SAN DIEGO — Afternoon roll call at Imperial Beach, the nation's busiest and most besieged Border Patrol station.
Two dozen men in green uniforms and close-cropped hair assemble at rows of tables, cracking jokes, adjusting sunglasses, girding for the night ahead. Theirs is a youthful gung-ho fraternity forged in the chaos at The Line where First and Third worlds collide.
Imperial Beach agents often quit after a few years, burned out by the chase: sprinting through treacherous canyons, four-wheeling down hillsides, single-handedly nabbing dozens of illegal immigrants.
Roland Gonzalez, a mustachioed Border Patrol supervisor sporting a baseball-style cap, fires up the troops.
"Catch as many tonks as you guys can," Gonzalez says, exhorting the agents to make arrests. "Safely. An alien is not worth busting a leg."
Tonks .
The expression, used matter-of-factly around the station, hints at the insular and sometimes violent culture of the Border Patrol. The onomatopoeic slang refers to the sound of an agent's flashlight striking an immigrant's head.
In the frenzied world of The Line, a code of the shadows places fraternal loyalty above the law and sometimes condones dangerous tactics and abuse of border crossers, say critics and agents.
Feeling abandoned and under siege, some agents close ranks, regarding the mostly nonviolent migrants, the public and their supervisors as adversaries in a thankless, futile battle. The job breeds a frazzled mentality--an explosive fusion of frustration, callousness and tension.
"Ninety percent of the 'thump' (abuse) cases come from agents who are fried," said Tim Still, a 12-year veteran in El Centro. "They are just not going to take any more that day. And the first person that mouths off at them-- smack ."
At the same time, the caricature of a thuggish "Green Gestapo"--an image burnished by the Mexican media and immigrant advocates--obscures a complex reality.
The patrol's task is fraught with risks. Armed criminals and drunken troublemakers frequent the border, and in the most recent fiscal year, authorities recorded 167 alleged assaults on agents--about one per 13,000 arrests--injuring 49 agents, four seriously. Of 11 agents killed since 1980, 10 died in vehicle and aircraft accidents and one was gunned down by a suspected smuggler in Fresno.
Barraged by faces of Third World despair, agents are moved to acts of compassion and heroism. Pursuers turn rescuers: They deliver babies in the brush, thwart robbers and rapists who prey on migrants, and on rare occasions even let the saddest cases go free.
"Hey, we are human beings," said former Agent Ralph Hunt, a burly, well-spoken six-year veteran. "We are not brutes. We are not racists. . . . A lot of people in the Border Patrol have a lot of integrity. They are hard-working."
Slang such as \o7 tonk\f7 and \o7 wet\f7 --short for the slur \o7 wetback\f7 --is not malicious, agents say, although such language is officially forbidden. "It's crude, it's demeaning and it's dehumanizing," said William Thomas Veal, deputy Border Patrol chief in San Diego.
Officers defend the towering statue outside the Imperial Beach station that depicts an agent clutching a net and a chicken, the latter representing border slang for migrant: \o7 pollo\f7 . Agents say the sculpture, a gift from an admirer, merely embodies the twisted sense of reality found at the international boundary.
"I used to know agents whose idea of fun at night was to go across the border and drink beers and sing songs with the same people they'd be deporting the next day," said former immigration Commissioner Leonel Castillo, who served during the Jimmy Carter Administration. Agents gave Castillo, the first Latino commissioner, a nickname: "Chief Tonk."
Such seemingly contradictory attitudes are ingrained in Border Patrol culture, as is the intimidating code of silence that punishes perceived turncoats and interferes with internal brutality investigations.
"There's a fortress mentality," said Hunt, who left last fall to become an immigration service examiner. "That's one of our failings. We are very insular."
Agent Sally Sandoval, one of the few women at the Imperial Beach station, broke the unwritten code--and paid the price. She testified last year against fellow Agent Frank Jeschke, who had been indicted on federal charges of assaulting a U.S. resident.
Sandoval began fearing for her safety after she received intimidating notes in her station mail drawer. Fellow officers disrupted her radio calls in the field, say officials and former colleagues.
During the trial, Sandoval testified that the accused agent had a well-known reputation for abuse. Apprehensive about retaliation, Sandoval testified: "There is a code that we are not supposed to tell on other agents."
The harassment was reported to the FBI; commanders warned at roll calls that those responsible could face criminal charges.
