Faces from the Border: Choosing Friends

Vehicle trails mark an area that was once a popular crossing point into the United States from Tijuana. For border...
Vehicle trails mark an area that was once a popular crossing point into the United States from Tijuana. For border agents in areas like these, having roots in both countries often imparts a deep understanding of language and place.Photograph by Kirsten Luce

This is the third in a three-part series, “Faces from the Border,” about Mexican-American agents on the border between the United States and Mexico. The series was produced, with funding from the Ford Foundation, as part of a research project on migrants and migration policy by the Division of International Studies and the Journalism on Public Policy Program at the Center for Research and Teaching in Economics (CIDE), in Mexico City.

Today, about half of the guardians of the border—U.S. Border Patrol agents—are Hispanic, and many have roots in both countries. Consider agent Yesenia León, aged thirty-three. She was born in a small town in the northern Mexican state of Chihuahua and came across the border legally when she was four thanks to her father, a U.S. citizen. León, the youngest of six children, was raised in El Paso.

She graduated from Bowie High School, which back then, she says, was known as “La Bowie” because the south-central school had a reputation for its cholos, or gang members. It was also known as the place that had, through a 1992 federal lawsuit, changed the way the agents operated in border cities. The Border Patrol agency routinely stopped and questioned Hispanics near the high school, located just a few feet from the border. The lawsuit brought by Bowie students and staff successfully made a case against racial profiling that has had a major impact on Border Patrol procedures throughout the Southwest.

“I grew up poor,” León said. She spoke Spanish at home, English at school, and “Spanglish” with friends. León’s parents divorced when she was eleven. Her mother had to work three jobs to make ends meet. León turned to childhood friends, “girls who got good grades,” to help her succeed. “Dime con quién andas y te digo quién eres”—tell me who you hang around with and I will tell you who you are—a saying that goes a long way in rough neighborhoods where peer pressure from gangs is high and the graduation rate is low. Choosing friends who were positive role models made all the difference for León.

After graduating from high school, she spent eight years in the U.S. Army. Later, she earned a degree in criminal justice from the University of Texas at El Paso and went to work in a correctional facility in El Paso before heading for Oklahoma, where, after some time, she became a social worker. But she missed home, so when she heard the Border Patrol was in the midst of a hiring spree in 2009 she quickly applied. Her background, experience, and gender became invaluable to the agency.

“Being bilingual and being from this area is definitely an asset, also the culture,” she said. She’s also one of the few female Border Patrol agents in a force where ninety-five per cent are men.

The advantage became poignantly obvious as the number of women detained at the border increased by a hundred and seventy-three per cent between 2012 and 2014. Last summer, León’s gender made even more of a difference during the mass migration of thousands of women and children from Central America who crossed the Texas-Mexico border. Confident, and petite, León has an easy smile, and a steely gaze. That became apparent as she took center stage, appearing often in media interviews as the Border Patrol mounted an aggressive campaign to recruit more women.

“As a female, other females feel more comfortable with you,” she said, recalling one group of mothers who were reluctant to talk to male agents about what they needed. “A few moments later, they call me over just to ask for a diaper.”

She understands the forces that drive people to cross the border illegally, particularly with their children. But she also knows all too well the dangers that greedy smuggling organizations pose for both migrants and feds like her. “Let’s say someone is speaking Spanish but in slang,” she explained. “Let’s say you apprehend a group of ten people and they begin planning how they’re going to take you down.” Her personal safety and that of the people she arrests depend on her deep understanding of language and place.

Every new operation on the border—such as Operation “Hold the Line,” in 1993, and Operation “Gatekeeper,” in 1994—has meant more jobs for young Hispanics. A new generation saw a future working for the federal government. So many Hispanics joined the ranks that by the end of the nineties, they were nearly one-third of the Border Patrol’s workforce.

But nothing compared to what happened after 9/11, which led to a dramatic increase in Border Patrol agents. For those growing up on the border ballooning federal budgets suddenly represented more job opportunities. The U.S. border region tends to have lower educational levels and fewer job opportunities than other parts of the country. For instance, in El Paso, which is eighty-one per cent Latino, only sixty-six per cent of young people graduate from high school, far below the national average. Among the city’s Hispanic youth, only thirteen per cent complete higher education.

For these Americans, guarding the border provides a route to a middle-class life when opportunities to do so are otherwise limited. The salary starts around thirty-nine thousand to forty-nine thousand dollars per year, which exceeds the local median household income of thirty-one thousand dollars for Hispanics (though not the average of fifty-six thousand dollars for white Americans). And the government benefits are generous. Gradually, the number of agents employed by the Border Patrol has increased fourfold since the early nineties.

As the number of agents has increased, the level of experience of agents in the field has declined, according to a 2010 report by the Congressional Research Service. The growing C.B.P. force has also paralleled increased charges of corruption and excessive force. The Office of the Inspector General in the Department of Homeland Security received sixteen thousand three hundred reports of employee misconduct within the agency in fiscal year 2014. Of these, about five hundred investigations were opened and a hundred and twelve employees were convicted.

