memoir "the line becomes a river. after that, prime minister's questions. later, imf managing director christine lagarde. ♪ this week on q&a former u.s. border patrol agent francisco cantu discusses his memoir "the line becomes a river: dispatches from the border." brian: francisco cantu, author of "the line becomes a river," when did you first think about becoming a writer? mr. cantu: i first thought about writing about my experiences as -- patrol agent

six months or year after leaving. i think i was really trying to grapple with that experience and come to terms with what i participated in. so that's when i really first started thinking, ok i have to write to make sense of this. it seems like the only option. to kind of get everything down on paper, put all of those experiences in one place. i didn't know it would be a book at the time. but i think that's how all tell-all books sort of's start. brian: when were you in the border patrol and where did you live? mr. cantu: 2008-2012, i spent the first two years of my career in a field station in arizona. and i spent another year at intelligence sector headquarters in tucson.

and then i spent about a half a year in el paso. brian: let me go to the basics. where were you born? mr. cantu: i was born in santa rosa, california, left shortly after my birth. my mother was a park ranger so we lived in a couple places in the southwest. while she was working for the national parks. and then we settled in arizona. she got a job at the forest service. i spent most of my life growing up in arizona. brian: at the end of your book, you say this. you -- acknowledgments, i want to acknowledgment three fathers. charles simmons, jack butter, and al carr. explain. mr. cantu: my biological father, and my mother separated early on. so i have nicknames for each dad. so that's my bio dad. and then i have my raise me dad,

which is jack udder. he raised me as i was going through my formative years. so i call him dad. he 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 al carter. my stepdad in my high school years. i had a lot of great father figures. brian: where did you grow up? mr. cantu: i grew up in a small town called kreskin. there.why did you live

mr. cantu: i lived there almost my entire adolescence. i was there might entire schooling from the time i was five years old until i graduated high school. brian: where did you go to college? mr. cantu: i went to college right here in d.c. at american university. brian: why did you pick it? mr. cantu: i wanted to study international relations. it's funny because i loved 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 a very wide view. and the reason i think that's funny is because after a year in d.c., i was like, i need to study something i'm a little more rooted in. and that i have a little more investment in. so i turned my focus back toward where i grew up and where i came from. and that's when i really started to focus on order studies, u.s. mexico relations within the umbrella of international relations.

brian: when you a fulbright scholar and where? mr. cantu: i was a fulbright scholar when i left the border patrol in 2012. i think i had a 2012-2013 fellowship. and i went to the netherlands. and i was studying rejected asylum-seekers living in the shadows after their application for asylum had been rejected. so they had sort of remained in the netherlands in violation of deportation order. i was interested when i applied for that fulbright to think about immigration and borders in another context. brian: and what year did you graduate from american and how close was that to the 2008 entrance into the border patrol?

mr. cantu: i graduated in 2008 and started the border patrol shortly thereafter. i hadn't 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 that i would be going back to arizona and if you are close to a southwest border station, you can accelerate the application by showing up in person for these interviews. and so i think there was six months that they were reviewing my application before i was finally accepted. it was a quick turnaround. brian: i'm looking at an article that comes something from splendornews.com. and the headline is from the middle of february. "an ex-border patrol cop has ourme a media darling and aregration experts furious." what's that about?

these are people on the left and the suspicion was people on the right would be attacking you. what's that about? mr. cantu: i think a lot of the concerns brought up by these groups are valid. i feel like they are based on misconceptions about the book and 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 do we listen to? and i think in some of that media coverage for this book, and you know this full well in the media -- border patrol is a very closed agency, very suspicious of outside attention. it can be very cagey. i think for a lot of people in the media, the fact that there is this book by a border patrol agent and i seem nice and the book is relatable, they are sort of betraying this that humanizes the border patrol.

but the message of the book is really one of the dehumanization of migrants. and 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 to really look at all the ways we discount the migrant experience and negate migrants with our words and rhetoric. so i really understand the root of that opposition. brian: go back to your mom for a second. where was she born? mr. cantu: my mother was born in i think san diego, california. that's where my grandfather's family settled after they crossed the border from monterey, mexico.

