Sixty Miles Of Border Essay

The border between The United States and Mexico has long been known as one of the most dangerous parts of the country. Dangerous drug cartels pushing people and drugs over the border, constantly are adapting and finding new ways to do so. This would pose a bigger threat if not for the United States border patrol agents who are on guard all hours of the day trying to prevent contraband from entering the country. Terry Kirkpatrick served in Nogales Arizona, and later Mexico. After receiving many death treats he was reassigned to Arizona. So, he has seen everything in his time with the border patrol. In his book, Sixty Miles of Border, Terry covers all aspects of the border patrol including their history, tactics, dangers, methods, his supervisions, and some of his personal stories. Terry starts the book by stating that smuggling in Arizona began in the eighteen hundred, long before the border patrol was established. In …show more content…
He claims in one page that arrests were at an all-time high in his office and it was hard to keep up with all the paper work. This all took place in pre-computer times when if a report was typed and needed to be corrected it was up to the secretary to fix the problem. Terry states that the supervisor was already “on his ass” (Kirkpatrick p26) so this left him with less time to go out to make arrests, to instead sit around and do paper work. This didn’t sit right with Terry who though his efforts are best used when he is in the field. During the harvest, Terry recalls how many agents seemed to be living at the office having so much work to do. During all the office chaos, Terry got a phone call that would change how he spent the harvest. This caller informed him about a drug stash house run by a man named Quemado, a notorious smuggler in his time. This ended his office hours and put him right where he wanted to