#meets with Jennette and clears and opens up about everything

[sylver-drawer]

So many Novel Athy lovers complain about how people hate on Novel Athy because she’s selfish, meanwhile I hate Lee Jihye because she dehumanizes people around her and that skews her perception of others and the situations she’s in, all while inheriting Claude’s tendency of preferring her image of [other people] rather than trying to acknowledge the real [them].

It took her eighteen years to realize she generalizes the people around her as one-dimensional characters instead of human beings (seen passively through how she treats the original cast of LP, and people she sees as mob characters like nameless and faceless nobles and girls she invites to her OWN parties), but she doesn’t dwell on or try to change that part of her, or how she treats them.

[madameaug]

oooo can you do when Jeanie pranks jungkook by saying another man’s name? Love the fictions keep it up!

Sure! I'm going to keep the 'wrong name' basis but add my own twist :) Hope it still meets your requests.

*just for this imagine Jungkook has continued down his path as a singer/member of BTS. Not a boxer but everything else remains the same

Pairing: Jungkook x Jenentte

"Guess what I learned about your daddy?" Jennette asked to Peanut as she swung her legs to the right. She wiped her daughter's hind legs with a moist wipe, removing all of the urine.

"Appa?"

"Yes! Guess what I learned about him." Jennette tossed the wipe into the trashcan, sliding up the fresh diaper up Peanut's legs. She babbled a response squirming slightly from the cold air. Tilting her up, her polka-dot leggings rose with no issue.

"His English name is Justin. Isn't that a funny name?" Wiggling her nose against Peanut's, causing her to laugh. Her two baby teeth peeked out of her gums. As quickly as Peanut was growing up, she was starting to resemble a lot like her mother. Those first few months of baldness were over and she had a decent amount of hair. If Jennette used a small rubber band, she could do pigtails.

"Why would he want to name himself Justin. Your appa is so silly." She carried Peanut in her arms and walked out of the woman's bathroom. "Let's prank him, okay?"

Not really sure what her mother was stating, Peanut clapped.

"Appa. Appa."

They returned to the table of three where Jungkook was sitting. Peanut slid perfectly into the restaurant's booster. It had been a while since the family of three had been out in public together. With Jungkook's commitments and Jennette's new managerial role their time together was limited.

But with the members pursuing solo endeavors now, it was the most free time Jungkook has had in a really long time. He was spending every moment possible with his family.

"Peanut cheese!" Jungkook pulled out his phone, taking pictures. Ever since he became a father, he's found no reason to take a picture of Peanut. Her first time at a restaurant, he took a picture. First time touching the grass, he took a picture. First time using the potty, you guessed it. He took a picture.

Like a subject of classical conditioning, Peanut started cheesing. Her cheeks were open, her eyes closed, and drool slipped down her mouth. Jennette jokes that if Peanut were to model, she wouldn't be camera shy.

"Justin, can you pass me that napkin?"

Watching the clear liquid string down onto Peanut's shirt, Jungkook moved with haste. Not even registering the name Jennette just called him.

"What did you say?

Before Jennette could respond, the waiter brought the food out.

The steam coming from his plate enticed him. Jennette was treating him to breakfast at a black-owned restaurant. He decided to be spontaneous and try shrimp and grits. Looking at his dish, he could tell his shrimp was well seasoned. The grits were thick and cheesy.

Taking a spoonful, he had to bite his tongue from releasing a satisfied moan. The grits were hotter than he anticipated, but they were too good for him to spit out. So he tried to cool it off with his mouth.

Nodding his head he quoted the saying of food reviewer Keith Lee.

"For sho, you right on." He fed himself another spoonful. "I don't know why you kept me from this place for so long. It's so good."

Jennette smiled, seeing Jungkook enjoy his food.

"Well this can become our little spot."

"Absolutely."

"Justin." Peanut grabbed onto Jungkook's shoulder. She wanted to get his attention and try some of his bowl's food.

"Who's Justin, baby?"

"You're Justin, Justin."

"What?" Jungkook was addled. Slowly scooping up a Peanut appropriate amount of grits. Who the fuck was Justin? This man who apparently has been around his girl and baby. Jungkook looked to Jennette for a clue, but her face was neutral.

"Tell appa who Justin is baby."

"Pleaseeee." She leaned her body, trying to get closer to the spoon of grits in Jungkook's hand.

Not denying his baby girl the grits any longer, he fed her. Watching the good food hit her belly. She smiled, then opened her mouth again.

