I was a reporter for the San Diego Union in 1980 when my family and I had a nasty confrontation with U.S immigration agents. That experience led me to investigate reports of Border Patrol misconduct. Here is an excerpt from my book describing what I found.
I took what I had experienced as incentive to report and
write a story on Border Patrol misconduct and brutality. My
sources were mainly retired Border Patrol agents who spoke
matter-of-factly about beating undocumented aliens. They
argued that it was required to keep control of large groups of
aliens. Clubbing an alien was necessary if he dared give an
agent a dirty look.
The official procedure for returning immigrants was to
book them at a detention center nearby. Detainees would be
asked if they wished to be formally deported, which required
a hearing or an agreement to a VR, “voluntary repatriation,”
which would have agents immediately return them to Mexico. However, some ex-officials told me they sometimes applied a “fence VR.” Agents would administer a beating away from the detention center and send immigrants back on foot.
Vernon Jaques, a retired Border Patrol agent, was candid.
“You have an officer arresting forty to fifty aliens a shift,” he
told me, “and that’s dehumanizing. You don’t view them as
humans. It gets easy to haul off and whack someone alongside
the head.”
The “fence VR” also meant no paperwork.
Jaques added that many agents were Vietnam vets who
found parallels between the war and securing the border.
They saw both as unwinnable struggles, which bred anger
and frustration.
“Now, instead of calling the enemy ‘slopes,’ they called them ‘tonks.’” Border Patrol agents still use the term today. Its derivation is unclear.
Ricardo Chavira Chicano 