Ride Along With Me

Altar Valley near the Mexico border has the highest number of
recorded found migrant bodies.

Everyone said it would give me the first hand experience I needed to write my story, and boy did it ever.

On Friday April, 6th for the second day in a row, I traveled near the Mexican border in Tucson, but this time the ride was in a government Border Patrol vehicle.

The agent was polite and considerate to me and my fellow borderbeat reporter, but his comments were not so neutral, which I guess is to be expected. A few guffaws at the mention of a certain Arizona Daily Star reporter's name, for example.

I've never been fond of the Arizona desert, but it is quite another thing to experience it when thinking about trying to survive in it. It was only April and already the hot wind was stinging and the sun was relentless.

I learned the most about the process of searching for, finding and arresting undocumented migrant border crossers. And though I try to remain as neutral as possible, it was refreshing to humanize a border patrol agent.

This is a fence made from railroad tracks
engineered by the Border Patrol to deter
smugglers from driving through the desert.

In general, it was an uncomfortable situation. Consider the attempt to remain an ominiscent observer, while sharing the experience of the border situation with an extremely opinionated individual and witnessing the apprehension of eight migrants all within five years of my age.

Forget the politics, the policies, and the major players, the day boiled down to a comparison of lives and birth given rights. The fact that I was born in a hospital merely 200 or so miles away from another girl, has made all the difference in the reason why on that day I was in the Altar Valley as a student reporter and she as a gutsy border crosser.


Two of the eight young migrant border
crossers apprehended by ATV Border Patrol agents.

There is no simple way to look at the border situation. But what Friday made me realize is we are all human; me, that hopeful young girl and border patrol agent. And as humans we all live according to what we think is right, whether that be simply trying to do their job, make a living or find a new life.

An answer is out there somewhere that maybe isn't the best for all sides, but at least is a way to find a compromise.