brian: your biological father was born where? mr. cantu: i'm not sure where my biological father was born. california or oregon. brian: how related are you to mexico in your ancestry? mr. cantu: 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. and they were fleeing the violence of the mexican revolution. so in many ways, they were refugees. they came here in a similar way a lot of people are coming here now. and he grew up in san diego. his entire family relocated there. they started one of the first -- you know, like, my great-grandfather started one of the first spanish-language newspapers in san diego for the mexican community living there. and my mother was actually -- her story is somewhat similar to mine where her mother and father separated early on. so she didn't grow up with her mexican father, my grandfather. she didn't grow up speaking spanish. she didn't grow up very close to

the mexican side of her culture. but she kept his name. she never changed her name so i have his last name, as well. brian: what a narco? -- what is a "narco"? mr. cantu: that's a spanish term for a drug dealer, anyone related with the drug trade. narco, narcotics. brian: wwhat's a cartel? mr. cantu: cartel refers to the drug smuggling mafia. brian: what a coyote? mr. cantu: coyotes are people who traffic drugs across the border. brian: what is the significance of the rio grande river? and this map that you see there, the rio grande starts in through new goes up

mexico, but that's the borderline. when you see that map and your own experience, what do you think? mr. cantu: 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 and the title really comes from thinking about this map and thinking about the way the line is drawn across the landscape. and when i was taking about the title, i was thinking about what borders we accept as natural. mountain range, river, they demarcate something in a way we sort of accept. and what sort of boundaries are unnatural? and growing up in arizona and seeing all these places where the line is sort of etched across the landscape in a very visible way, in a very unnatural way, i wanted to speak to that

tension with the title. and i became interested and hyper focused on this point outside of el paso where the -- you know -- line that is drawn across the desert needs -- meet the river. and he comes somewhat more -- becomes somewhat more natural in a way. brian: the names in the book, are they the names of the actual people? mr. cantu: they are all changed without exception. brian: why? mr. cantu: to protect the identities of the people in the book. brian: including the border patrol agents you worked with? mr. cantu: yes, for everyone. border patrol agents, especially the migrants. my friend jose at the end of the book, his family. brian: all made up. the names? mr. cantu: yes, sir.

brian: a fellow named dan harris who is the chief agent at the border patrol academy. where is that, by the way? mr. cantu: new mexico. brian: i want to show a clip of him talking about the training. [begin video clip] >> we are going to be tough on you. it is not going to be an easy task to get through this academy. >> that means you, raymundo! >> we expected to come in good physical condition. you will be become proficient in code law, use of firearms, and proficient in driving our vehicles. spanish-language, use of force, policy and procedures, tactics, techniques. we provide you every tool you need to protect yourself and protect the people of this great country. [end video clip] brian: accurate? mr. cantu: i think i might have seen that video before or something much like it. i think the academy is, i recognize some of the themes in

that film. so i would say it's pretty accurate. the academy is designed, sort of a hybrid between a police academy and military training. so there is a lot of academic studying and book learning you have to do. immigration law. and there's also firearms training,pursuit physical training. course, the border patrol academy, much like any military or law enforcement training, is sort of designed to break you down and build you back up again in the image of border patrol agent. or any kind of enforcement officer. brian: how much time do you have to commit to them before you begin? mr. cantu: the border patrol, unlike the military, you don't sign a contract for any particular amount of time. a lot of people drop out and leave the academy or leave during the field training. so there's no time commitment. brian: let me show you a hearing back in 2010 where it talks

about border control agents. the customs and commissioner is talking to a former senator of arkansas, but it will give you a chance to see whether this is still the truth eight years later. [begin video clip] my understanding is that the cbp policy is to do a polygraph on all the applicants. >> that is our goal, sir. >> my understanding is you are only doing 10% right now. is that right? >> that's accurate. >> of those who are polygraphed, what percentage are found unsuitable? >> approximately 60%. >> 60%. can we extrapolate from that, if there is 90 or even 85% of the folks that are on this chart here that have not been

polygraphed, that maybe 60% of them might not pass the polygraph if they took the test? >> we and others have done that analysis and reached the same conclusion. [end video clip] brian: did they give you a polygraph test? mr. cantu: i did not receive a polygraph test. brian: did you know what he was talking about? mr. cantu: i do. i joined at the tail end of the bush hiring push. so similarly, there was a call for more border patrol agents and i was part of this wave of border patrol agents that brought border patrol staffing to the highest it has ever been. brian: do you have to have a college degree? mr. cantu: you do not. brian: is there an officer corps

