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ImmigrationProf Blog
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A Border Patrol Officer’s Undocumented Father

By immigrationprof

Julianne Hing writing for the Atlantic:

I am a storyteller by trade, and a new one still learning my way around. Earlier this week I happened on this report about Marcos Gerardo Manzano Jr., a 26-year-old California Border Patrol agent who was charged with giving shelter to an undocumented immigrant, and a twice-deported one at that—his 46-year-old father Marcos Gerardo Manzano Sr.

Manzano Jr. reportedly lied to federal investigators who came around asking about his father’s whereabouts after someone in the neighborhood said they’d seen him in town. When FBI agents raided the Manzanos’ San Ysidro home they didn’t find the father, but they did find another undocumented immigrant hiding out.

I read that report and felt so sad—I imagined the younger Manzano’s impossible choices, his emotional burden sitting on his chest making it hard to breathe as he tried to sleep at night. To abide by the law he was paid by the government to uphold or to turn in his own father for deportation again?

I decided immediately that I wanted to share the Manzanos’ story with you, TNC’s audience. It would be the perfect entry point to discuss the real human drama behind immigration policies and the way that they’ve have failed our country. Policing the border has become much more difficult in recent years since the new border walls and increased border enforcement have forced migrants away from traditional urban crossing points to treacherous, remote regions. Increased border security has also led to the professionalization of criminal networks who want to push drugs through the border. Now families coming to the U.S. in search of a better life and the small number of crossing drug smugglers alike—though immigration policy makes little distinction between the two—pass through increasingly dangerous choke points. In 2010 a record 378 people died trying to cross the border, and there was still one month in the year left to tally. This even though migration into the country is actually down. Read more…..

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