After 26 years, a Border Patrol agent has a new role: helping migrants
Story by Lauren Villagran, USA TODAY • 2h
EL PASO, Texas – The night's sleeping mats neatly folded to one side, shelter director Michael DeBruhl bowed his head in prayer with the few migrant families who had stayed over.
There were eggs and black beans for breakfast, oatmeal and steaming coffee. DeBruhl greeted them using the Spanish he'd perfected in 26 years as a U.S. Border Patrol agent.
If migration at the U.S.-Mexico border has been one of the most divisive issues in America, DeBruhl has straddled both sides. He has handcuffed migrants and deported them. He has fed migrants and sheltered them. He has survived, in his own heart and mind, a debate that has divided the nation's politics, and its families.
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"Immigration is extremely complex," he told USA TODAY. "When I was a field agent, that’s what I understood: I understood enforcement and the intelligence of how people come across the border. But as you rise in the organization, the higher you go, the better the picture is on the larger issues."
DeBruhl began as an agent in 1989, patrolling the Rio Grande in Texas. Over his nearly three-decade career, he rose to become chief patrol agent of Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, joined the agency's highly selective Border Patrol Tactical Unit and served in agency leadership in Washington, D.C.
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