they are basically commercials for the rnc. msnbc is signaling the democrats in the same way pick these institutions become cooperative by the political process and we are told because we only list media outlets that we already agree with that the demonization becomesth-- we see the other person is not just wrong, but against our very way of life was to destroy all we hold dear. that's part of the answer why? host: jonah goldberg's new book. thank you for a few minutes here in miami. guest: great to be here. thank you very much. ♪

>> this week on q&a former us border patrol agent francisco cantu discusses his memoir, "the line becomes a river". >> francisco cantu, author of "the line becomes a river", we did you first think about becoming a writer? guest: i think i first thought about writing about my experiences as a border patrol agents, you know, a year after leaving, i think. i was really trying to grapple with that experience and come to terms with what i had participated in and so that's when i really first asserted thinking i have to write in order to make sense of this. it seems like the only option to kind of get

everything down on paper put those experiences in one place. i didn't know it would be a book at the time, but that's how all of that sort of start. host: when with you in border patrol and where did you live during that time? guest: i was in the border patrol from 2008 until 2012. i spent the first two years of my career in a field of station in arizona, and i spent another year at an intelligence sector headquarters in tucson. of income i spent about half a year in el paso. host: let me go through kind of the basics. where were you born? guest: i was born in santa rosa, california, left shortly after my birth. my mother was a park ranger, so we sort of lived in a couple different places in the southwest while she was working for the national parks and then settled in arizona and got a job

in the forest service. spent most of my life growing up in arizona. host: at the end of your book you say this, you acknowledge-- one to my three fathers, charles simmons, jack otter and al carr. explain. guest: i have my biological father, my mother and he separated early on and so i have like nicknames for each of dad. that is my bio dad and then i have my raising dad and that's jack otter. he was around as i was going through my most formative years, so i call him dad. came into my life when i was maybe six months or a year old, so he's also my dad and then my mom remarried i think when i was in middle school to our cotter, so he was

sort of my stepdad during my high school years. had a lot of great father figures in my life. host: where did you grow up? guest: in a town called prescott host: arizona? guest: yes, north of phoenix. host: how long did you live there? guest: almost my entire adolescence. i left when i turned 18, so i was there my entire schooling from five years old until he graduated high school. host: where did you go to college? guest: near dc at american university. host: why did you pick american? guest: i wanted to study international relations and it's funny because i left arizona, i think, wanting to explore the world and wanting to broaden my horizons and i had that travel bug and so i went to international relations as a way of having like a very wide view.

the reason i think that's funny is because after a year in dc i was like man, i need to study something that i'm a little more rooted in and that i have a little more investment, so i sort of turned my focus back towards where i grew up, towards where i came from and that's when i really started to focus on border studies on the us-mexico relations within the umbrella and international relations. host: when were you a fulbright scholar adware? guest: i was a fulbright scholar from when i left the border patrol in 2012 and i think i had in 2012, 2013 fellowship and i went to the netherlands and i was studying rejected asylum seekers living sort of living in the shadows after their application for asylum have been rejected, so they had sort of it

remained in the netherlands in violation of deportation orders. i was interested when i applied for that fulbright to think about immigration and border's in another context. host: and what year did you graduate from american and how close was bad to the 2008 entrance into border patrol? guest: so, i graduated american university in 2008, and i started border patrol shortly thereafter i had actually begun the application process while i was at american university. i think i signed up for the accelerated sign-up process because i knew i would be going back to arizona and if you are close to like a southwest border say should you can accelerate the application by showing up these interviews and so yeah, i think there was six months that they were reviewing my

application before i was finally accepted and so it was a quick turnaround. host: i'm looking at an article that comes from something called splendor news.com. and the headline is from middle of february, ex- border patrol cop has become a media darling and an immigration activists are furious. what is that all about? it's about, you know, your time in austin promoting this book and these are bunch of people on the left end of the suspicion was when he wrote the book that people on the right would attack you, so what is this about? guest: honestly, i think that a lot of the concern that have been brought up by these groups are very valid. i feel like they are based on misconceptions about the book and about the content of the book and the message of the book. however, i think the

