In particular, he explains the arduous and highly politicized process of determining and marking the border in the mid-19th century.Īfter graduating, Cantú encounters a steady stream of migrants, both dead and alive. His fellow trainees and superiors, however, are often disrespectful, for instance, urinating on migrants’ belongings.Ĭantú intersperses his personal stories of working the border with history. Cantú often chats in Spanish with the migrants he apprehends, asking them questions about where they’ve come from. An agent’s job is to locate people trying to cross the desert from Mexico into the United States illegally and to take them to the patrol station, where they are either processed and returned to Mexico or retained to face legal charges in the U.S. Training ends with three months in the field, where Cantú works as part of a large group of new recruits. Cantú’s close relationship with his mother is already showing signs of strain, too: when she raises concerns about the morality and safety of working for Border Patrol, he becomes defensive. The training is tough, and many of his classmates quit. He first begins to wonder about the nature of the work he’s signed up for during his training, when his superior tells him traumatic stories from the field.
As the grandson of a Mexican migrant and a young adult who has lived in the American Southwest almost all his life, Cantú has always had some level of understanding of the border, but he hopes working for Border Patrol will give him a clearer insight into the region and its politics.
Fresh out of college, where he studied the U.S.–Mexico border, Francisco Cantú gets a job with the United States Border Patrol.
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