Brothers of the Borderlands

I met Manuel Padilla in 2015, when he became Chief of the Rio Grande Valley Border Patrol Sector. At that time, I was a regular invitee to the agency’s quarterly landowner and stakeholder meetings that included law enforcement and elected officials, irrigation district directors, farmers, business owners and residents along the river.

Border Patrol always set the agenda for these meetings, which were facilitated by the Border Community Liaison (BCL) program representatives. Designed to foster “beneficial relationships” in communities with substantial Border Patrol presence, the BCL program includes the Explorers and Operation Detour initiatives; school and career day presentations to youth; Citizens’ Academies; and other public relations activities intended to promote positive public perception and agent recruitment. At a typical meeting we learned who won the agency’s annual chili cook-off, met new cadets, celebrated agent’s birthdays and retirements, and watched propaganda films like The Shift, produced by Border Patrol and their media partners.

Padilla’s arrival was heralded at one of these meetings, where he was cast as a super star who had worked miracles in Arizona. Most significantly, he was credited with decreasing illegal traffic across the Tucson Sector by 90%, based upon apprehensions by Border Patrol, which fell from a high of 616,000 in 2000, to 63,000 in 2015. Now that numbers in the Rio Grande Valley were climbing, causing reporters and politicians to declare a “refugee crisis of epic proportions,” Padilla was expected to deliver similar results.

In response to the surge in unaccompanied minors and family units crossing the border in deep South Texas that began in mid-2014, Governor Rick Perry deployed the Texas National Guard to support Border Patrol’s efforts to secure the border; so, we wound up with Humvees stationed on the levee at the National Butterfly Center.

It was neither Border Patrol, nor the National Guard, that found five little boys in our gardens one beautiful fall day, but our staff. The youngest was five years old; the oldest, maybe, 15. As the little one gleefully wondered out loud about this “magical place” with more butterflies than he’d ever seen, the eldest explained how they had ridden La Bestia, the freight train dubbed “The Beast” that traverses Mexico from its southernmost border to the United States.

In spite of the sensational news and images reported from the Rio Grande Valley, this was a first — and only — unaccompanied child encounter for us at our refuge on the river. Because we are obligated by law to report this activity, I called it in to Border Patrol. While we waited for them to arrive, we made small talk with the hungry boys and explained to them, as best we could, what may be in store once Border Patrol took custody of them.

The transport van had not even left the property when I lost it. Coming face-to-face with these boys, with their plight, rocked me to my core. At home, our boys were ages 17, 16 and 12. The mere thought of hugging them good-bye and watching them flee, alone, to navigate untold peril across thousands of miles, in the hope of reaching safety and the possibility of a better life was too much for my mother-heart.

Contemplating these boys and the uncertainty of their situation still wakes me in the middle of the night; still, causes me to sob. If I could have taken them in, I would have — and I know this is something Manuel Padilla understands, because he has lived it.

The son of immigrants, Manuel Padilla was born in the United States in 1965; but his youngest brother, the one he took in, was born in Mexico.

While Manuel joined the U.S. Army at seventeen, served two years, then joined the U.S. Border Patrol in 1986; baby brother, Miguel Angél Padilla Heredia, stayed in Mexico, where his life followed a much different trajectory.

In an article by Kristian Hernandez of The Monitor, published August 20, 2016, Manuel is quoted discussing Miguel Angél:

“He is six years younger than I am. When I got in the Border Patrol in Sierra Blanca, [Arizona,] I brought him with me because he was already 14 or 15, at that age when he was getting in trouble, so I brought him with me, and he convinced my mother to take him back and the rest is history.…”

That history is not a pleasant one, but it is a human story with all of the messiness that entails. In this timeless tale, one brother appears to make all the right choices, excel in his chosen career and climb the rungs of success to enjoy a life of prosperity; while the other brother falls in with the wrong crowd, catches some bad breaks and descends into a life of crime. Indeed, this history has cast a shadow on the esteemed service record of a high-ranking law enforcement officer who once harbored a young Mexican National in the hope of giving him a better life, of saving him from the gangs, of sparing him from danger, drugs and deadly violence… But isn’t family supposed to mean more than a line in the desert, or an ugly 30-foot wall?

I wish I had the opportunity to question Manuel about all of this, but he quit responding to questions a long time ago. I would ask him how the gulf widens between brothers — between human beings — born on opposite sides of the border. I would ask why he has dedicated his life to closing borders to people like his mother and his brother, to preventing them from entering the United States and accessing the opportunities that propelled him into a life of comfort, security and plenty. I would ask him about his role in militarizing border communities and building the walls that only heighten fear, diminish freedom and make all of the rhetoric surrounding immigration more barbed.

I would ask him why Latinos, including first-generation U.S. citizens like himself, make up 50 % of Border Patrol agents. As the daughter of an immigrant, this is something I struggle to comprehend, daily, even as I listen to my own brothers regurgitate the anti-immigrant tripe they have adopted and internalized.

Still, Manuel is not interested in discussing his family or his past; never mind his brother’s criminal history and convictions for forgery, robbery and drug trafficking. The whole mess is merely an unfortunate footnote in his employee file at the Department of Homeland Security; an inconvenient truth for which he faces scrutiny every five years, during his regular security clearance review by Customs & Border Protection’s internal affairs.

But June is Immigrant Heritage Month; so, what better time to consider the ties that bind and the lines that divide, especially when our brothers and sisters, cousins and cuñados, become servants of Border Patrol, effectively slamming gates and pulling up ladders behind them?