essential argument there is who gets to tell these stories and whose voice to listen to and i think in some of the media coverage for this book and you know this poll well in the media the border patrol is a very closed agency, very suspicious of outside attention and can be very cagey, so i think for a lot of people in the media the fact that there's a book by a border patrol agents and i seem nice and the book is relatable, sort of pro- trade as a book that humanizes border patrol, but the message of the book is really one of dehumanization of migrants and so i think the focus is sort of-- the takeaway of the book is not that we need to be humanizing border patrol agents, the takeaway is really to look at all of the ways that we discount the

migrant experience and the gate migrants with our words and rhetoric, so i really understand the root of that opposition. host: going back to mom for second. where she born? guest: my mother was born in i think san diego, california. that's where my grandfather's family settled after they crossed the border from monterrey, mexico. host: your biological father was born where? guest: i'm not sure where my biological father was born, california or oregon. host: so, how related are you to mexico in your ancestry? guest: it was my mother's father who crossed the border and in fact, his parents brought him across the border when he was maybe five years old. they were fleeing the violence of the mexican revolution, so in many

ways they were refugees. they came here in a similar way that a lot of people are coming here now and he grew up in san diego. his entire family relocated their. they started as one of the first like my great grandfather i guess it was started going to the first spanish newspapers for the mexican community living there and my mother was actually her story is somewhat similar to mine where her mother and father separated it really also she didn't grow up with her mexican father or my grandfather and so she didn't grow up speaking spanish. she didn't grow up close to the mexican side of the culture, but she kept his name and never changed her name, so i have his last name as well. host: what is a narco? guest: sort of a spanish term for drug dealer, anyone related with the drug trade.

guest: narcotics. host: cartel? guest: cartel refers to, you know, drug smuggling mafia. host: what is a coyote? guest: coyotes are the people who truck migrants across the border. host: one significance i went to put on the screen a map of the rio grande river and this map you see there is not-- the rio grande starts in colorado and comes down through new mexico, but that's the borderline and when you see that maps in your own experiences, what do you think? guest: you know, i spent a lot of time looking at this map and thinking about this map. when i was thinking more abstractly about the book in the title really comes from thinking about this map and thinking about the way that the line is drawn across the landscape.

when i was thinking about the title, i was thinking about what borders we accept as natural, mountain range, river, something in a way that we sort of accept and what sort of boundaries are unnatural and growing up in arizona, and the seeing all these places where the line sort of just etched across the landscape as a very visible way in a very unnatural way i wanted to sort of speak to that tension with the title and i became interested in-- and hyper focused on this point outside of el paso, where the line that is drawn across the desert meets the river and then becomes somewhat more natural in a way. host: the names of the book, are they the actual names of the people where they made up?

guest: they are all changed without exception. host: why? guest: to protect the identities of the people in the book. host: including the border patrol agents that you worked with? guest: yeah, for everyone, border patrol agents, you know, especially the migrants, my friend josé at the end of the book, his family. host: all made up the name? guest: yes, sir. host: a fellow named dan harris chief patrol agent at the us border academy, where is that, by the way? guest: new mexico. host: i want to show you a clip of him talking about the training and tell us what you think. >> when you arrive at the border patrol academy we will be tough on you. it's not going to be easy to get through this academy. we expect you to come in

in good physical-- condition. you will become proficient in border patrol operation, immigration law, united states code criminal law, use of firearms, proficient in driving vehicles, off-road vehicles, pursuit vehicles, spanish language, use of force policy and procedures, tactics and techniques and we provide you every tool you need to protect yourself and protect the people of this great country. host: accurate? guest: i think i might have seen that video before or something much like it. i think the academy is i recognize some of the scenes in the film, so i would say it's pretty accurate. you know, the academy is designed, sort of a hybrid between a police academy in military training, so there's a lot of academics studying and book work you have to do, immigration law and there's also firearms training, pursue training which you saw pictures of, physical