in the enlisted corps? mr. cantu: no, sir. everybody is equal. whether you have a bachelors degree or military degree, everybody is thrown into the academy and starts at the same place. and you have to work your way up. you can't apply straight out of the academy. for an officer position or supervisory position. you have to do two years of probation before you are eligible for any sort of promotion. brian: in your book, we learn about your dreams and your nightmares. why? mr. cantu: the reason that is booka central part of the -- in the border patrol, there is not a culture of talking about the ways you might be affected by the job. again, i think that is similar to all law enforcement and military positions. and for me, as somebody who has entered the border patrol with a lot of questions, almost from an academic standpoint, a lot of

those questions really faded away just in order to wake up and show up to 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. it manifested itself in dreams and maybe quieted doubts in my mind. and 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 calling me back to my sense of humanity, i think. brian: at what point in your time there, four years in the border patrol, did you say i don't think i want to do this anymore? and why? mr. cantu: honestly, i think it ran so deep that leaving the

border patrol, i applied for this fulbright and that was a way out. and it was a way to leave but to still be moving forward. if you had asked me at the time, i don't think i would have told you i can't do the job i need to get out. i'm leaving because it's not for me. i think again, that was this thing in the back of my mind or this subconscious thing that didn't become obvious to me until after i had left and had some distance from the job. but i do remember when i finally took those dreams seriously, i was at a dental appointment. and the dentist gave me the news i was grinding my teeth in my sleep and said that i had ground through several layers of enamel. and he said this is serious. job?u have a stressful

what's going on? know, for years leading up to that dental appointment, i had been having these dreams ever since i joined where i would grind my teeth or clench my job until my teeth would explode in my mouth. so to have that news was the first time i was presented with a real-world manifestation of that dream life, that subconscious life. so that was the moment where i sort of had to sit back and say, maybe i'm not dealing with this just fine. maybe i'm not all right. brian: when did you first come across a dead body in the desert? mr. cantu: the first dead body that i saw, which is the only body that i came across in my time as an agent, was after i was working for the border patrol for a year and a half or more. it was in the summertime. 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. and it was an agent. and they had actually put rocks out in the road to stop passing vehicles, but people drove around them. nobody stopped for them. and these two boys, it was a nephew of the man who died and the nephew's friend. and they were all three from the same village and they had crossed the border together. and so the men who died, he died from dehydration. he died from taking these uppers that smugglers give you to kind of -- caffeine uppers.

and 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 arrange for the repatriation of the body. and it was this moment where there was an extreme disconnection happening from the immediacy of this person's death and this person's humanity and entering this bureaucratic system that was entirely severed from that. brian: how often do we find a languagegrant or what desertt to use -- in the border?o get across the

mr. cantu: so this is something i don't think we talk about enough and i don't think we talk about it to the extent that we need to. because hundreds of people die every year in the desert. and the something like 6000-7000 people have died crossing the desert since 2007. this is a result of policy of enforcement through deterrence by which we have heavily enforced the urban 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 less people were crossing the border, the crossing is still remaining as dangerous or becoming even

more dangerous. and that seems to be an essential missing piece from our conversation about immigration reform. brian: let's go back to the map for just a second. that border. i read, is about 1900 miles long. how much of that has any kind of a wall? mr. cantu: i think there is approximately 700 miles that have some sort of barrier. brian: where would that be? mr. cantu: 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 bet theredot, you can fencing inestrian that area. much of the other barriers are vehicle barriers.

