Patrolling Chaos: The U.S. Border Patrol in Deep South Texas

by Robert Lee Maril

As the residents of McAllen, Texas, sleep soundly, a small number of agents of the U.S. Border Patrol wait in dark shadows on the northern bank of the Rio Grande. Those few, thinly spread watchers are the first line of defense against a chaotic tide of undocumented workers and determined drug smugglers with only one goal in to cross the river to el Norte. Patrolling Chaos is based on extensive ethnographic field work focusing on one station of three hundred Border Patrol agents over a two-year period. Following twelve typical agents, men and women, as they go about their regular ten-hour patrols along the border, the book describes the daily risks they face and the insights they hold as a result of their extensive, first-hand experience with the hard realities of immigration policy, the war on drugs, and the threat of terrorist infiltration. Robert Lee Maril spent two years observing the surveillance and apprehension of thousands of undocumented workers and drug interdictions involving huge quantities of marijuana and cocaine ―as well as the deaths of illegal immigrants, corruption among law enforcers, and other events that shaped the work lives of agents. The book also describes the impact of the 9/11 attacks on border security and on the personal lives of the agents and their families. This rarely documented view of the world or agents of the U.S. Border Patrol will contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of our border with Mexico, the people and the resources of the borderlands, the constant flow of illegal immigrants and drugs, and new challenges confronting the enforcement of laws and policy in light of international terrorism.

310 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2004

Reviews

[Nick · Rating 3 out of 5]

Donald Trump visited Laredo yesterday, invited and then disinvited by the local chapter of the Border Patrol union. He appeared in the full flower of his narcissism, claiming that he was in danger and that Hispanics support him, disagreeing with the local officials who feel that crime is declining and that a wall is unnecessary. (And continuing to focus on one death in San Francisco, ignoring so many in Charleston and elsewhere). Trump's fly-by photo op recalls to mind "Patrolling Chaos" by Robert Lee Maril, the only scholar (as far as I know) to conduct fieldwork among Border Patrol agents. Things move quickly these days, and this study is a little dated--Maril closes out the book by revisiting the McAllen office, only to find that many of the agents he knew had resigned to become air marshals as that service expanded after 9/11. But his book does explain why border agents might be so disaffected as to invite a bombastic presidential candidate to visit. The conditions in the fields of South Texas are punishing and dangerous, with canebrakes and cartel-affiliated smugglers. The international boundary hinders the work (even as it provides the need for it)--in one situation, Maril recounts how an agent was blamed for not helping a drowning man on the Mexican shore. Even-handedly, Maril also reports on agents arrested for brutality and corruption. But the agents' biggest frustration, in Maril's account, is with policy. At the time he was in McAllen, each Patrol sector was trying to replicate the success of Silvestre Reyes' hard line tactics in El Paso--a strategy that vaulted Reyes into a career (now over) in Congress. But in Maril's view, and, according to him, of the agents in the field, the strategy made no sense because it immobilized them far from where the border-crossers were actually moving. The invitation to Trump--who now clearly lives in an fact-free penthouse bubble of his own devising--shows that the frustration has not abated in the nearly decade and a half since Maril published his work. No one seems to remember that illegal immigration has declined, whether because of additional security (including parts of the wall that Trump wants), improving economic conditions in Mexico, and the takeover by the cartels of the people-smuggling business. And no one seems to remember why cities declared themselves sanctuaries in the first place--because regimes in Central America that enjoyed our government's support were murdering anyone who disagreed with them.

[Liz · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a fascinating look at the tension-laden job of being an officer on the border between Mexico and the United States. It's an ethnography and rather impartial, reporting the sympathetic humane behaviors along with the abuses.