The Fence: National Security, Public Safety, and Illegal Immigration along the U.S.–Mexico Border

Chapter 5. ISIS

Chapter 5 ISIS S o which do you think I should get, the bull or the cow?” asks CBP agent Tony Jasso, turning into the parking lot in front of La Hacienda Restaurant on Old Military Highway. Although completely empty at a little before 2:00 a.m., the parking lot is lit up like a Christmas tree. “Well, bro,” says Agent Henry Rocha, “I’d say the cow. You buy the bull, the meat is stringier. Tougher. The cow is better. I’d say the cow.” A seasoned agent, Rocha was born and raised in Brownsville. Agent Jasso, with three years of experience compared to Rocha’s seven, is from Dallas . The two have been friends ever since Jasso was posted to South Texas. Agent Rocha parks the Tahoe near the entrance to La Hacienda, then they both sit talking , ears constantly tuned to the radio dispatcher. The dispatcher sporadically calls out sensors, the number of hits, and the time of the hits. For the last hour all the sensor hits have been ten miles to the west of their assigned turf. ISIS 89 “Okay,” says Tony over the voice of the dispatcher. “You convinced me. I’m going to buy the cow. You got room in your freezer?” “It’s a big one,” says Henry, flexing his shoulder to loosen a cramped muscle. Their night shift half over, so far the two have very little to show for their work. Earlier they checked out four different sensors along the river, each of which took at least five hits. But by the time they reached the river landings where the sensors are buried, there was no one there to apprehend. Except for the third sensor. The third sensor had taken twenty-three hits in less than ten minutes. Agents Jasso and Rocha rushed down to the banks of the Rio Grande in their truck, scanning the brush with their powerful Mag-lites. In the moonless night a startled cow glared back at them, then returned to its nighttime grazing. That’s what got them started on the cow talk in the first place. “Now it’s only big enough for a quarter,” Agent Henry Rocha tells his partner. “I got four fifteen-pound snappers in there I caught yesterday. They take up a lot of space. What a trip! Too bad you couldn’t get time off. It was two hours out to the snapper banks. Rough going all the way. Three spring breakers on board and me. Those college kids started drinking soon as we left the dock at South Padre Island. Started puking a half hour later. Stayed sick most of the rest of the trip. Two hours out, four hours of fishing time, then two hours back to the dock. I think between the three of them they caught two fish. Maybe three.” “Yeah, but they deserved it. A lot of those spring breakers leave their brains back at the dorm. I’d say you got your money’s worth. I’d like to. . . .” Agent Jasso never finishes his sentence. The dispatcher calls out sensor no. 308, less than half a mile from La Hacienda Restaurant. It has already taken three hits. Gravel flying, Rocha guns out of the empty parking lot, takes two left turns, and a few minutes later switches off the headlights as he eases the truck behind the cover of two mesquite trees. Knowing the traffic setting off sensor no. 308 must cross the irrigation canal at the footbridge to reach the trails leading to Old Military Highway, he heads directly for the footbridge. He positions his partner on the other side of the footbridge, fifty yards south between the canal and the dense vegetation bordering the lone escape route. Henry kneels down twenty feet from the bridge, checks his watch, radios Tony to make sure he is in place, then calls for backup from two agents who are the closest to them on patrol. They tell Henry they are rolling and will be there in ten minutes. For twenty minutes Agents Jasso and Rocha wait silently in the dark near the riverbank. During those twenty minutes, which seem like an hour, they A Virtual American Dream 90 see no one and hear nothing but the bullfrogs and the night birds rustling in the trees. Agent Rocha then radios Agent Jasso to assume a new position north of the...