Review: The Line Becomes a River


Review for "The Line Becomes a River: Dispatches from the Border" by Francisco Cantu (2018)

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

In keeping with #NonfictionNovember, I really liked this book. I am glad that I did not read the many negative reviews of this before picking it up, much of which is not about the content but full of personal rancor towards the author, a former Border Patrol officer. Did these reviewers even read the book? Apparently not.

What the author does do is present a pretty fair and balanced view of U.S. and Mexican lives on both sides of the border. The first section covers his early days on patrol, catching people who activate sensors in the desert. There are many stories here–desperate immigrants wishing for a better life who are deserted by their coyotes (smugglers), people who live on the border whose properties are continually trashed and broken into by immigrants, those who aid cartels through drug smuggling. Both criminals and non-criminals are almost always rounded up and deported. There are also some pretty shocking accounts of Border Patrol agents being cruel and just plain racist (destroying immigrant water sources, calling them “wets”). In addition to this, the author describes countless dead bodies, those not fortunate enough to make it out of a scorching desert hell. The middle section of the book deals with Cantu’s moral conflicts and eventual disillusionment with the work after he is assigned to a desk job. The desk job involves profiling cartels, their victims almost always killed through unimaginable violence. Border Patrol officers have a particularly high turnover rate, which, for a morally conflicted person such as Cantu, is wholly understandable.

The last section of the book is the most poignant, in my opinion. After his departure from the Border Patrol, Cantu befriends a Mexican man from Oaxaca named Jose. Although he is undocumented, he is a hardworking man with a wife and three sons. Returning from a trip to visit his mother in Oaxaca, he is caught by Border Patrol attempting to cross back into the U.S. Cantu assists the family by showing up to his trial, getting him a lawyer, taking his sons to visit him in detention. I won’t tell you Jose’s fate, other than to say that the last part of this book is not the author’s but the voice of Jose himself.

Nowhere in this book does Cantu position himself in favor of U.S. Border Patrol policies. While participating in their enforcement as an officer, he is a part of the institutional violence against immigrants, which he acknowledges. The story of Jose is a good balancing act for the critics to show that immigration presents an ever present challenge with no easy solutions. People on both sides of the border ultimately suffer.

I recommend that you don’t read the negative reviews and read this book for yourself.

Four stars.


Review: Dear America


Review for "Dear America: Notes of an Undocumented Citizen" by Jose Antonio Vargas (2018)

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

This is a great book. It is about life as an immigrant, but it is not about politics. Through his connection to journalism, Vargas wrote an op-ed in 2011 outing himself as undocumented. He also wrote a Time magazine cover story on the subject in 2012.

“Dear America” is mostly a story about the author, Jose Antonio Vargas, whose mother hastily put him on a plane from the Philippines to join his grandparents in America at 12 years old. He grows up in California and does not realize until he attempts to apply for a driver’s license that the paperwork provided by his grandfather was fake. He confides in several trusted colleagues and administrators, who eventually get him to college and into several prestigious journalism gigs, despite his undocumented status.

Vargas explores how the “path” to citizenship does not exist for him and many, many other people. He cannot simply apply for legal citizenship, because he came here illegally and risks deportation. Leaving the U.S. and returning to the Philippines effectively bans him from coming back for 10 years, and even then, approval for U.S. citizenship is not guaranteed. He could attempt to pull off a sham marriage (i.e., marrying a U.S. citizen for a green card), but Vargas refuses to do this because he is gay. As a result, he discusses a sense of constant homelessness even though he considers America his country. Many aspects of American life are continually out of reach for him because he is undocumented. Though he pays taxes through his job, in many states, he cannot drive or legally work. He cannot travel overseas and has been effectively cut off from his extended family. He also faces constant fear of detainment and deportation, which he goes through later on in the book.

Overall, this is a short book that puts a human face on the argument around illegal immigration, which is far more complex than building walls and talk about caravans. What does it mean to be an American? If it is simply a matter of being born on U.S. soil, then I, as a ‘natural’ resident, did not “do” anything to earn my status. Why do we as citizens feel the need to make people like the author do the same? Lots of complex arguments here, many of which have no quick answers.

Definitely recommend this book.

Review: In My Father’s House





Rating: 5 out of 5 stars







Five stars.