training and of course the border patrol academy much like any military or law enforcement training is a sort of designed to break you down and build you back up again in the image of border patrol agents or any kind of enforcement officer. host: how much time do you have to commit to them when you begin guest: the border patrol is unlike the military in that you don't sign a contract for any amount of time. you know, a lot of people dropout and leave the academy or leave during the fuel to training, so there's no time commitment. host: let me show you a hearing back in 2010, where it talks about border patrol agents, the customs and border patrol assistant commissioner james-- he's no longer there, he's talking to senator mark pryor from arkansas, but it'll give you a chance to see whether this

is still the truth about eight years later. >> my understanding is that-- excuse me-- the policy is to do a polygraph on all the applicants connect that is our goal, sir. >> and my understanding the only do about 10% right now, is that right to make that's accurate. >> of those who are polygraph, what percentage are found unsuitable for service? >> proximally 60%. >> and we extrapolate from that, you know, if there is 90 or 85% of the folks that are on this chart here that have not been polygraph that may be 60% of them might not pass the polygraph if they took the test to? >> we another's have done an analysis and reach the same conclusion. host: did they give you a polygraph test? guest: i do not receive a polygraph test. host: do you know what he's talking about? guest: i do.

this was a conversation being had also the time when i joined. you know, i joined sort of at the tail end of the bush hiring push, so similarly there had been a call for more border patrol agents and it was part of this way of border patrol agents that had brought border patrol back into. host: do you have to have a college degree to be in border patrol? guest: you do not. host: is there an officer corps and enlisted corps like in the military? guest: no server. everyone joins at the same level, so even if you have a bachelors or masters degree or become from a military background or law-enforcement background, everyone is thrown into the academy and a starts at the same place and you have to work your way up. you can't adjust apply straight out of the academy. gift of life for officer position or supervisory position. you have to do two years of probation before your

eligible for promotion. host: in your book we learn about a lot about your dreams in your nightmares. why? guest: the reason that is an essential part of the book, in the border patrol there's not really a culture of talking about the way that you might be affected by the job. again, i think that's very similar to all sort of law enforcement military positions and for me as someone who entered the border patrol with a lot of questions almost from a more like academic standpoint a lot of those questions really faded away just in order to wake up, show up at work and do the job. so, i think a lot of the intensity and the violence that you are exposed to and participating in at different levels, you don't process that. you don't talk about it out loud, and so for me

that was really relegated to my subconscious and manifest itself in dreams and maybe i think that those dreams when i look at them they were really alarm bells calling me back to my sense of who i was outside of this job or who i was before i joined and just called me back to my sense of humanity. host: at what point in your time, for years and border patrol, did you say i don't think i want to do this anymore and why? guest: you know, i think it ran a so deep that leaving the border patrol, i applied for this fulbright and that was sort of a way out and it was a way to leave to still be moving forward. if you had asked me at the time, i don't think i would have told joy can't do the job i had to get out, i'm leaving

because it's not for me. i think again i was like the thing in the back of my mind or the subconscious thing that didn't become obvious to me until after i left, after i had left the job. i do remember when i finally took those dreams seriously. i was at a dental appointments and the dentist gave me the news that i was grinding my teeth in my sleep and to said i had grounded through several layers of enamel and said this is serious, you has a stressful job, what's going on and for years leading up to that dental point and i had been having dreams premature since i joined where i would grind might teeth or clench my jaws and tell my teeth would explode in my mouth and so to have that news was the first time i was presented with a real-world manifestation of that dream line, that subconscious life and so

that was the moment where i sort of had to sit back and say well, maybe i'm not dealing with this just fine. maybe i'm not all right. host: when did you first come across a dead body in the desert? guest: the first of dead body that i saw, which is the only body i came across in my time as an agent was after i had been working for border patrol for a year and half or more. it was in the summertime. you know, you find a lot more bodies in the summer because of the heat, and it was august. it was in the middle of a hot afternoon, and two boys flagged down a passing vehicle. it was an agent and they had actually put rocks out in the road to stop the vehicles, but people

