Author of UCLA common book discusses experience as border patrol agent
“…The Line Becomes a River: Dispatches from the Border” was chosen as UCLA’s 2018-2019 common book in July. In months prior, thousands of immigrant children had been separated from their parents at the United States-Mexico border.
The campus-wide committee responsible for the selection had no idea that months later, just before the launch of campus programming for the common book, the federal government would shut down for over a month over funding for a proposed border wall.
The memoir details author Francisco Cantú’s experience as a U.S. Border Patrol agent from 2008 to 2012. In the book, he said he reflects on his time as a part of a system that has normalized violence. This past week, UCLA hosted two events with Cantú – a book talk Tuesday and a panel Wednesday, featuring members from the legal community and UCLA faculty to discuss immigration. The discussions sought to connect Cantú’s work with the ongoing developments in immigration, said La’Tonya Rease Miles, director of UCLA First Year Experience.
“We hope that the book increases peoples’ awareness of the border and humanizes that experience, I would say in a way that perhaps our media is not right now,” Miles said. “That really was the goal there, recognizing that not everyone really knows what that experience was like.”
Cantú said he initially joined border patrol because he believed he could observe and change the system from the inside or use the insight for a future career in law or politics. Instead, he found himself deeply affected by the way in which he internalized the workings of the system, and felt the need to write about his experience to help him process the experience. Cantú felt the need to push back on the idea that one can step into institutions that have normalized violence and emerge unscathed, he said..”
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