they are steel posts. or x-shaped normandy beach style barriers. and the walls that we have were actually the result of an earlier iteration of this conversation we are having right now. "build the wall" bill pass through congress. that's what gave us much of the fencing we have now. brian: how many border patrol agents are there? mr. cantu: i can't say the exact number. i know that it rose to a high of about 20,000. i think it has dropped now somewhere between 15,000-18,000. attrition is really high in border patrol, much higher than most law enforcement agencies. i should also mention that that number of border patrol agents makes it the largest law enforcement agency in the country. so there are more border patrol fbi, dea,n there are

or any other agency. brian: when you work as a border patrol agent, how much were you paid? mr. cantu: i think because i had an undergraduate degree, i started at a slightly higher rate of pay. i think i entered the border patrol making somewhere between $38,000-$42,000 salary. and the border patrol is really set up also because of this problem of attrition like to rapidly give you increases in pay. i think after you are with the border patrol, you remain with them for six months, you get a pay increase. after a year, you get another pay increase. even with a short amount of time in, you can be making $60,000-$80,000 a year in short

order. brian: what do most of the agents think of the border patrol organization? mr. cantu: it's hard to say. it's important for me to say i haven't been a border patrol agent for years. i, in no way whatsoever, speak on behalf of the agency or the people in it. i think most order patrol agents, while they are there doing the work, they are proud of the job that they do. i think border patrol agents often feel sort of maligned by the press and the media. so i think it creates a culture where it is a bit insular or tribal, so there is a fraternal feeling among order patrol agents muchtrol like there might be in the military where the outside world doesn't understand us or what they do and there is a lot of pride, i think. among the agents. brian: here's a bit of 30 seconds of the atlantic magazine video piece that they did on border patrol corruption.

clip] video trump: our goals for the hiring of another 5000 border patrol officers. >> the risk is that you did exactly what we did last time. >> we will increase the number of order patrol officers write an additional 6000. >> we dramatically ramped up border patrol agents. you've got to hire people quickly. 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. [end video clip] brian: what is your reaction to hearing that? and what kind of people would be that corrupt in the border patrol? mr. cantu: i'm really glad you played that clip because i think

it is really important to be talking about that, especially as somebody talking about that hiring push. there was a moment where you heard audio of, i don't know who was saying this, but we run the risk of doing the same thing all readyve done. i think that is 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 fix. we know what the outcome of that will be. same as what we have seen. you know, cutting corners is just going to happen when you are hiring thousands of people at once. the border patrol academy in artesia, 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, they

would talk about the old patrol and the new patrol. and the difference being in the old patrol, they had a more rigorous academy. they had more rigorous physical training, and they had more rigorous spanish training, which i think is the most important element that is the biggest corner being cut. i think agents are being sent to the field 40 border him hundred protection agents were arrested and convicted in recent years and president trump's promise to hire 5500 new agents could make the problem worse. how are they corrupted? corrupted border patrol agent's? mr. cantu: i never witnessed any corruption. the people i was close to, i never heard rumblings or knew anybody who was accused of

corruption. however, there were acquaintances at the station that you would hear about, and you know, they would just kind of disappear. they had been relieved of duty or they were given, the gun was taken from them, they were relegated to a different assignment while they ran the investigation. so 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 you know, the big concern along the southern border is agents being corrupted corrupted by the drug cartels, and if you think about it, a border patrol agent standing at a checkpoint come all they have to do is wave one car through the check point and get a payoff from some cartel group. i think that is the fear, that is the danger, and that is what you are trying to prevent against with these things like polygraph testing, trying to

weed out people who uses that could end up doing that. brian: what is going on at the border? what are all the things that are happening coming back and forth? i mean, we talked about the drugs and that stuff. break it down, the number of people that want to come into this country, versus those that are moving drugs into the country. mr. cantu: i wish i knew an actual number. like most of what i am telling you, all i can speak to is my personal experience in the years when i was there. i absolutely apprehended, you know, many drug smugglers. seized it many loads of narcotics, arrested people who were, you know, had extensive criminal records, but the majority, without a doubt, are the people -- of the people i encountered in my duties were people looking for a better life.