"Justin look at this funny meme." Jennette laughed while showing her phone. It was a funny new parent post of Instagram that Jennette had been following since she learned she was pregnant.

Taking her phone, Jungkook tucked her phone under his thigh. "Who the hell is Justin? Cause it's not me, and you got my Peanut repeating after you."

"Just a guy I know."

"Who is he." Jungkook's tone was becoming more assertive. He was tired of repeating of himself. And the longer he was going without knowing 'Justin's identity the more he feared ruining this nice family breakfast.

"Jennette, please, my patience is thinning out."

Taking him at his word, Jennette answered his question.

"I found an old video of you saying that you wanted to go by Justin. I shared that with Peanut in the bathroom. It was just a prank, there's no Justin."

Jungkook's face immediately softened. He playfully rolled his eyes. Knowing exactly what interview you were referring to.

"Oh gosh, you watched that clip." He physically cringed. Peanut whined still wanting some grits. Jungkook pulled her onto his lap. Feeding the remaining of his grits to his baby girl.

"I'd hate to be Justin right now." Jennette laughed.

"Whatever." Jungkook kissed Peanut's cheek. Enjoying the rest of the breakfast hour with his little family.

AND SCENE <3

Happy holidays to all of my beautiful followers and readers. May the holidays be enjoyable and relaxing for you. 2024 is just around the corner. Wonderful things are waiting for you. Smooches ~~~

[romanosgirl1978]

Taking Over Me I

A/N: I have no idea what this is lol. I was bored at work and this is what came of it. Thank you to @fan-grell-411 for beta reading it and @pascalslittlebrat for giving me a reason to continue writing it. Hope you like it my dear, and I promise things will happen in later chapters.

Max Phillips x Reader

Words:1121

Warnings: Talks of sex, Reader has a partner but no cheating

Summary- While at work you and your co-worker, Jennet get on the topic of sex. What happens when your boss, Max Phillips, overhears? (This will probably be changed later)

Part I Part II Part III Part IV

~~

"I am not telling you," you groan, hanging your head. "Come on. There's not one guy in the office you would let rail you?" Jennette asks, laughing. "Look I have Alex. I really don't see why I should have to answer that," you deflect, trying not to look at her. You already feel warm and desperately try to steer your mind away from the dreams that have plagued you for the past week. "So? It's just a what if type of question. No harm done and you know I wont tell anyone." She says and leans towards you. "You're not letting this go are you?" You ask, defeated. "Not a chance in hell," she smirks back. Rolling your shoulders, you start to turn your chair towards her and give her a random name. *Max walks in to check on the progress. Jennette behind right shoulder* "Good Morning ladies," he calls leaning against the side of your desk. Fuck "Morning Mr.Phillips," Jennette chirps, grinning. You give him a small smile and duck your head back to your computer. "And how are you looking on payroll, sweetheart?" He asks, turning his eyes to you. You clear your throat and ignore the smirk you feel burning against the side of your head from your reaction to him. "Almost done. Just waiting on confirmation for a few more things. It should be done before lunch. I'll email you before I send it through." Max grins and claps his hands. "Wonderful. But just feel free to drop the report by my office before you go to lunch." "Yes, Mr.Phillips," you nod. He tilts his head and gives you a wounded look, hands clutched over his heart. "Please ladies. Max. No need to be so formal." He winks before turning on his heel and walking out of the room. Silence falls over the small office for a few minutes as he walks away and you can only hope Jennette would drop it. Your hopes are soon crushed when she hits your shoulder with a small stack of papers repeatedly. "No. Fucking. Way." You groan and let your head drop to your desk. She laughs loud enough you're sure everyone in the building can hear and you turn to shush her. "Okay fine. Yes. I would let Max rail me," you hiss quietly, trying to shut her up. "But it's not gonna happen it's never gonna happen and you're not gonna tell anyone." "Okay okay," she says, raising her hands defensively. "I won't tell anyone else," she smirks. You massage your temples and turn back to your computer. This is gonna be a looonnggg day, you sigh to yourself. ~~ Lunch rolls around and you grab your purse and the files that Max had requested. You could do this. Just walk in, set the files on his desk and get out. One foot in front of the other. You knock on the door once and it swings open, so you peek your head around. Max waves you in, phone pressed against his ear. “Yes of course,” he says, eyes watching as you walk towards him. “Everything is being set up for the meeting as we speak.” You hold the files up and set them on the corner of his desk. He nods and smiles, mouthing a small thanks before you turn on your heel and walk back out, closing the door behind you. Letting out a breath you didn’t know you had been holding, you take the elevator down to the lobby to the small café down the block. ~~

"So how was your lunch with Max?" Jennette teases bumping your shoulder.