drove around them. no one stopped for them and these two boys, it was the nephew of the man who died and his nephew's friend and they were all three from the same village in santa cruz and they had crossed the border together. and so the man who died died from dehydration. he died from taking these uppers that smugglers give you to kind of caffeine up first. i don't know. i will never forget that i remember his face. i remember his body. even more than that, i remember having to explain to his nephew why they couldn't stay with his body and why they couldn't bring his body back to mexico with them and explaining the bureaucratic procedures by which they would have to contact the mexican consulate and obtain a sheet of paper and arrange for the

repatriation of the body and it was this moment where there was like an extreme disconnection happening from the immediacy of this person's death and this person's humanity and entering this, you know, bureaucratic system that was entirely severed from that. host: how often do we find a dead immigrant or whatever language you want to use in the desert on their way trying to get across the border? guest: this is something i really don't think that we talk about enough and i don't think that we talk about it to the extent that we need to because hundreds of people die every year in the desert, and something like six or 7000 people have died crossing the desert since the year 2000. this is a result of a policy of enforcement through deterrence by which we have heavily enforced in areas and

the more easily crossed areas and we push the crossings out to the more remote parts of the desert like the part of the desert where this man died, and so that number of deaths has remained quite constant. last year i'm sure you heard many times the news that crossings were down. they were at i think their lowest point in 14 years and the number of border deaths did not go down. it actually went up in relation to the year before and so despite the fact that less were crossing the border, the crossing still it remains as dangerous or becoming even more dangerous and that seems to be an essential missing piece from our conversation about immigration reform. host: lets go back to the map for a second. of that border i read is about 1900 miles long. how much of that has any kind of a wall? guest: i think there is approximately 700 miles that has

some sort of barrier. host: where would that be? guest: the actual wall that we would think of as a high wall tend to be in the urban areas, so anywhere on that map where you see a .-dot you can bet there will be pedestrian fencing in that area. much of the other barriers are vehicle barriers, so just sort of steel bottlers or x shaped kind of normandy beach style barriers and the walls we have where actually the result of sort of an earlier iteration of this conversation we're having now and we had a build the wall bill passed through congress and that was the secure offenses act of 2006, and that's what gave us much of the fencing we have now.

host: how many border patrol agents are there? guest: you know, i can't say the exact number. i know that it rose to a high of about 20000. i think it has dropped now somewhere between 15000 to 18000. attrition is really high and border patrol, much higher than most law enforcement agencies and i should also mention that that number of border patrol agents makes it the largest law enforcement agency in the country, so there is more border patrol agents than there are fbi or dea or any other agency. host: when you worked as a border patrol agents, how much were you paid? guest: i think because i had an undergraduate degree i started at a slightly higher rate of pay. i think i entered border patrol making somewhere between 38 to $42000 salary and then border

patrol is really set up also because of the problem of attrition to sort of like rapidly give you increases in pay, so i think after you are with border patrol and remain with them for six months you get a pay increase. after another year, you get another pay increase and so even with a short amount of time and you can be making 60 to $80000 a year in short order. host: what do most of the agency you work with think of border patrol organization? guest: it's hard to say, i mean, it's important for me to say that i have not been a border patrol agents for years. i have no way whatsoever speak on the head of the agency or the people in it. i can say that i think most patrol agents while they are they are doing the work, they are proud of the job they do. i think border patrol

agents often feel sort of maligned by the press in the media, so i think it creates a culture where it's a bit insular or tribal and so there is really a fraternal feeling among border patrol agents much like there might be in the military where kind of the outside world doesn't understand us or what we do and so there's a lot of pride, i think, among the agents. host: here's a bit of-- 30 seconds from the atlantic magazine video piece that they did on better-- border patrol corruption. >> call for the hiring of another 5000 border patrol officers. ♪ >> the risk is that you do exactly what we did last time. we will increase the number of border patrol officers by added

additional 6000. >> we direct-- to medically ramped up border patrol agents or keuka to hire people quickly could they cut corners. there was a real spike in border patrol corruption. >> on average more than one agent has been arrested every month for the past 11 years. host: what is your reaction to hearing that? host: and what kind of people would be that corrupt to get into the border patrol? guest: on glad to playback the because i think it's really important to be talking about that, especially as someone who came in as part of that last hiring push. there was a moment in that clip where you heard audio of-- i don't know who was saying this, but we run the risk of doing the same thing that we have already done and i think that's absolutely true right now. without any sort of policy reform, we are doing exactly what we did before by allocating more money for fencing

