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Francisco Cantú’s The Line Becomes a River: Dispatches from the Border is the epitome of a well-timed book. Cantú, a third-generation Mexican-American, worked for the Border Patrol from 2008 to 2012. He has written a quietly beautiful but disturbing memoir about his experiences and disillusionment with the Patrol and the violent mess represented by the U.S.-Mexico border. Since building “the Wall” was arguably *the* most important issue that got Donald Trump elected, The Line Becomes a River is an exceedingly valuable account of what our border policies have actually wrought.

Christians should care about Cantú’s story, because it soberly raises questions about how the border system dehumanizes people (as bureaucracies so often do) and creates a nihilistic and deadly game of cat-and-mouse between U.S. law enforcement and the immigrants who wish to cross the border illegally.

Cantú is definitely opposed to what America’s border policy has wrought, and he was opposed to it well before Donald Trump took office. One assumes that he also opposes Donald Trump, but that is not the point of the book. Moreover, he hardly paints a rosy picture of life in Mexico. While countless individual Mexicans in the book are decent, honest, and loving people (as he makes clear in a stranger’s act of kindness on a visit to Ciudad Juarez), the “narcos” and corrupt government officials have deeply scarred much of the country with violence, suspicion, and unpunished crime.

Indeed, the book is harrowing in its depictions of Mexican gang violence, and the mass abduction, abuse, and murder especially of women in tormented cities like Juarez. And readers should note that Cantú hardly holds back in his recounting of the rough, profane culture of the Border Patrol (a culture that anyone with military or law enforcement background will probably find familiar).

The last third of the book is its most moving. This is when Cantú, now a former Border Patrol agent, takes up the cause of a friend named José who is undocumented but has been living in the United States for many years with his (also undocumented) wife and their three (U.S. citizen) boys. Although Cantú seems uncomfortable talking about religion, it becomes clear that Jose and his family are vitally involved in a church, presumably a Protestant one (Cantú speaks of José’s “pastor,” who is never named). José seems almost certain to have gone through a conversion experience, as he is deeply committed to his church, and he speaks of once having struggled with alcohol abuse. When José goes back to Mexico to visit his dying mother, he is trapped south of the border and unable to return to his family. He gets arrested attempting to cross the border. Cantú, José’s pastor, and a friendly immigration lawyer do everything they can to secure a familial exception to José’s deportation. It doesn’t work.

Cantú, recounting José’s comments to him, argues that it is ironically the Mexicans most committed to their families who are the most likely to run afoul of the border enforcement system. José says, in effect, “I was going to visit my dying mother. And then I was going to return to my wife and kids. My three boys need me.” José believes that this is God’s will. Thus he tries repeatedly to cross back into America.

Cantú offers no easy answers, and he and José seem to agree that the United States must have and must enforce some kind of border control laws. In fact, a potential frustration with Cantú’s book is that he offers virtually no answers at all. He simply recounts his experiences and his despair. And he suggests that a humane people shouldn’t tolerate what the system does to people and families on both sides of the border.

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