Journal #15 "Border Patrol State"

Leslie Marmon Silko’s essay reminded me of a horrifying experience that happened to me when I was about thirteen.  My church youth group went on a mission trip to Mexico and built houses and helped renovate a church in a small border town.  We would drive to Mexico in school buses in the morning and return to Texas in the evenings.  The  cross back into Texas was always a nerve wracking experience.  Some days the border patrol would simply look in the bus and see all of us inside.  Some days they would enter the bus and walk up and down the aisles.  On a rare occasion they would make each of us exit the bus and leave all our personal belongings (excluding our passports) on the bus.  I would always think of imaginary horror stories of the Border Patrol not letting me cross the border into the United States.  Our youth leader was one of our main translators in Mexico but was of Spanish descent.  One day they would not let him back into Texas saying he could be “a possible illegal immigrant.”  This man was half Hispanic half white and had a passport and a driver’s license to prove his citizenship.   The Border Patrol made the school bus full of children wait so they could make a couple phone calls.  After waiting two hours in a yellow school bus in the heat, they finally let him go and told him they were just making some precautionary measures.  I had lost all of my respect for Border Patrol because of that incident.  That man was a citizen of the United States and should not have been put in that demeaning situation. 

“Border Patrol State” was an honest expression of the frustrations of the lack of respect the Border Patrol has for the general public.  They were simply asserting power because they had the ability to do so. Silko’s recollection about “the uniformed men would be only too happy to drag us out of the car if we did not speedily reply with their request.”  She made a point that they think their subjects of interrogation should obey them because they have the authority to make matters worse if they choose not to comply.