You roll your eyes. "Please. I just ran next door for a sandwich. Besides, he was on a phone call and, oh yeah, I'm taken," you snark before plopping down in your desk chair.

She rolls her eyes. "Someone's awfully defensive over a stupid question. What's going on?"

You groan and your head lolls to the side as you look at her. Sighing you dig the heel of your hands into your eyes. "It's nothing. Just haven't been sleeping very well."

"Dreaming about a certain boss?" She jokes.

When you don't immediately throw any kind of sass back at her, her eyes widen. "No way. How long?"

"All week."

Her jaw drops. "Are we talking about the kinda dreams I think we're talking about?"

You shake your head, a small whine in your voice when you answer. "Worse."

"What? How much worse?"

There's a reluctance in your eyes that she must pick up on.

"I just…. Is…. Like a full on wet dream?" She whispers.

"Can you not say that out loud," you commiserate. "I already feel bad enough, even though that only happened… like twice," you cringe.

"You can't always control your dreams," she tries to reassure.

"I know that. But I just want them to stop. They make me feel guilty when I wake up. Alex is so great."

She nods. "It's not like you're actually doing anything though. And it's not like you're planning to. You're not... planning to... are you?"

You groan and shake your head. "No. Of course not. That's not fair to Alex. I just want the dreams of Max to stop."

"Are you and Alex still doing it?" She asks bluntly.

"Every now and then yeah. Not as often."

"Do they still get you off?"

"Technically…" You drag.

"What do you mean?"

You sigh and just turn to face her, leaning over her desk. "They make me feel good. We both finish and it’s decent…" you start to chew on your lip.

"But?" She prompts.

"But it's almost the same thing every time. And those dreams," you whine, a shiver going down your spine at the mere thought. "It's just… something different, ya know?"

"No I don't. They're your twisted dreams, but I get what you mean… I think." She pauses for a minute and looks you over. "But out of curiosity, how good are the dreams?"

You gulp and your eyes dart to the door, making sure no one is passing by before turning back to her.

"It's rough," you almost moan. "Hands and teeth and just," your eyes roll into the back of your head. "It's hard and fast and absolutely brutal. If it were real it would probably put me in the hospital," you joke. "Hes such an ass but he looks like he knows how to fuck."

She nods at your last comment. "So what are you gonna do?"

You scoff. "I'm going to ignore it. There's nothing else I can do. Nothing would even come of it if I did. You see how he is."

"Fair enough," she shrugs before getting back to work.

[eddiejpoplar]

Exploring the Southern Border in a 2017 Ram Power Wagon: Arizona to the Gulf of Mexico

Arizona dissolves into yellow plains as we push through New Mexico and into Texas, stopping in El Paso just long enough for a meal. We’re never more than 30 miles from the border, and our hours have caught a cadence of gas stations, hole-in-the-wall food joints, and roadside motels. The Ram Power Wagon shows the marks of our miles, dusty and pinstriped, splattered with a thousand desert bugs. The perfect wanderer, inside and out, its plush leather seats comfortable, its bare vinyl floors up to the task of enduring the sand and grit we track in. We eat and aim for Big Bend National Park, some eight hours from Texas’ western-most city. It’s a long ride down I-10. Another reminder of how gargantuan our country is, of the impossible scope of us.

The daylight left us hours ago by the time we find Highway 90, and the sky’s spattered from horizon to horizon with stars, so many that my familiar constellations are lost in the wash. We drive for long hours, nothing in our high beams but two yellow lines and a few hundred hare.

The morning shows us what we were missing by staring at the stars. The landscape has changed. Just outside of Presidio, the Rio Grande is a green and living ribbon twisting its way through the Texan bedrock. Life clings to the banks. You smell it long before you see the river proper—the delicious aroma of water and the sweet perfume of wild and thriving desert trees. Mesquite and juniper hang on the cool morning air and come singing through our open windows. The land goes wild, the river slicing through deep gorges, taking the border with it. At Santa Elena Canyon, the rock faces that separate the U.S. from Mexico are 1,500 feet high.

“When you factor in the mountain ranges and a pretty remote and rugged desert area, there’s not a lot of water for wildlife, let alone humans.”

Jennette Jurado has been a park ranger at Big Bend for 11 years, and though she’s a Michigan native, it’s clear from the way her voice swells when she talks about the place that she thinks of this as home. Her eyes are bright and smiling as she tells us that there are two parks here. Between Big Bend and Rio Grande Wild and Scenic River, the park service manages 245 miles of the international border.