and more money for hiring border patrol agents without any policy fixes. we know what the outcome will be. it will be the same as what we have seen. you know, cutting corners is just is going to happen when you are hiring thousands of people at once. you know, the border patrol academy in artesia, you know, they have to ramp that place up. it's a big operation, and i think a lot of the training requirements have changed. a lot of the old border patrol agents when i came in we talk about the old patrol in the new patrol, and the difference being that in the old patrol had a more rigorous academy as they saw it. they had more rigorous physical training and more rigorous spanish training, which i think is the most important elements, the biggest corner being cut. i think agents are set into the field under equipped in language

skills. host: i have another article here from 2017, and the headline is border patrol corruption problem more than 140 customs and border patrol-- border protection agents were arrested or convicted of corruption in recent years and president trump's promise to hire 5500 new agents could make the problem worse. how are they corrupted? and did you see corrupted border patrol agents? guest: i never witnessed any corruption. the people i was close to, i never heard rumblings. i never knew anyone accused of corruption took however, there were acquaintances at the station that you hear about. you know, they would just kind of disappear. they had been relieved of duty or were given their-- their gun was taken from them and they were relegated a different assignment

while under investigation. it is a problem that i saw. i think the way that happens, you know, of course there is all sorts of different kinds of corruption, but the big concern on the southern border is agents being corrupted by the drug cartels and if you think about it border patrol agents standing at a checkpoint all they have to do is wave one car through the checkpoint and get a payoff from some cartel group. i think that's the fear, that's the danger and that's what you are trying to prevent against with these things like polygraph testing, trying to weed out people who you suspect could end up doing that. host: what's going on at the border? what are all the things that are happening coming back and forth? when we talk about the drugs and all that stuff, but break down the number of people that come in this

country versus those moving drugs into the country. guest: you know, i wish i knew an actual number. like most of what i'm telling you, all of what i can speak to is my personal experience when i was there. i absolutely apprehended many drug smugglers, seized many loads of narcotics, arrested people who were-- had extensive criminal record, but the majority without a doubt or the people that i encountered in my duties were, you know, people looking for a better life, non- criminals, just people coming to reunite with family or looking for a job and that was the overwhelming majority of people like howard. host: what would happen, do you think, if the situation were reversed and americans were trying to get into mexico like this?

what with the mexican government do about people trying to get into their country? guest: i think you can look at what the mexican government does along its southern border with guatemala. i think that gives you the answer right there. it's extremely militarized. it is-- you know, of course the mexican law enforcement is much more -- has reputation-- well, not even reputation, just the fact that they are more corrupt and they are often working hand-in-hand with some of these smuggling cartels and so i don't know, that's our answer right there. and i think the other thing that's important to consider is that these migrants coming from central america, which is now actually the majority of migrants i think last year the first official year from -- migrants from

central america exceeded migrants from mexico and those migrants, their lives are at risk's. their bodies are being commodified and they are being dehumanized in every step along the journey, not just related to our border, but on the passage to mexico, on the crossing across the border between guatemala and mexico. you know, they are at risk during that entire 1000, 2000, 3000 mile-long jury across the interior of mexico to get here stephen a fellow named tim naylor foley who is the leader of the arizona border recon describing what he does. comes from "usa today". >> just relate over. >> when i was a kid, this one quote that kennedy had said has always stuck with me and that is, you know, asked not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.

