisco Cantú on how a culture of dehumanization and denial keeps ICE and Border Patrol personnel “at war with an enemy that does not fight back.”
The man, who appeared to be in his early twenties, had lived in Arizona since he was eight years old—longer than Childress had been in the state himself. A few months earlier, the man had hosted a barbecue at his house, and neighbors had called in a noise complaint. The police came, asked for the man’s I.D., and reported him to immigration authorities, who deported him to Mexico. Childress asked why the man hadn’t sought Dreamer status under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which provides protection from deportation for certain undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children. The man explained that he had wanted to, but his father had been afraid that the paperwork was a trick meant to entrap them.
Childress listened as the man described the mountain town where he’d grown up, a place that sounded much like the community where Childress was raised, in rural Colorado. “I barely speak Spanish,” the man told Childress. “I don’t know anybody in Mexico. I’ve been down there wandering around for three months, trying to figure out what to do, and I decided, You know what? I’ll take my chances and come back here. And then I fell from the fence and broke my leg.”
The doctor arrived and announced that the man had suffered a complete fracture and recommended that he seek surgery as soon as he was back in Mexico. If the injury went untreated, the doctor warned, it could lead to sepsis. For now, he said, the man would be fitted with a temporary cast and returned to Border Patrol custody.
Read the full story at The New Yorker · All coverage of this story