rebuild america schools. a letter from the national league of cities. and natso. a letter from the new democrat co-liegs. coalition. >> without objection so ordered. with that, the committee stands adjourned. >> thank you. announcer: tonight on "we communicators" -- interviewed by tony rom. >> how we remove roadblocks to there, broadband out access to high-speed internet is the number one issue of our county mayors when we are out and about. you are not going to get economic development or keep the hospital open or have advanced educational opportunities or some of the next generation

public safety components without access to high-speed internet. announcer: watch "the communicators" tonight at 8:00 eastern on c-span 2. ♪ >> this week on q&a, former u.s. border patrol agent francisco cantu discusses his memoir "the line becomes a river." ♪ 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 a border control -- border patrol agent 6 months -- a year after leaving, i think.

i was really trying to grapple that experience and come to terms with what i had participated in. so that's when i really first started 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 all of those experiences in one place. i didn't know it would be a book at the time. i think that is how all books sort of start. brian when were you in the : border patrol and where did you live during that time? mr. cantu: i was in border patrol from 2008 to 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. 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. your acknowledgments, i want to fathers,ge my three charles simmons, jack butter, and al carr. explain. mr. cantu: my biological father, separatedand he pretty 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. he was around as i was going

through my most formative years. 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. then my mom remarried i think when i was in middle school to al, so he was during 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 prescott. north of phoenix. brian: how long did you live there? mr. cantu: i lived there almost my entire adolescence. i left when i turned 18. i was there my 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 american? mr. cantu: i wanted to study international relations.

it is funny because i left arizona wanting to explore the world and wanting to broaden my horizons. i had that travel bug. 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 border studies, u.s.-mexico relations within the umbrella of international relations.

brian: where you a fullbright 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 become a media darling and an immigration -- and our immigration activists are furious." what's that about? this is about your time in austin and these are people on the left and the suspicion was people on the right would be attacking you. what is this about? mr. cantu: honestly, i think a

lot of the concerns that have been brought up by these groups are very valid. i feel like they are based on some 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 whosehese stories and voice to we listen to. i think in some of the media coverage for this book, and it -- you know this full well in the media the 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 portraying this as a book 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. really to 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 moderate, 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 -- 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? mr. cantu: that's a spanish term for a drug dealer, anyone related with the drug trade. brian: what is a cartel? mr. cantu: narco from narcotics. cartel refers to the drug smuggling mafia. brian: what a coyote? mr. cantu: coyotes are people who traffic migrants across the border. significance -- i want to put up a map of the rio grande river. this map that you see there, the rio grande starts in california and goes through new mexico, but that's the borderline. when you see that map and your own experiences 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 etchede is sort of 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

line that is drawn across the desert meet the river. and then becomes somewhat more natural in a way. brian: the names in the book, are they the actual names of the people or are they made up? 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 a 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. tell us what you think.

>> when you arrive here at the border patrol academy, 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! >> yes, sir. >> we expected to come in good physical condition. you will be become proficient in border patrol operations, immigration law, code criminal law, the use of firearms, and proficient in driving our vehicles. off-road vehicles, pursuit 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. 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. there's a lot of academic studying and and book learning you have to do. immigration law. and there's also firearms training, pursuit training physical training. ,and, of 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 when 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 a border control agents.

and border patrol assistant commissioner is talking to senator mark pryor, the former senator from arkansas, but it will give you a chance to see whether this is still the truth eight years later. >> 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. 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. this was a conversation being had also at the time when i joined. i joined sort about the tail end of the bush hiring push. so similarly, there had been 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 and an enlisted corps like you would have in the military? mr. cantu: no, sir. everybody joins at the same level. even if you have a bachelors degree or masters degree or from

a military background or law enforcement background, everyone is thrown in 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. you have to do 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 a lot about your dreams and nightmares. why? mr. cantu: the reason that is such a central part of the book -- 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. for me, that was really relegated to my self-conscious. i think it manifests 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 have 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 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. do you have a stressful job? what is going on? and for years leading up to that dental appointment, i had been