Both are part of the largest Border Patrol sector in the South, one that covers some 510 miles of border and blankets 135,000 square miles, including 118 counties in both Texas and Oklahoma. Despite its size, it’s the quiet-est sector for illegal alien crossings. In 2016, the area saw 6,366 apprehensions, less than half of the next busiest sector, Yuma. Agents apprehended a total of 415,816 individuals attempting to enter the country illegally last year, and though that’s a staggering figure, the agency says the number is a long way from the high-traffic era. Between 1980 and 2008, apprehensions averaged 1.1 million individuals per year.

Jurado says that in her 11 years at the park, she’s never personally seen or interacted with anyone trying to cross from Mexico into the U.S. through Big Bend. When I ask if she feels safe here, she offers a smile and laughs. She tells us she routinely heads out to hike in the park alone and has never had a problem. The biggest danger is the environment, she says, because hikers routinely underestimate just how much water they need.

There is no physical barrier between the two countries here. The land serves that purpose, and when we look across the Rio Grande, all we see is another few hundred miles of empty desert, the back door to Mexico’s Cañon de Santa Elena national park.

“When you factor in the mountain ranges and a pretty remote and rugged desert area,” she says, “there’s not a lot of water for wildlife, let alone humans.”

The cliffs of Santa Elena Canyon split the United States and Mexico at Big Bend. They’re breathtaking, taller than the Empire State Building, flagpole and all.

She has a hard time keeping the pride out of her voice. And later as we wander the 50-mile dirt road that hugs the Rio Grande, we understand why. This is a place to be proud of. The Chisos Mountains are stunning, rising 2,000 feet up from the desert plain like a fortress on our horizon. Ocotillo plants wave their alien, spiny arms at the sun as we pass. We see horses, wild or near to it, their flanks shining amber in the sunlight. Even in early spring, it is impossibly hot. Sweat wells and evaporates on your skin the second you step outside, leaving a thin and coarse trail of salt behind. There is no manmade barrier between the two countries here. The land serves that purpose. When we look across the Rio Grande, all we see is another few hundred miles of empty desert, the back door to Mexico’s Cañon de Santa Elena national park.

The sun is setting by the time we make the eastern end of Big Bend, the sky dimming to navy as the light fades. Eager stars flicker behind those old mountains, and a cool wind picks up. After the bake of the day it’s almost cold, and we find ourselves grabbing our jackets as we point the truck toward Laredo.

When we arrive the next day, we find an entire economy hanging on the border. The Laredo Port of Entry is the busiest land port in the Western Hemisphere. Forty percent of America’s trade with Mexico comes across its bridges.

We meet with Port Director Gregory Alvarez and Assistant Port Director Alberto Flores on a busy morning.

“NAFTA is really occurring in Laredo,” Flores says. “You see that raw material coming from Canada, transiting through the U.S., going to Mexico, then you see some of that raw material coming back as a complete product.”

Flores is a Laredo native. He speaks quickly, his dark brown eyes ready with a sharp and mischievous joke if the moment presents itself.

Every train car coming into the U.S. gets an X-ray scan. … we beg Them to scan the Ram, but the agents say no. “We’d hate to find something you didn’t know was there.”

Alvarez is tall but soft spoken, his words considered and precise. He pronounces the Spanish names of towns to the south with a fluent flourish. He’s been port director here since late 2015. The port’s activity forces Border Patrol to walk a hard line between border security and trade facilitation.

A Customs and Border Protection helicopter runs a drill outside our hotel in Laredo, Texas.

“You’ve got that dual mandate of economic security and everything that entails,” he says, “and national security and everything that entails.”

Alvarez isn’t shy about the drug traffic that continues to come across the border at ports of entry.

“Without getting too detailed on specific seizures and arrests, we have a lot,” Alvarez says. “You have large interdictions, and you have them often on World Trade Bridge.”

He says 1,000 pounds is pretty average for a marijuana seizure.

Local news reports are full of headlines about what the Port of Laredo has seized in the past year: $800,000 worth of heroin in March and $5.6 million in cocaine in February. Alvarez is proud of the work his agents are doing, but he’s not naive.

Agents will inspect auto parts on their way north from factories in Mexico.

“We recognize that it’s just not a problem we’re going to seize our way out of,” he says. “It’s got to be a much more sophisticated approach.”

