The Line Becomes a River: Dispatches from the Border

by Francisco Cantú

For the next two hours, Lupe and I stood at the conference table sorting through piles of papers, some of them faded and yellowing: documents providing evidence of José’s entry into the United States at age eleven and the work he had been engaged in every year thereafter, earning minimum wage as a dishwasher, a busboy, a custodian, an auto repairman, a maintenance man, a farmworker, a fruit picker, an agricultural equipment operator, a carpet mill factory worker, a truck driver, a construction hand; documents providing certification of his marriage, certification of the birth of each of his three sons, certification of his mother’s death; documents providing evidence of the growing lives of his children, children who visited the school nurse and the local health clinic, children who received brain scans, behavioral health reports, cognitive speech and language therapy, children who received report cards and teacher’s notes, children who were being shaped by the twin identities of immigrant and citizen.