having these dreams ever since i joined where i would grind my teeth out 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 had been 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 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. the man who died, he died from dehydration. he died from taking these uppers that smugglers give you to kind of -- caffeine uppers. 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. explaining the bureaucratic procedures by which they would have to contact the mexican consulate and obtain sheet of paper 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 dead immigrant or -- what language you want to use -- in the desert trying to cross the border? mr. cantu: so this is something i really don't think we talk about an off 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. something like 6000 to 7000 people have died crossing the desert since 2007. this is a result of a policy of enforcement through deterrence by which we have heavily enforced the urban areas and the more easily crossed areas, and we have pushed 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. despite the fact that 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 has 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. anywhere on a map where you see a dot. you can bet there will be a pedestrian sensing in 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. we had a bill to the wall bill passed through congress. that was the secure fence is act of2006 -- fences that's what gave us much of the 2006. 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 to 18,000. attrition is really high in border patrol, much higher than most law enforcement agencies. i should also mention that that number -- the number of border patrol agents makes it the largest law enforcement agency in the country. there are more border patrol agents then there are fbi, dea, 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 $42,000 salary and the border patrol is really set up also because of this problem of attrition -- to sort of rapidly give you increases in pay. i think after you are with the border patrol -- if 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 to 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 can say that i think most of border patrol agents, while they are get -- they're 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 is a bit insular or tribal, so there is a fraternal feeling among border patrol agents much like there might be in the military where the outside world doesn't understand us or what we do so there's a lot of pride, i think among the , agents. brian: here's a bit of 30 seconds from the atlantic magazine video piece that they did on border patrol corruption.

>> our goals for the hiring of another 5000 border patrol officers. >> the risk is that you did -- and do exactly what we did last time. >> we will increase the number of the border patrol officers by 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. 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 someone who came in at the last part of 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 we have already 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. it will be the same as what we have seen. corners isutting going to happen when you are hiring thousands of people at once. academy inpatrol 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 would talk about the old patrol and the new patrol and the difference being in the old

patrol, they had a more rigorous academy as they saw it. 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 that is being cut. i think agents are being sent to the field under equipped with language skills. brian: i have another article here from 2017 and the headline is more than 140 customs and border patrol agents were arrested or convicted of corruption in recent years and president trump has promised to hire 5500 new agents can make the problem worse. how were they corrupted? corrupted border patrol agents? i never witnessed any corruption. the people that i was close to, i never heard any rumblings or never knew anybody who was

accused of corruption. however, there were acquaintances at the station that you would hear about and, -- they would just kind of disappear. they had been relieved of duty or they were given -- their gun was taken and they were relegated to a different assignment while they were under investigation. it is a problem that i saw. i think the way that happens -- there is all sorts of different kinds of corruption, but the big concern is agents being corrupted by the drug cartels. it, a borderabout patrol agent at a checkpoint, all they have to do is wave one the-- waive one car through checkpoint and get a payoff from the cartel group. that is the fear. that is the danger and what you are trying to prevent against

with things like polygraph testing and trying to weed out people who you suspect could end up doing that. brian: what is going on at the border? what are all the things happening coming back and forth? i mean, we talked about the drugs and that stuff. break it down, the number of people that just want to come into this country versus those that are moving drugs into the country. >> i wish i knew an actual 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 many drug smugglers. narcotics, loads of arrested people who had extensive criminal records, but the majority, without a doubt, of the people i encountered in my duties were people looking ,or a better life

non-criminals, just people coming to reunite with family or looking for a job. that was the overwhelming majority of the people i encountered. brian: what would happen, do you think, if this situation was reversed and americans 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. i think that gives you the answer right there. it's extremely militarized. of course, the mexican law -- hasment is much more a reputation -- not even a reputation, just the fact that they are much more corrupt and they are often looking hand -- working hand-in-hand with some of these smuggling cartels.

there. our answer right i think the other thing that is important to consider is these migrants coming from central america, which is now the majority of migrants. i think, last year was the first official year migrants from central america exceeded migrants from mexico. -- their lives are at risk, their bodies are being modified and 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 guatemala and mexico. they are at risk during that know, 1000, 2000, 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 "usa today." >> when i was a kid, this one quote that kennedy had has always stuck with me. that is, "ask not what you can do for your -- your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country." as we find them that is when , they put the cameras out. then we start saying, ok, it is where we start game number two. game number two turns in 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. by doing that, we end up playing whack-a-mole.e of you hit them here. they pop up over here. brian: what are you seeing in that 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 that this is a game of whack-a-mole. you know, that is a metaphor, at dehumanizes you not to think about the migrant as people but as animals. these people are vigilantes. they are not trained by the united they to 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 the border patrol is doing and not a help. brian: what is your sense of most border patrol agent you work with -- what do they consider their job to be and do they want to stop the traffic? mr. cantu: the border patrol -- thethat i worked with

