The Line Becomes a River by Fransisco Cantu

Yesterday, I was reading an article that stated that most deported parents decline reunification with their children as they feel it's too unsafe in their homelands. As a mother, this is the kind of thing that makes my hear feel as though it's tearing in two. 

The Line Becomes a River by Fransisco Cantu is a firsthand look at a border patrol officer's role in this messed up game of cat and mouse. The book is divided into three parts: in the first, he's a freshly minted border patrol officer; in the second, he's moved out of the field and into an administrative position; in the third, he's tried to leave that life behind and works in a coffee shop within a market.

I didn't enjoy the first two parts as much as I'd anticipated - it somehow felt a bit removed, a bit impersonal...I can't quite put my finger on it. Maybe I wanted some more insight into Fransisco or the anecdotes felt too quick to read. I wanted to know more about the people crossing. I'm not quite sure. But the third section drew me right in. Without giving too much away, it's actually once he's out of the job altogether that it seems to affect his life the most. He becomes friends with an undocumented worker who works in the same market. They form a friendship and this is where we really get to experience both sides of what it means to cross a border - we see the perspective of the people who protect it and those who seek to cross it. We see how it tears families apart, how it's unforgiving, corrupted, malicious.

It's through this book that we see that the border as so much more than a line that demarcates two pieces of land. It represents division, a breaking apart of so much. It's enough to break a human heart in two.