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Every weekday at the federal courthouse in Tucson, Arizona, undocumented migrants are gathered in a courtroom and made to face the judge’s pulpit like shackled parishioners. Most of them are young men wearing T-shirts, sneakers, and jeans. Called up in groups of five, they are each asked the same incantatory set of questions: Do you understand the rights you’re giving up? Are you pleading voluntarily and of your own free will? Are you a citizen of the United States? Did you enter southern Arizona from Mexico without coming through a designated port of entry? How do you plead? Culpable,

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is a former U.S. Border Patrol agent. His first book, The Line Becomes a River, will be published next year by Riverhead Books. Cantú is the recipient of a 2017 Whiting Award.

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October 2017

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