thing that is so strange and i think becomes lost in a lot of these conversations is how routine all of this comes. thismes -- routine all of becomes. a lot of the questions you are asking and that i had when i got into border patrol get relegated to the back of your mind. 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 do my crossword puzzle or watch my ipad or do i have to drive around? border patrol agents, first and foremost, you are concerned with your safety, the safety of the people you work with. you want to do your job. the agents i knew and i admired, peoplented to treat the that they apprehended with

respect and dignity. i also saw people who did not operate that way. when you are talking about as you are18,000 agents, talking about every different kind of person you can imagine. werew good agents who dedicated to their work and i knew agents who i really disagreed with the way they did the work. brian: what do you think of the world that portrays the border and what i am thinking about -- i will show a clip and a second, is "secario." what does it mean? mr. cantu: it is the word for a cartel hitman basically an assassin. betweenhis is a story el paso and juarez. did you leave 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, then almost surreal and is sor element of why it surreal is that it is simultaneously so normal because you become conditioned to living in this safe environment in el paso in in the years when i was living there, it was sort of as the peak violence was peter ring -- petering out -- for your viewers that don't know, it was the most violent city in the world for several years. it was the murder capital of the world. i think that place is saddled with so much mythology.

mythologize the border in general. movies are part of that. images of death and destruction and all of this sort of purveyed the way we think about the area. livingine everyone their under a cloud of violence, which is true and also not true and that's why it's so surreal. host: here is up -- brian: here's a little bit of video from the movie "secario." >> there she is, the beast, warez -- juarez. >> 1900s, president taft went to visit the president and took guy men with him and some had a pistol. thinking he is so

safe. juarezon their way to and when you see those vehicles, does that remind you of your experience? mr. cantu: 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 at some spots on the 10 and look out the passenger window and see the rio grande and the fence and 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 they drive into juarez and you

see bodies hanging from the highway overpass and i think one character says "welcome to juare z." that is the damaging part because it encourages us to think about the entire border as this landscape of devastation. brian: we might as well do the upcoming "secario 2." toro is in this one and i think josh brolin. when you see it, the music sets the mood. >> how would you define terrorism? the current definition is any individual or group -- that uses violence to achieve political goal. ♪ this administration believes the drug cartels --

♪ -- fit that definition. ♪ >> do you want to see this thing through? i am going to have to get dirty. ♪ >> i am turning you loose. >> how loose? >> no rules this time. >> adios. brian: how much of that is accurate? the feeling? mr. cantu: it is simultaneously important to recognize that the violence in mexico pervades many ways,iety in so but it's also important not to glorify that or focus on that is what mexico is or what life just across the border is.

i think we lose sight of the fact that, people live in these communities every day. they have lives just like us. , in i think about juarez also think about visiting juarez with my mom and we were walking to the big open marketplace and my mother fell in a pothole on the street while we were crossing the road and really badly twisted her ankle and the light turned green and the cars were about to go and we were sort of panicked trying to get her up and people stop to their cars, got out of their cars. one man sort of held traffic with his hand and people came and lifted my mother out of the street and helped her to the sidewalk and just left their in street. 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. we lose sight of the humanity of the people who live in these places and i think that is problematic. it encourages us to think of every border town as a place we should fear going to. ryan: how much did your view about this whole thing change during the time you were in the border patrol? mr. cantu: it changed dramatically. the biggest change if i have to try to describe it would be that i entered the border patrol with all of these sort of grand macro level questions. sociopolitical questions, policy questions. 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. when i look back at my time in the border patrol, what really sticks with me -- but i really remember our those human interactions that i have. those encounters and those conversations i had with crossers. that is what i carry with me every day and i think that is what gets lost in this conversation. it was almost a reversal for me. brian: which crosser's conversation do you remember the most? mr. cantu: there was a man and a woman who were left behind bear -- by their group in desert. brian: were they trying to get across the border to come to the united states? mr. cantu: they were part of a larger group migrants coming for : work and they got separated, left behind because they couldn't keep up. the woman was pregnant, that is why she could not keep up. they were lost for three days after their group left them. they were drinking filthy water

from cattle tanks., they made it to a village and the border patrol got called and i was the agent who is supposed to take them in. i started talking with them and it turned out this pregnant woman had grown up in iowa and spoke perfect english and she schoolteacher in iowa. i think her husband saw we were talking and had a connection and he leaned over at one point and read, can you just skip the whole arrest and deportation thing? can you just drive us back to the border and let us cross back into mexico? no,dn't hesitate, i said, this is my job, i cannot do that and i took them in. what i remember about that encounter is 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 hold them in my mind. i wanted that woman to be safe and for their child to be safe. a couple hours later, i went back out on patrol, i was sitting in my car and i had completely forgotten their names. the reason that encounter sticks with me so much is because i think that is the first step in inization, forgetting what makes someone in individual. brian: what should this country do? if you were invited to the oval office and the president said tell me from your experience what do you think we ought to do? mr. cantu: well, i think we need to have conversation about board -- 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 the immensity and nuance of this issue.