once we find them, then we put the cameras out. then we start saying this is where we will start game number two. game number two turns into a test match. i have to try to put my pieces in front of their pieces to block them. they are trying to outsmart you, but you are trying to outsmart them. and then we end up playing the game of lacrimal. you hit them here and they pop up over here. host: what you see in that video? guest: the first thing i noticed first and foremost is the language of that man and that many people like him used to talk about the migrants and the i did that this a game of whack a mole, you know that's a metaphor that at its essence of dehumanizes as not to think about these migrants as people, but as animals and all i can share with you is my opinion. i think these are

vigilantes. host: you are talking about the tim naylor foley? guest: absolutely. i think these people are vigilantes. they are not trained by the united states government to do this work. they are taking the law into their own hands and i think they are quite often an impediment to the work border patrol is doing and not a help. host: what is your sense of most border patrol agents you work with? what are they consider their job to be and do they want to stop the trafficking? guest: you know, the border patrol agents that i worked with , the thing that is so strange ended that i think becomes lost in a lot of these conversations is how routine all of this has become. so, i think that a lot of these questions that you are asking and a lot of these questions that

i had going into the border patrol, they get relegated to the back of your mind, so i think so many agents when they show up for work they are like what kind of position do i have today, am i going to be able to, you know, do my crossword puzzle or watch my ipad or am i going to have to i drive around, but border patrol agents are first and foremost concerned with your safety, the safety of the people you work with. you want to do your job. you want to-- the agents i knew and admired wanted to treat the people that they apprehended with respect and dignity. i also saw people who did not operate that way and so when you are talking about as many as 18000 agents you're talking about like every different kind of person you can imagine. i knew good agents who

were dedicated to their work and i knew agent to really disagreed with the way they did their work. host: what do you think of the movie world that portrays the border and everyone i'm thinking about i will show clip in a second, which came out in 2015 and there's another one coming out june. what does the car you mean? guest: the word for cartel hitman, basically an assassin. host: this is a story between el paso and theodore or did you live in that area? guest: i did for a while. host: how would you describe it? guest: the way i would describe living in el paso, it's almost surreal and then another element of why it's so surreal is that

it is simultaneously so normal because you become conditioned to living in this safe environment in el paso, and in the years when i was living there it was sort of as the peak violence was peter and out, for your viewers i think who don't know he was the most violent-- it was the most violent city in the world for several years. it was the murder capital of the world, but i think that place is saddled with so much mythology. we must apologize the border in general, but specifically there and el paso and movies are part of that and so images of death and destruction and all of this sort of pervades the way we think about that area and we imagine everyone there living under like a cloud of

violence, which is true and also not true and that's why it's so surreal. host: here's a bit of video from the first movie. >> there she is, the beast. >> no. 1900, president taft went to visit president diaz, took 4000 men with him and all most called it off. some guy was going to walk up to taft and blow his brains out. 4000 troops. do you think he felt safe? host: on their way, when you see those vehicles and all of that does it remind you of your

experience? guest: i always think about when i think about living in el paso, driving on interstate 10 and you drive right next to the border, i mean, you could look out at some spots on the 10. you can look out the passenger window and see the rio grande and the fence and see it on the other side, so you know the city you are looking out at his two cities. so, that part of it is familiar. there is a scene in the same film, i saw in theaters shortly after this one where they dry then and you see these bodies hanging from the highway overpass and i think the character says welcome. i think like that the damaging part because it encourages us to think of the entire border as this landscape of devastation.

host: we might as well do the upcoming sick are zero. i think josh brolin is in this, but when you see this, the music sets the mood. i want you to tell us what you think of this. >> how would you define terrorism? >> current definition is any individual or group that uses violence to achieve political goal. the administration believes the drug cartel fit that definition. ♪ >> do you want to see this thing through? i'm going to have to get

dirty. tourney you loose. >> how loose connect no rules this time. host: how much of that-- i don't mean to laugh, but for much of that is accurate? guest: simultaneously before to recognize that the violence in mexico pervades mexican society in some anyways, but it's also important not to glorify that were focus on that as what mexico is or what the life just across the border is. i think we lose sight of the fact that people live in these communities everyday that have lives just like us and so when i think about it i also think about visiting with my mom and we were walking to the big open

marketplace and my mother fell in a pothole on the street while crossing the road and really badly twisted her ankle in the light turned green and the cars were about to go and we were sort of panicked trying to get her up and people stopped their cars, got out of their cars. one man sort of like hell to traffic with his hands and people came and lifted my mother out of the street and helped her to the sidewalk and just left their cars idling the street and it was extremely, it's a scene of humanity that you would expect to see anywhere. you don't see moments like that depicted in these films, so we lose sight of the humanity of the people that live in these places and i think that's problematic and encourages us to think of every border town as a place that we should fear going to. host: how much did your view