peopleminals, just coming to reunite with family or looking for a job. that was overwhelming majority of people i encountered. would happen if this situation was reversed, and a were trying to get into mexico like this? what would the mexican government do about people trying to get into their country? mr. cantu: i think you can look at what the mexican government does along its southern border with guatemala, and i think that gives you the, that gives you the answer right there. it is extremely militarized. course, the mexican law has aement is much more, reputation, well, it is not even a reputation, it is a fact that they are much more corrupt. often working

hand-in-hand with some of these smuggling cartels. and so, i don't know. that is our answer right there. i think the other thing that is important to consider is that these migrants, who are coming from central america, which is now actually the majority of migrants. i think last year was the first official year that migrants from central america exceeded migrants from mexico. and those migrants, their lives are at risk, their bodies are being commodified. they are being dehumanized at every step along that journey, not just when they get to our border, but on the passage through mexico, on the crossing across the border between guatemala and mexico. you know, they are at risk during that entire, you know, 1,000, 2,000, 3,000-mile long journey across the interior of mexico. brian: there is a fellow named tim nailer foley who is the leader of the arizona border recon, describing what he does.

this comes from "u.s.a. today." >> well, there was a kid, this -- when i was a kid, this one quote kennedy had has always stuck with me. that is "ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country." once we find them, we put the cameras out. then, we start saying ok, this is where we will start game number game number two turns in two. a chess match. i have to try to put my pieces in front of their pieces to block them. they are trying to outsmart you. you are trying to outsmart them. but by doing that, then we end up playing the game whack them. ole. you hit them here, they pop up over there. brian: what you see in the video? mr. cantu: well, the first thing that i noticed, first and foremost, the language that man, and many people like him used to talk about the migrants, and the idea this is a game of whack

metaphor that, a at its essence, dehumanizes and asks you not to think about the migrants as people, but as animals. can share with you is my opinion. i think these are vigilantes. -- brian: you are talking about the tim nailer foley? mr. cantu: absolutely, yeah. i think these people are vigilantes. you know, they are not trained by the united states government to do this work. they are taking the law into their own hands. anhink they are quite often impediment to the work the border patrol is doing, and not a help. brian: what is your sense of most border patrol agents you work with? what do they consider their job to be? do they want to stop the traffic? mr. cantu: you know, the border patrol agents that i worked

with, the thing that is so strange and that i think becomes lost in a lot of the conversations is how routine all of this becomes. so i think a lot of these questions 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 many agents, when they show up for work, they are like, what kind of position do i have? am i going to be able to, you know, do my crossword puzzle or watch my ipad or do i have to drive around? but border patrol agents, they are, first and foremost, they are concerned with their safety, of theety the people -- people they work with. you want to do your job. you want, 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, you know, as many as 18,000 agents, you are talking about every different kind of person you can imagine. i knew good agents who, you know, who were dedicated to their work, and i knew agents who i really disagreed with the way they did their work. brian: what did you think of the movie world that portrayed the border and the one i am thinking, i will show a clip and a second, is a movie that came out in 2015. there is another coming out in june. what does that word mean? mr. cantu: well, it is the word for cartel hit man, basically, an assassin. brian: well, this is a story between el paso and juarez. did you leave in that area?

-- did you live in that area? mr. cantu: i did for a while. brian: how would you describe it? mr. cantu: the way i would describe living in el paso is, it is almost surreal and then, another element of why it is 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 in ciudad juarez was petering out, for the viewers who don't know, that 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 mythologize the border in

general, but specifically ciudad juarez and el paso. movies are part of that, so destructionath and and all of this sort of pervade 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. that is why it is so surreal. brian: just a little bit of video from the first movie. >> there she is. the beast. >> no. 1900, president taft went to visit president diaz and took 4000 men with him. one guy had a pistol. he wanted to blow his brains out. 4000 troops.

you think he felt safe? brian: on their way to juarez, does that remind you of your experience? i always think about, when i think about living in el paso, driving on interstate 10, and you drive right next to the border. you can look out at some spots on the 10, you can look out the passenger window and see the rio grande and see the fence and juarez on the other side. the city you are looking out at is two cities. that part of it is familiar. there is a scene in the same film, i saw it in the theater shortly after this one, where and youve into juarez

see bodies hanging from a highway overpass. saysnk benicio del toro "welcome to juarez." that is the damaging part, because it encourages us to think of the entire border as this landscape of devastation. you might do the upcoming isrio 2, benicio del toro in it. the music sets the mood. i want you to tell us what you think. >> how would you define terrorism? ♪ >> the current definition is any individual or group that uses violence to achieve political goals. ♪ >> the administration believes fit thatcartels

