Unbeknownst to
the Border Patrol agents, one of their bullets had struck the smuggler in the buttocks.
Minutemen: teams of volunteers, sometimes described as vigilantes, who take it upon themselves to patrol
the border in California, Arizona, and Texas.
The border region extends just over 60 miles each way north and south of the boundary line and stretches 2,000 miles from east to west.
Over the past decade,
the Border Patrol has implemented its Southwest Border Strategy, which has entailed the construction of longer and taller walls and fences in an attempt to seal off the major points of entry and increasing the number of agents patrolling these areas.
There are certainly still delays for trucks crossing
the border, but that problem was there even before Sept.
Through these anecdotes, Davidson details the enormous and epic migration in Mexico toward
the border, a migration propelled by demand for maquiladora laborers.
The pink pastel may be more soothing to the eye, but it does little to prettify the reality of the hard-scramble life along
the border.
In similar stories full of telling descriptions and observations from a wide range of people, we enter the world of San Diego's Balboa Park boys, mostly homeless migrants from south of
the border who sniff glue and sell their bodies to wealthy San Diegans; of San Diegos Logan Heights Chicano gang, some of whose members ended up hired guns for the Arellano Felix brothers; of politics and immigrant smuggling rings.
Nowhere in America is the housing situation as desperate as
the border colonias, says John Henneberger, director of the Texas Low Income Housing Information Service in Austin.
With each preventative measure, the journey to slip past
the Border Patrol became more treacherous.
