Commentary : Immigration Agents’ Actions Beg a Question

I had gone to an Irish pub in Clairemont with a friend to listen to the occasionally mournful, sometimes raunchy tunes and tip a few beers. But, after a few minutes of revelry, the conversation among a group of five young immigrants standing next to our table proved more interesting than the music.

The men with thick Irish accents were all soccer players and in the United States illegally on expired visas. Two of them were talking about driving to Disneyland that weekend when another asked, with genuine concern, if they were not afraid of being stopped at the San Onofre Border Patrol checkpoint.

“Not really,” said one of them. “We look American. They only stop people who look foreign.” The five laughed at the irony of their compatriot’s comment.

For the five Irishmen, the comment may have been ironic. But for many Chicanos who were born and raised in the Southwest, there is some truth in the young man’s statement.

Officially, the U. S. Immigration and Naturalization Service and the Border Patrol say that no ethnic group is singled out when agents choose to enforce federal immigration laws. Everyone, regardless of physical appearance, is subject to being stopped by Border Patrol agents at any time, any place, and being asked, “Citizenship, please?”

Agents with whom I have become acquainted, including friends who grew up to be Border Patrol agents, insist that physical appearance plays only a minor role when an agent decides to ask a person about his or her citizenship. There are other telltale signs, they say, that prompt an agent to pop the question. A person’s demeanor and mannerisms can lead to inquiries about his citizenship, they say. Most agents say they also go on instinct.

This sounds fine as an ideal, but it is hardly the practice. How often do Border Patrol agents pull over a car full of Anglo faces on a border highway? How often do they wave through a car without questioning the occupants, and stop the car behind it that is full of brown American faces?

Being from the Rio Grande Valley of Texas, I literally grew up with the Border Patrol around me. While picking cotton as a youth, I remember Border Patrol agents walking into the fields, asking each of us about our citizenship.

My father, who also was born in the United States, was a combat veteran of World War II and worked for the federal government in one capacity or another all of his adult life. He was even a detention officer with the Border Patrol for a while.

But there were occasions when none of that mattered to the agents who stopped him and demanded proof of his citizenship--even while he operated a U.S. government vehicle. And, as I learned a few days before I left for Vietnam, being a serviceman with an Army identification card was not enough to prove to demanding agents that I was a U.S. citizen.

Two weeks before my departure, my father and I drove from my hometown of San Benito to Houston to see my first baseball game at the Astrodome. About 75 miles north of home, we were stopped at the Border Patrol checkpoint near Sarita.

The agents were particularly demanding when they inquired about our citizenship. My father’s federal identification card and my military identification were not enough. Eventually, my father’s patient, but stern, objections to their uncompromising demands prevailed. We were allowed to drive through.

Later, my father recounted two incidents in which Border Patrol agents stopped him and demanded proof of his citizenship while he was driving a U.S. government truck on federal property along the Rio Grande River. Whites who drove the same trucks in the same area were not stopped.

In the summer of 1971, when my oldest daughter was 9 months old, we drove from California to Texas to visit my family. My wife was born and raised in California and does not “look foreign.” I prepared her for the social and political peculiarities she would encounter for the first time in my home state, including the Border Patrol.

However, advance warnings were not enough.

Southeast of El Paso, near Sierra Blanca, we were stopped at a Border Patrol checkpoint. The car ahead of us, carrying white faces from Iowa, was waved through without question. But the agent took a quick look inside our car and put up his right hand.

The fact that he had allowed the car with Iowa tourists to pass without question and had decided to question us angered me.

“Why didn’t you question them?” I demanded. “What is it about us that makes you think we might not be U. S. citizens?”

For a moment, the startled agent, a Chicano, was at a loss for words. Then, in his best authoritative voice, he informed me that he had the right to stop and question me at his pleasure. He never answered the question that I posed to him. Instead, he looked at the baby in the back seat and asked us if we could prove that she was ours and a U. S. citizen.

That was almost 17 years ago, but it appears that little has changed in the interim.

Two months ago, a friend and his family had a similar experience at the Temecula checkpoint. Every member of my friend’s family has unmistakably Hispanic features. They were returning to their Riverside home after visiting relatives in Chula Vista when they had the misfortune of raising the suspicions of a Border Patrol agent.

The car ahead of theirs, carrying two white women and a white man, was waved through without question. However, their car was directed off to the side, where another agent began to question the family.

What was it about his family that raised the agents’ suspicions, asked my friend, a high school science teacher. Was it because they looked too Mexican?

The agent was ruffled by the question and asked my friend if he was trying to be a “wise ass.”

Once again, the agent failed to answer the question.