Not surprisingly, efforts on the part of Mexican criminal groups to corrupt the border police have increased in recent years, too. Criminals research potential human weaknesses, exploiting the cross-border clans and relationships that define the region, offering money, sex, whatever it takes. In some cases, cartels have corrupted officers who had key roles, such as Margarita Crispin, a former customs inspector in El Paso who had a long list of boyfriends and other associates with ties to the Juárez cartel. She helped smuggle thousands of pounds of marijuana over three years, almost from the time she began working for the agency. She waved off drug-sniffing dogs in her lane. She’d complain she was afraid of them. Investigators later learned she had owned dogs as pets. Crispin pleaded guilty, in April 2008, and received a twenty-year prison sentence.

León prefers not to dwell on cases of corruption within the ranks. “Every agency is going to have some bad apples,” she explained in her usual reserved manner.

Oscar Hagelsieb, the assistant special agent-in-charge of Homeland Security Investigations, is more blunt. “With opportunity, there also comes responsibility. We have to be very vigilant, not just about the border but everyone around us. If you’re from the border, there are strengths and weaknesses, but if cartels think they know your price you have to prove them wrong.”

The cat-and-mouse game along the border isn’t just dirtier, more abusive, and bloodier; it’s also deadly. More than six thousand migrants have died attempting to reach the U.S. since 1998, with three hundred and seven bodies found in 2014. Some human-rights activists fear an unknown number of clandestine graves near the U.S.-Mexico border.

Those who do cross benefit from unusual guardians of the border, people like Irma Whiteley. The stylish brunette with a penchant for high heels is an investigator with the Office of the Federal Public Defender, a job she’s held since 2006. Her gregarious nature helps while interviewing potential witnesses. She’s determined and methodical when digging up information and gathering evidence that could help in a client’s defense. Some of that evidence points to special circumstances, including the client’s family history, which might lead to a reduced sentence. She works in the El Paso federal building, just blocks from the border. Whiteley’s diligence has earned her the respect of colleagues across the country. She credits her success, in part, to her father and background, having been born and raised along the border.

Whiteley is the youngest of four children. Her mother was born in Ciudad Juárez, and her father was a native of San Juan, Texas. She still has relatives on both sides of the border. A veteran of the Second World War and a Green Beret, her father was away during the first years of her life on special operations in Bolivia and Panama. “He came home one day,” she recalled. “I didn’t know who that was. I told my mom, ‘There’s some man out there.’ “

This time, he stayed, and his new responsibilities included tracking down soldiers who went AWOL just across the border in Mexico before they deployed. Whiteley soaked it all in, even tagging along on investigations with her father. Her father taught her “old-school investigating” and inspired her to become an investigator.

“The language, the culture is just so important,” she said. In one case, she explained to a federal law enforcement agent why a client only knew people involved in a smuggling case by their nicknames. On the border and in Mexico, apodos (nicknames) are all too common, routine. “I didn’t know what my cousins’ real names were until a few years ago,” when they connected on Facebook, Whiteley said.

Her cases include indigent clients from both the U.S. and Mexico facing a variety of charges. And when her investigations led to Juárez she followed those leads into Mexico. A close encounter with people following her in 2008 put an end to her trips across the border. She still gathers facts and meets with clients’ family members and other witnesses, sometimes at an international bridge.

One of her more memorable cases involves a man who spent a decade crossing into the U.S. repeatedly to reunite with his family. Each time he was caught by the Border Patrol, the punishment increased and he was locked up. Her investigation uncovered that he was eligible for “derivative citizenship” because his mother was a U.S. citizen.

“Sure enough, he was a U.S. citizen all this time, and we just had to prove it,” Whiteley said. “It seems like they don’t have a voice for themselves.… They’re scared. They’re really young. It’s important to give them a voice.”

Along the border, that voice is threatened, increasingly replaced by silence amid the heated political rhetoric that’s about to get worse. The latest arrivals turning themselves in along the Texas-Mexico border are from Syria, including families, drawing more finger-pointing by U.S. politicians.

Mexico and the United States seem overwhelmed by the sheer size of a border that stretches not just physically but emotionally. One hot Saturday, I was waiting to cross the international bridge from Ciudad Juárez to El Paso. I was standing in line with Mexicans of all ages and socioeconomic backgrounds, including abuelitas waiting to cross over to see their grandchildren in Texas for a holiday weekend. We waited for two hours as passports were checked rigorously, making us feel like strangers in our native lands, especially for those who cross daily. Where is technology when you need it? I wondered.

As we neared the front of the line, I heard someone in the group in front of me mutter, “Espero que no nos toque un mexicano,” or “I hope that we don’t get a Mexican [border customs officer],” a common stereotype on the border, as Hispanic agents are often viewed as having a chip on their shoulder, trying to constantly prove their loyalty to the United States.

I complained to the Hispanic agent about how long the line was, and how tedious the process was, explaining that it took me longer to cross from Ciudad Juárez to El Paso than to fly from Mexico City to the border. He deadpanned, “Looks like you’re having a bad day.” “No,” I replied. “We’re all having a bad day.”

Yes, the wound all too fresh also deepens. The shadows of our fathers and mothers loom large. And yet, from where I stand, at times it’s hard to tell where Mexico ends, or the United States begins, as if the line, at times blurry, at times hard, can divide us from them.

This is the third part of Alfredo Corchado’s series. Read the first part, “We Could Be Them,” about Border Patrol agents whose family members once crossed over illegally, and the second part, “The Devil Is on the Loose,” about agents and the business of drug smuggling.

The television journalist Angela Kocherga contributed to this report; Lauren Eades provided data. Carlos Bravo Regidor and Homero Campa, faculty members at CIDE, coördinated the research and assisted with editing.