When Vincent Vargas was training to be a Border Patrol agent in 2009, he was shown a video of two Mexicans desperately trying to enter the United States by swimming across the wild Rio Grande.
A person drowned trying to save his friend, who panicked so much that he accidentally dragged the man trying to save him.
The video was horrible.
Both men drowned just five feet from land and a group of screaming friends who couldn’t swim.
“I became more frustrated watching this video,” Vargas writes in “Borderline: Defending The Home Front” (St. Martin’s Press). “I told myself I could never watch someone drown if I could help it.”
With his new book, he aims to dispel some of the misconceptions he calls “extremely offensive and intellectually dishonest” about border guards.
“Most Americans have a view of the US Border Patrol from what they might see on television or online, but this is a false narrative,” he writes. “The Border Patrol has been misunderstood, vilified, criticized and politicized by both its supporters and detractors. It has been compared to organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan and even the Waffen-SS.
“Most Americans have a view of the US Border Patrol from what they can see on television or online, but this is a false narrative,” writes Vincent Vargas. Courtesy of Borderline
While many assume that the border guards are “a group of racist individuals who don’t want to let anyone into the country, that couldn’t be further from the truth.”
One night, Vargas dove into the Rio Grande to save a migrant, but was left helpless when the current swept the man under.
“I’ve rescued a handful of people, I don’t remember their faces,” he writes. “But I do remember this young man’s face.”
The border between the United States and Mexico stretches for nearly 2,000 miles, through mountains and canyons, deserts and rivers.
Vargas seeks to give a different vision of the Border Patrol in “Borderline: Defending The Home Front.”
In some places, it may be one of the most inhospitable places on the planet but, as Vincent Vargas explains, it is also one of the deadliest.
According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, more than 8,000 people have died trying to cross the border since 1998 and, as Vargas points out, 35 Border Patrol agents have lost their lives in the line of duty in that time.
“Protecting our borders can be a dangerous task that, unfortunately, can result in the death of these agents,” Vargas writes.
From the agency’s birth in 1924 to the wide and varied range of its missions today, the Border Patrol is, Vargas writes, “part of that thin green line, that border line, where battles are fought daily between the opposite extremes of life and death, justice and villainy, peace and chaos.”
Vargas served four years of active duty in the U.S. Army’s 2nd Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment, enduring the carnage of tours in Iraq and Afghanistan before joining the Border Patrol and training to become a a BORSTAR (Border Patrol Search, Trauma and Rescue) agent, assigned to the Border Patrol Tactical Unit (BORTAC).
While Vargas coped admirably with the physical demands of the intense training program, some exercises left him perplexed and amused.
From time to time, Vargas was thrown into mock drug raids where angry Spanish-speaking actors would emerge from nowhere and throw wads of bills and bags of fake drugs at the trainees, leaving the agents to try to calm the situation. “You don’t sit in a classroom month after month,” he writes.
But the training left Vargas in doubt about the danger of the job he was about to undertake.
In July 2009, just days before Vargas left the Academy, Border Patrol Agent Robert Rosas was shot and killed with his own service pistol while investigating a drug smuggling operation near Campo, California.
“The murder of Agent Rosas was chilling,” he writes. “It was a rude awakening to the potential dangers of the job, and he hadn’t even started as an agent.”
Death has been a recurring theme in Vargas’s life and career.
“Protecting our borders can be a dangerous task,” Vargas writes. Jeff Swensen
Growing up in Los Angeles, he had lost several friends to gang violence and many more followed him when he joined the military.
In 2004, while in the military, his close friend Devin Peguero was killed in a live-fire exercise.
Then, during his deployment to Iraq, he had to deal with the deaths of his colleagues, Sergeant Ricardo Barazza and Sergeant Dale Brehm, killed by enemy fire while clearing a building in Ramadi.
“Like most military men and women, I had survivor’s guilt,” he writes. “If those bullets had hit me, maybe Sergeant Barraza would still be alive.”
“It was never easy to deny a family access to the land of opportunity,” Vargas writes. Courtesy of Borderline
The Border Patrol was no less dangerous, both for agents and for those trying to reach the United States.
In 2010, agent Brian Terry was part of ‘Operation Huckleberry’, a mission designed to disrupt the so-called ‘rip crews’, or those gangs that steal drugs and contraband destined to cross the border into the United States.
When Terry’s team confronted one team, he was shot by a suspect armed with an AK-47. He died in hospital shortly after.
“The news hit me like a two-by-four on the head,” Vargas writes.
These bands have nothing to lose. “If a Border Patrol agent attempts to detain them, they must deal with that agent and potentially eliminate him,” he writes.
Capturing drug traffickers is only part of the job, according to Vargas. Courtesy of Borderline
Vargas was also tasked with stopping ‘coyotes’, traffickers who made fortunes by taking the life savings of would-be immigrants to arrange illegal crossings into the United States.
“Once they have this money in hand, they manipulate, threaten and often abuse their cargo while it is in transit,” he explains. “It is not uncommon for families to force their young daughters to take birth control pills so as not to become pregnant if they are raped by smugglers, which happens all too often.”
Once they cross the border, they are left to fend for themselves and many do not survive as heat exposure, dehydration and hypothermia take their inevitable toll.
Vargas assumed his duties with empathy, not condemnation.
“It was not my job as a BORSTAR agent to judge anyone for their efforts,” he writes. “He was “My job is to conduct search and rescue and provide aid and, when necessary, life-saving intervention before any human life is lost in the unforgiving terrain of the Texas border.”
“Our border is not broken. It is misunderstood and neglected,” wrote Vargas.Mitch Meyer
There is good reason for your compassion.
When his maternal grandmother was 18, she left her home in Chihuahua, Mexico, and crossed the border into Texas.
His sister, Francisca, had been born in the United States and was therefore an American citizen, but when she died young from an illness, Vargas’s grandmother, whom he knew only as Francisca, simply stole her sister’s identity. and made a life of his own. in Canutillo, just north of El Paso.
His and his family’s lived experience shaped Vargas’ approach to his work on the border.
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“There I was, a third-generation Mexican-American whose grandmother crossed illegally into the United States, about to arrest some people who were doing essentially the same thing for the same reason: to have a chance at a better life.
“It was never easy to deny a family access to the land of opportunity. “I have always seen a little bit of my grandmother in everyone.”
He was not the only agent in the same position.
Today, there are about 20,000 Border Patrol agents, and while 65 percent are white, there are about 20 percent who, like Vargas, are Hispanic or Latino, and another 8 percent are black.
“The Border Patrol has worked hard to ‘look like America’ and has largely succeeded,” Vargas writes.
He left the Border Patrol in 2015. The 42-year-old now lives in Salt Lake City, Utah, with his wife and seven children.
He is a motivational speaker and actor, who appears on the FX show “Mayans MC.”
He is also a drill sergeant in the US Army Reserves.
However, almost a decade after leaving Border Control, he is still not convinced that people, whether politicians or the public, really understand the type of service Border Patrol provides.
“Outside actors will never understand what we really do. Knowing the good we have done and will continue to do is enough,” Vargas writes. Courtesy of Borderline
It remains underfunded, understaffed and undervalued and, he says, is increasingly politicized by lawmakers without the knowledge to implement real change.
“Outside actors will never understand what we really do. Knowing the good we have done (and will continue to do) is enough,” she writes.
“Our border is not broken. She is misunderstood and neglected.”
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Source: vtt.edu.vn