about this whole thing change during the time you were in the border patrol? guest: i mean, it changed dramatically and i think the biggest change if i had to try to describe it would be that i entered the border patrol with all of these sort of grand like macro level questions, sociopolitical questions, policy questions and i thought that being on the border and see those realities day in and day out would give me answers to those questions, but those questions they really faded away and when i look back at my time in the border patrol what really sticks with me, what i really meant member of the human interactions i had, those encounters that i had. that's what i carry with me every day and i think

that's what gets lost in the conversation, so it's almost a reversal for me. host: which cross or conversation do you remember the most? guest: you know, there was a man and a woman who are left behind by their group in the desert, and-- host: were they just trying to get across the border to come to the united states? guest: they were part of a larger group fall of migrants coming for work and they got left behind because they couldn't keep up. of the woman was pregnant and that's why she couldn't keep up. they were lost for three days after the group left them. they were drinking filthy water from cattle tanks and they made it through a village and butcher-- border patrol got called and i was the agent who was supposed to take them in and i started talking with them and it turned out that this pregnant woman had grown up in 91 and she spoke for picking the-- grew up in iowa and she spoke perfect

english and she was a schoolteacher in iowa and her husband saw we were talking and had a connection and he sort of leaned over at one point and said hey man, can you we just skip the whole arrest and deportation think and can you just drive us back to the border and let us cross back into mexico? be a brother, and i didn't hesitate to call said no. this is my job. i can't do that and i took them in, but what i remember about that encounter is that i remember asking their names. i remember introducing myself to them and i remember wanting to remember them because i had this connection and i wanted to hold them in my mind. i wanted that woman to be safe and for their child to be safe and then a couple of hours later i went back out on patrol. i was sitting in my car and i had completely forgotten their name and

the reason that encounter sits with me so much is because i think that is in the dehumanization is forgetting what makes someone an individual. host: what should this country do? if you were invited to the oval office and the president said tell me from your experience, what you think we ought to do? guest: well, i think we need to have conversations about border issues that start from a place of complexity and not complicity i think we need to be talking about this in a way that acknowledges the immensity and the nuance of this issue, so the rhetoric has to change, i think. honestly, if i had that year of a policy maker i would say we have to change this policy of enforcement through deterrence that i think has precipitated a humanitarian crisis because those numbers i mentioned earlier of the

border deaths are not abstract. i carried the image of one of those people who lost their lives with me and i think that's unacceptable, you know, that is that people die each year crossing our border on our own doorstep. i think that has to change and it's something we can change right away. host: here is a clip from a documentary. ♪ [speaking in native tongue] [speaking in native tongue] host: what drives men like this? guest: i think what's amazing about that film and about that

man's story, to me is listening to all of the ways that a person like that begins to shut down different parts of the brain, the psyche and the spirit that make us human and you begin to look at what you do as a job and to look at the people that you are charged with killing is not people and so when i was writing this book, this man's a story and his testimony made an impression on me because i felt parallel between the disconnection that he had to his work and the disconnection that i had started to develop in my work. host: what are you doing now to make a living? guest: i'm a writer, and a

part-time instructor, coordinator and bartender. [laughter] host: instructed where? guest: university of arizona. host: teaching? guest: i teach part-time at the university poetry center, sort of community creative writing and literature seminar. host: y bartender? guest: it's a good way to make some pocket money and i love the people that i work with and i may assist in otto of spirits. i found a place where i can do all those things. host: in what city? guest: tucson. host: by the way, you mention your mother a lot in the book. where is mom now? guest: my mom lives outside of the town where i grew up, close to prescott. host: are their brothers and sisters? guest: half-brothers and half-sisters on my father's side. host: how many? guest: to half-sisters and a older half-brother.

