and on that same border but in the US side is david taylor with his proyect working the line. from his statement:
To the American public the Border Patrol generally functions either as the heroic defender of our periphery or as a band of government thugs that beat up on displaced Mexicans. Neither exaggerated position is accurate. Most agents say they want a clear mission and will enforce whatever border policy the American electorate articulates. They view their work as service to our country in much the same way that someone in the military would. Many are frustrated by the presentation of the border issue in main-steam media. Some agents believe our current border policy is misguided while others equate the border issue with post 9/11 national security.
The political views of agents run the gamut from republican to democrat (though the majority are conservative). However, political affiliation does not seem to correlate with the empathy agents have for those that they are charged with apprehending. Some freely acknowledge that if they were in the south, looking north, they would be crossing as well. Others take a hard line, reducing the issue to right and wrong - legal and illegal. A surprising number of agents are the children of parents that crossed the border. Fifty-one percent are Hispanic. They frequently save the lives of people who have been abandoned by their coyotes (smuggler/guides) in the desert.
The Border Patrol is currently in a state of transition. It is migrating from an organization that, for most of its history, looked and functioned much like a rural sheriff's department, to one styled after the high-tech military of the 21st century. The photographs from this ongoing project create a more complex portrait of an organization that is most often seen through the lens of ideologically driven polemics.
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