definition. ♪ >> do you want to see this thing through? i'm going to have to get dirty. ♪ >> i'm turning you loose. >> how loose? adios. brian: i don't mean to laugh, but how much of that is accurate? the feeling? mr. cantu: it is simultaneously -- simultaneously important to recognize that the violence in mexican society in so many ways, but it is also important not to glorify that or focus on that as what mexico is, or what life just across the

border is. i think we lose sight of the fact that, you know, people live in these communities every day, they have lives just like us, and, you know, so when i think about juarez, i also think about, you know, visiting juarez with my mom, and, um, we were walking to the big open marketplace, and my mother, you know, fell in a pothole on the street while we were crossing the road. she badly twisted her ankle. the light turned green. the cars were about to go. we were sort of panicked trying to get her up and people stopped the cars, got out of the cars, you know, one man sort of like held traffic with his hand, and people came and lifted my mother out of the street and helped her to the sidewalk. they left their cars idle in the street. , it was a scene of humanity that you would expect to see anywhere.

you don't see moments like that depicted in these films. the humanityght of of the people that live in these places, and i think that is problematic. encourages us to think of every border town is a place week -- we should fear going to. brian: did your -- or how much did your view about this whole thing change during the time you were in the border patrol? mr. cantu: it changed dramatically. i think the biggest change, if i had to try to describe it, would be that i entered the border all of these sort of bland, macrolevel questions. sociopolitical questions, policy questions. and i thought that being on the border, and seeing those realities day in and day out, would give me answers to those

questions. but those questions really faded away. and when i look back on my time on the border patrol, what really sticks with me, what i really remember, are those human interactions i had come of those conversations i had with crossers. that is what i carry with me every day. that is what gets lost in the conversation. it is almost a reversal for me. brian: which crosser conversation do you remember the most? mr. cantu: there was a man and a woman who were left behind by their group in the desert. and -- brian: were they trying to get across the border to come to the united states? mr. cantu: they were come -- part of a larger group of migrants coming to work. they got left behind because they couldn't keep up. the woman was pregnant. they were lost for three days after the group left them. they were drinking filthy water from cattle tanks.

they made it to a village and the border patrol was called and i was the agent who was supposed to take them in. , andrted talking with them it turned out the pregnant woman had grown up in iowa. she spoke perfect english. she was a schoolteacher in iowa. i think her husband saw that we were talking and we had a connection. he so the -- sort of leaned over at one point and said, hey, man. andwe skip the whole i rest -- arrest and deportation thing? can you drive a spec to the border and allow us to cross back into mexico? and be a brother? i didn't hesitate. i said, no, this is my job. i can't do that. i took them in. but i remember about the encounter, i remember asking their names and i remember introducing myself to them, and i remember wanting to remember them because i had this

connection. i wanted to like hold them in my mind. i wanted a woman to be safe, and for their child to be safe. then, a couple hours later, i went back out on patrol. i was sitting in my car and i had forgotten their names. the reason that encounter sticks with me so much is because i think that is the first step in dehumanization, forgetting what makes someone an individual. brian: what should this country do? if you were invited to the oval office and the president said, tell me, what should we do? we need toi think have a conversation about border issues that starts from a place of complexity, and not simplicity. i think we need to be talking about this in a way that acknowledges, you know, the immensity and the new wants of this issue.

so the rhetoric has to change, i think. the ear of ai had policymaker, i would say we have to change this policy of enforcement through deterrence that i think has precipitated a humanitarian crisis. because those numbers that i mentioned earlier, of the border deaths, they are not abstract to me. i carry the image of one of those people who lost their life with me. , think that is unacceptable that hundreds of people die each year crossing the border on our own doorstep. that has to change. it is something we can change right away. brian: here is a clip from a documentary. this is called l sicario room 164. >> ♪ spanish]ing

brian: what drives men like this? mr. cantu: what is amazing about that film, and about that man's , 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 as not people. so when i was writing this book, this man's story and his

testimony made an impression on me, because i saw parallels between the disconnection that he had to his work and the disconnection that i had started to develop in my work. brian: what are you doing now to make a living? mr. cantu: i am a writer. structure --me in in and coordinator and bartender. brian: instructing where? mr. cantu: university of arizona. i teach part-time at the university's poetry center. sort of community creative writing and literature seminars. brian: why bartender? mr. cantu: it is a good way to make some pocket money, and i love the people i work with. of agaveficionado spirits, so i find a way to do that. brian: in what city?

