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The Spanish term for Border Patrol.
La Migra Quotes in The Devil’s Highway
The The Devil’s Highway quotes below are all either spoken by La Migra or refer to La Migra. For each quote, you can also see the other terms and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Chapter 1
Quotes
“Getting bodies,” in Border Patrol lingo, didn’t necessarily mean collecting corpses. Bodies were living people. “Bodies” was one of the many names for them. Illegal aliens, dying of thirst more often than not, are called “wets” by agents. “Five wets” might have slipped out. “Wets” are also called “tonks,” but the Border Patrol tries hard to keep that bon mot from civilians. It’s a nasty habit in the ranks. Only a fellow border cop could appreciate the humor of calling people a name based on the stark sound of a flashlight breaking over a human head.
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Somebody had to follow the tracks. They told the story. They went down into Mexico, back in time, and ahead into pauper’s graves. Before the Yuma 14, there were the smugglers. Before the smugglers, there was the Border Patrol. Before the Border Patrol, there was the border conflict, before them all was Desolation itself.
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Afterword
Quotes
Part of the idea was to foment discussion. Make us think a little about those people who are “like, illegal.” But the deeper idea was to bear witness—we saw an exodus straight from the biblical template, and it felt that no one was paying attention. As I started the work, I will confess, it was all about the good men who died. But it didn’t take long to see that the story was really about all humans—all of us in those ancient deserts are lost wanderers.
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Item: a Mexican Beta Group immigration cop asked me if the situation in the U.S.—the suffering of the undocumented—would be improved if we called them by other terms. What if they are called “refugees”? “Pilgrims”? He was a philosopher. “In God’s world,” he said, “no man is illegal.” Every night, he locked himself inside the police station so the cocaine cowboys from the desert couldn’t kill him.
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The border makes me happy. Hard to believe. But, after all, I’m from there. Is the border all hate and fear and bad craziness? No. Of course not. Just like the Border Patrol agents aren’t all racist monsters looking to crack beaner heads. Just like the smugglers aren’t all savage beasts looking to slaughter innocents for filthy lucre…well, not all of them. Just like the walkers aren’t slobbering rapists and murderers—in spite of the blazing sign we float over their heads: ILLEGAL.
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La Migra Term Timeline in The Devil’s Highway
The timeline below shows where the term La Migra appears in The Devil’s Highway. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 1: The Rules of the Game
...it is called the Vidrios Drag. They are now praying to be found by the Migra, or the Border Patrol, whom they had “walked into hell trying to escape.” They cannot...
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Chapter 5: Jesús Walks Among Us
...“gangster.” Maradona omitted the fact that the trade in Nogales had been forced west by Migra crackdowns, and that Jesús would be working in a “mean” little town below the Yuma...
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Chapter 8: Bad Step at Bluebird
...son, Reymundo Jr., with the ascent. Mendez knows that the “surest way to beat La Migra [is] to keep to the high country” and avoid the flat planes of the desert....
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...the men were caught off-guard by bright lights. Mendez told the men it was La Migra, and all of them scattered. However, this “mysterious” event raises a lot of questions. Urrea...
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...the men would later recall feeling spooked but optimistic—they had, they thought, successfully outrun the Migra, and many of them took the rest stop to enjoy the snacks they had brought...
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Chapter 13: The Trees and the Sun
After climbing a mountain, the abandoned walkers spot a lone Migra truck patrolling the desert. They scramble toward it, but there is no way to get...
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Chapter 14: Helicopters
...possible. Within ten minutes of Mike F. finding the men and giving them water, the Migra are already “fully engaged” in a rescue mission. Mike F., with the lost walkers in...
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Afterword: Ten Years On
...the rescuers open up to him. He writes that the “triumvirate of Desolation—walkers, smugglers, and Migra—all were worthy of witness.”
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