The midterms are today. I'm writing this before I find out how they turned out, but I gotta say, "THE BORDER" is one of those big-ticket, bright-and-flashy issues that are being touted out there this election season. The Fear strikes those listening to the loudest, most uninformed voices on the subject.
Well guess what. You're reading the blog of someone who is there in the front row, talking to, and staying under the roofs of people here in the borderlands. No, we're not talking San Diego, Houston, or major cities of the Sunbelt, I'm talking within-5-miles of the border. Where the checkpoints cordon off the highways. Street signs warning people of 'migrant crossings' are posted along the roads. On the mountainsides you can find Border Patrol vehicles scouring the land. Drones hum in the air above you, almost invisible, looking to track down and bag one of the biggest overblown threats in the American psyche: The Latin American Migrant.
OVERBLOWN!? You might say: "They're coming here by the thousands! The caravans! The crime!" As we know, a certain successful presidential campaign first went public when the candidate said "They're bringing crime, they're rapists."
But let's not soapbox about the issue of migrants. Let's hear from the people on the ground here.
I've talked with people on both sides of the border here. I'm talking folks that have either lived here for years, or all their lives within a stones throw of the border. The people on the 'front line'. People who have lived here long enough to see the changes in policy that have impacted their day-to-day. American citizens, all.
The most dominant policy that's impacted people here the most would be the 2001 Patriot Act. Hastily signed almost unanimously by a presidential veto-proof supermajority in the wake of 9/11, the Patriot Act donned the American Border Patrol vast new powers, including those to enter a person's property- both their land and their homes- with NO WARRANT.
That's right, the Patriot Act killed the 4th amendment, the right to privacy, within 100 miles of the border. The lands that fall within the jurisdiction of the Border Patrol are effectively a Non-4A zone.
With the Patriot Act, locals no longer have the power to ask the Border Patrol to leave if their trucks start rolling over their fences and plants, or kicking down their doors in search of migrant vagabonds.
I stayed at a Bunk-A-Biker here north of the Tecate border crossing. We were in the process of finishing up replacing my back brake pads when a Border Patrol truck rolled up onto the property. The junkyard dogs swarmed the vehicle bringing it to a halt, and I walked up to see why the agent was here. He asked if we'd seen anyone go through the area or if he could poke around the property.
When the property owner, my mechanic and friend walked up, he could tell that the agent was new and kind of lost. He pointed him in the right direction and got to telling me about his experiences with the agency. Migrants haven't been an issue or worry for him, it's the patrol that harasses him the most. Years ago, an agent had driven a truck right through his property and ran over and killed one of his dogs and drove off, so he decided to get revenge.
In the middle of the night, he scared the border patrol by walking up to 5 yards behind them and cocking his rifle in the dark. He was on his own property, but the supervisors got involved, he got a stern warning, and the Patrol hadn't been seen on (or near) his property for about a decade or more from the incident. Recently, new blood replaced the old and they're back to running on his property again.
THEN I SEE THEM
That day, as it turns out, there were some migrants in the area. It's what the officer was looking for initially.
After I had packed up Lechuza to finally make a break for the border, I found myself following a Border Patrol van. Like a paddy wagon of old, it had pulled over along a turnout along the highway and that's when I saw them.
They were three teenagers, no more than 18, dirtied and toting nothing but backpacks. A border agent was going through their belongings.
I can only imagine what it took for them to get here. I thought about where they were from. I thought-- how much of a threat could these kids be? Were their parents killed in cartel violence? Were they escaping something or yearning for something? Were they Mexican or from a Central American nation? How long were they on the road? They were captured within 5 miles of the border, did a drone spot them in the landscape?
Then I thought about what was coming next for them. How long would it take for them to be 'processed'? How well or poorly would they be treated by the Patrol? Where would they be deported to and how long would that take?
I could only glance at them as I rolled past at 55mph. The glimpse was fast, only a fraction of a second to see them, but I'll remember it for the rest of my life. I got a look at the boogeyman, that terrifying menace south of the border, the threat to our livelihoods and safety-- 3 dirty kids that traveled hundreds of miles or more under the unforgiving, relentless Mexican sun.
There you have it, though. After I'd passed these migrants, I hung a right onto the CA highway 188 to Tecate, rode about 5 minutes, then crossed over. Saga 4 ends. I leave the United States behind with no idea when I'll return. I'm switching to Spanish mode, becoming vigilant to where I get my water and gas, putting on my head on a swivel to ride in their anarchial traffic-- heading ever-southward.
-JT
11/14/2022