mr. cantu: tucson. brian: you mention your mother. where is mom now? mr. cantu: she lives outside the town where i grew up. brian: are there brothers and sisters? mr. cantu: i have half brothers and have half brothers and half-sisters on my father's side. brian: how many? mr. cantu: two half-sisters and an older half-brother. brian: the experience of writing the book, how long did it take you, and what do you think of the process? fiveantu: i spent maybe years writing this book. really began as inaccounting of my own time the border patrol, and of the ins that i participated what, now, when i look at it, is the perpetuation of these flaws and violent policies.

thinking,y changed my as i had already started writing the book, is when i became hisnds with this man, jose. story is what really transformed me. because it was the first time i had seen behind the curtain at what happens to all of the people that i would have been apprehending and sending on their way after they left the holding facility. by becoming closer to his family, i saw the ways that deportation rips through their lives, even though they never cross the border. brian: you and the book with jose, his wife and three children. where are they today? mr. cantu: his wife and three children are still in the u.s. brian: are they citizens? mr. cantu: his children are

citizens. brian: where is jose? safety, i for his can't say where he is. what i can say is that his life is very precarious. safe.not , much like many people who are in his situation, he lives in a state of constant fear. brian: we should point out that in your book, you have him, after being back and forth a couple times, he is, or he was at the end of the book, back in mexico. mr. cantu: yes. when i sort of, the book ends with his voice. that is a very intentional decision, because i think the voices of people like jose, those are the voices that have the most to tell us. i think we can learn more from

listening to someone in jose's position than we can from listening to any policymaker, politician, border patrol agent. brian: let's say the wall is built. and another 5500 border patrol agents are created. what will the impact be? say.antu: it's hard to what is certain is that people will still find a way over, through, around. that without any kind of , policyul policy reform, it doesn't do anything to address the problem of the people that are here. and problem of all of these people who are separated from their families, the problem of the dreamers, who are living in this legal limbo. none of that addresses the day-to-day realities those people are living with. brian: you quote your mother in

your book, saying that she spent her career slowly losing my sense of purpose. has that happened to you? mr. cantu: absolutely. i think, and it happens by design sort of. when you step into an institution like the border patrol, you are giving over all of these parts of your identity, ,nd what makes you who you are to this institution in order to help it perpetuate its goals. so i very quickly lost sight of those questions i answered with, of my sense of who i was before i came in. if i didn't have somebody like my mother as a tether, calling me back to that, i don't know that i would've come out from it in the same way. brian: how long did she spent with the park service? mr. cantu: she spent have her career with the park service, then she spent the other half

her career with the forest service. she retired from that job. she spent her entire career working for the federal government. brian: last question, what does she think of the book? mr. cantu: i think my mom is infinitely more happy with the career choice to be a writer than she was with my career choice to be a border patrol agent. she read the book during many different stages of its writing, and she is a great, loving, supportive mother, as you would expect. brian: than -- the name of the book is "the line becomes a river dispatches from the border." our guest has been francisco cantu. thank you very much. mr. cantu: thank you so much for having me. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2018] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org]

announcer: for a free transcript or give us your about this program, visit us at q&a.org. q&a programs are also available on c-span podcasts. >> if you liked this q&a program with francisco cantu, here are others. talks about journalism, politics, and his views on immigration in america. california congresswoman grace napolitano discusses immigration and the impact of the hispanic vote in u.s. elections. the head of the hispanic advocacy group formerly known as the national council of la raza. you can find these interviews online at c-span.org.

>> our podcast, c-span's the weekly, takes you beyond the headlines to explain in-depth a significant news story shaping the conversation in washington and around the country. you will hear from leading journalist, experts, and policymakers, providing context. on the freekly c-span radio app, itunes, and google play, and online anytime at c-span.org. >> this past week at the british house of commons, prime minister theresa may was asked about her meeting with the crown prince of saudi arabia. another set of questions had to do with the response to homelessness in the u.k. this is 45 minutes. you. order. questions to the prime minister. mr. simon hall.