host: this experience of writing this book when you look back on it, how long did it take you and what do you think of the process? guest: i spent maybe five years writing this book. for me, the book really began as an accounting of my own time in the border patrol and of the ways that i participated in what is now when i look at it is the perpetuation of these flawed and violent policies. you know, what really changed my thinking as i had already started writing this book is when i became friends with this man, who is a and his story is what really transformed me because it was the first time i had seen behind

the curtain at what happens to all the people that i would have been apprehending and sending on their way after they left of the border patrol facility by becoming close to his family i saw the ways that deportation rips through their lives even though they never cross the lord or. host: you" josé, his wife and three children. where are they today? guest: his wife and his three children are still in the us. host: are they us citizens? guest: 's three children are us citizens. host: where is josé? guest: i really can't say for his safety sake. what i can say is that his life is very precarious, you know, he is not safe.

i think his-- much like many people who are him his situation he lives in a state of constant fear. host: you should point out that he in your book you have him after being back and forth a couple of times he was back in mexico at the end of the book. guest: yes, and when i sort of-- you know, the book ends with him and, i mean, that's a very intentional decision because i think the voices of the people like josé, those are the voices that have-- are the most compelling. i think we can learn more by listening to someone in his position then by listening to any policy maker, politician , border patrol agents. host: lets say the wall is built and another 5500 border patrol agents are created. what will the impact of that be?

guest: it's hard to say with certainty, but people will still find a way. i think that without any kind of meaningful policy, policy reform it doesn't do anything to address the problem of the people that are here and the problem of all of these people who are separated from their families, the problem of the dreamers who are living in this legal limbo. and none of that addresses the day to day reality that those people are living with. host: you call your mother in your book as saying that she spent her career slowly losing my sense of purpose. did that happen to you? guest: i think and it happens sorted by design. when you step into an institution like the border patrol, you are getting over all of

these parts of your identity and what makes you who you are. this institution in order to help it patch weight its goal and so i very quickly lost sight of those questions that i entered with, of sort of my sense of who i was before i came in and if i didn't have them-- have someone like my mother is a tether sort of colony back to that, i don't know that i would have come out from it. host: how long did she spent with the park service. guest: she spent half of her career with the park service and then she spent the other half of her career with the forest service and she retired from that job, so she spent her entire career working for the federal government. host: last question. what does she think of your book? guest: i think my mom is infinitely more happy with the career choice of being a writer

than my career choice of being border patrol agents. you know, she read the book during many different stages of its writing and she's a great, loving, supportive mother as you would expect. host: the name of the book is "the line becomes a river". our guest has been francisco cantu. thank you very much. guest: thank you for having me. ♪ >> for free transcripts or to give us comments about the program is an essay q&a.org. q&a programs are also available at c-span podcasts.

>> book tv continues now on c-span2. television for serious readers. here's a look at some authors recently featured on book tv afterwards, our weekly author interview program that features best-selling nonfiction books and guest interviewers. economist stephen moore discussed the economic policies of the trump administration. reported on the growth of illegal global trade with the emergence of new technology. examined whether the american dream is attainable today. in the coming weeks on afterwards i'm a journalist stephanie land will report are living in poverty. we will look at the growing business of collecting and filling consumer data and at this weekend former trump administration strategists sebastian grote got offers his thoughts on how the us can strengthen national security. >> when day my father

who was an amazing athlete was on the national crew team before he was arrested. he loves to swim and he comes out of the ocean and i'm eight or nine years old and i see these white lines on his wrist and he's far too young to be wrinkled and i said to him that, what is that and without blinking with no emotion he said, that's where the secret police mount my wrist together with wire behind my back so they could hang me from the ceiling of the torture chamber. .. >> you are watching booktv on

c-span2. television for serious readers. 6:10 pm the value in reading great literature. at 7 pm accounting time in the regulatory commission. then at 8 pm you see the meeting of the free minds book club at the washington d.c. jail. which connects inmates with contemporary literature.and on booktv "after words", sebastian gorka offers thoughts on how the u.s. can strengthen national security at tempe appear to wrap up at 11 pm with white house reporter, april ryan, she moderates and author discussion on race in america. that all happens tonight on c-span2 , booktv. television for serious readers.