the rhetoric has to change, i think. of atly, if i had the ear policy maker, i would say we have to change this policy of enforcement through deterrence that i think has precipitated a humanitarian crisis. those numbers i mentioned earlier of the border deaths are not abstract to me. i carry the image of one of those people who lost their lives with me. i think that is unacceptable. you know, that hundreds of people die each year, crossing our border on our own doorstep. i think that has to change. that is something we can change right away. brian: here is a clip from a documentary. rios one is called el seca room 164. ♪ speaking spanish]

brian: what drives men like this? mr. cantu: i think what is amazing about that film and that me, istory -- to 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 know, aret you, you charged with killing as not people. when i was writing this book, this man's story and his

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

mr. cantu: tucson. ryan: you mention your mother a lot. where is mom now? mr. cantu: she is outside the town where i grew up, close to prescott. i have half brothers and half-sisters on my father's side. i have two half-sisters and an older half-brother -- two half-brothers and an older half-sister. brian: how long did writing this book take you and what do you think of the process? mr. cantu: i spent maybe five years writing this book. began ashe book really inaccounting of my own time the border patrol and the way now i participated in what when i look at it is the perpetuation of these flawed and violent policies.

thinkingly changed my as i had already started writing this book is when i became friends with this man jose and his story is what really transform to 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 border patrol holding facility by becoming close with facility. -- by becoming close with his family, i saw the ways that deportation rips through their lives even though they never crossed a border. brian: you end the book with jose and his wife and three children. where are they today? mr. cantu: his wife and his three children are still in the u.s. brian: are they u.s. citizens? mr. cantu: his three children are u.s. citizens. >> where is jose? mr. cantu: for his safety, i

cannot say where he is. what i can say is his life is very precarious. safe.not i think much like many people who are in his situation, he lives in a state of constant fear. brian: you should point out, that in your book you have him after being back and forth a couple of times he was at that end of the book back in mexico. mr. cantu: yes. voice.k ends with his 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 from

jose'sng to someone in position than we can listening to a policy maker, politician border patrol agent. ,brian: let's say the wall is built and another 5500 border patrol agents are created, what will the impact of that be? mr. cantu: it is hard to say certain, but people will still find a way up, over, through, around. i think without any kind of reform, itpolicy doesn't do anything to address the problem of the people that are here. and the problem of all these people separated from their families, the print -- problem of the dreamers 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 as saying that she spent her career slowly losing my sense of purpose? that happened to you? mr. cantu: absolutely. it happens sort of by design. when you step into an institution like the border patrol, you are giving over all of these parts of your identity and what makes you who you are to this institution in order to help it perpetuated goals. 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 someone like my mother as a tether sort of calling me back to that, i don't know that i would have come out from it in the same way. send --ow long did she spent with the parks service? spent half her

career with the parks service and then the other half with the forest service and she retired from that job. she spent her entire career working for the federal government. brian: last question. what does she think of your 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: the name of the book is "the line becomes a river: dispatches from the border" our guest has been francisco cantu. ♪ [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 free transcripts or to give comments about the program, visit us at qanda.org. podcasts -- programs are also available at c-span podcasts. this programed with francisco cantu, here are others you might enjoy, jorge ramos talks about his views on immigration in america. discussingitano immigration policy and the impact of the hispanic vote in u.s. elections and the head of the hispanic abbasid -- advocacy group has a national council. you can find his interviews online at c-span.org. here is a look at our live

coverage today. on c-span, the heritage town nation looks at school discipline rules issued by the federal government followed by the secretaries of the army, navy, and air force talking about defense strategy and the future of the military. later, a discussion on what it is like covering the trump administration with journalists from cnn, the washington post, and 538. the senate returns at 4:00 p.m. to continue debate on legislation that would ease banking regulations and on c-span 3, a national security form looks at technology in the future of warfare. >> tonight on c-span's landmark cases, we will explore the 1886 case where a san francisco city ordinance discriminated against the chinese laundromat order. found in favf