I ask if Alvarez cautions his agents about crossing the border. There were restrictions in 2007 and 2008 but not now, he says. Many of his agents have family on the southern side of the border and regularly travel to Mexico to visit.

Alvarez says he knows the violence spun out of control with the cartels, and when it did it spurred a massive response from American law enforcement that continues to this day. Customs and Border Protection is now the largest, most well-funded law enforcement agency in the country with an annual budget of more than $13.56 billion, and it enjoys a breadth of function unlike any other organization in the U.S. government, with oversight of 44 other agencies.

“It’s bad for business if you’re a drug organization.”

That budget has afforded the Port of Laredo some impressive tools. Flores takes us on a tour of the facility, pointing out the various enforcement layers, from cameras focused on license plates and faces to the massive yellow radiation detectors.

Every train car coming into the U.S. gets an X-ray scan. The imaging is impossibly detailed. You can count individual ceramic tiles and pallets hidden behind the sheet steel of a boxcar. You can count the lug nuts on pickups headed north from sister plants in Mexico. And you can see contraband. Bales of marijuana hidden in lead-lined crates. People lying in pickup beds.

Later, at a similar scanner for semis, we beg to scan the Ram. The agents say no.

“We’d hate to find something you didn’t know was there,” the agent manning the display says, his deadpan delivery betrayed by the smile that leaps to his lips.

North Korea sails cargo ships off the coast of California with intercontinental ballistic missiles hidden below deck, and China is stockpiling weapons in Mexico. So says Texas resident Rusty Monsees.

After the miles we’ve covered, Brownsville shows up quickly. The land quits being a desert, trading the brown plains for flat, humid Gulf marshlands. That’s where we meet Rusty Monsees. He’s a man who can’t decide where his tall tale ends and reality begins. He’s 69, his face and scalp a patchwork of skin cancer craters. Gifts from a lifetime under the Texan sun. He smokes like the world’s running out of Pall Mall menthols. Says his family has owned a spit of land up against the border here since the 1940s.

Monsees has had a clear view of Border Patrol’s efforts over the years. It’s a strange sight. The border here spends much of its time on private land, well beyond the levee that protects the town from storm surges, upon which the border fence rests. In some places, that’s more than a mile from the international line.

There are gaps where people and vehicles come and go through the fence, and though a Border Patrol agent watches the traffic from his vehicle, he doesn’t stop or question anyone while we’re there. It’s easy to understand Monsees’ frustration.

There’s no way that the Border Patrol can get down here and adequately enforce it,” he says.

It’s harder to follow his logic. It wanders in and out of conspiracy theories. He tells us he’s seen uniformed ISIS soldiers streaming across the border, complete with AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenades. He says he’s buried 150 of his own dogs over the years, all killed by Mexican coyotes moving people and drugs across the border. He says North Korea sails cargo ships off the coast of California with intercontinental ballistic missiles hidden below deck and that China is stockpiling weapons in Mexico. He says he once saw a U-Haul in Matamoros packed with the decaying corpses of children slain by a cartel for their organs.

Living on the Edge: Rusty Monsees hosted a militia camp on his property a few years back. The group disbanded, and at least two of “Rusty’s Rangers” wound up in federal prison over gun offenses.

He moves so fast, jumping from apparent fallacy to fallacy, it’s impossible to mine the truth from the slurry of lies that churn from his lips. It would be tempting to write him off entirely, but he thoroughly believes the things he’s afraid of. He believes them even if there’s nothing there, and he’s not some insane panhandler. He’s a land owner. A voter.

He says something that rings clear and true just as a Border Patrol Chevy Tahoe rattles past us, stirring up a haze of grit from the dry levee road. Monsees lifts a hand in greeting.

“If [the Mexicans] would sincerely work with the local officials,” he says, “because they want this stopped, too. Their people are being killed. They want their people to have a decent wage. … What they’re saying is this: Give us an equal standing, and we can take care of our own politicians if you give us a reason and help to do it.”

A Border Patrol Chevy Tahoe inches its way down the beach in Las Palomas Wildlife Area outside Browns from Performance Junk Blogger 6 http://ift.tt/2idK0u2 via IFTTT

[jesusvasser]

Exploring the Southern Border in a 2017 Ram Power Wagon: Arizona to the Gulf of Mexico

Arizona dissolves into yellow plains as we push through New Mexico and into Texas, stopping in El Paso just long enough for a meal. We’re never more than 30 miles from the border, and our hours have caught a cadence of gas stations, hole-in-the-wall food joints, and roadside motels. The Ram Power Wagon shows the marks of our miles, dusty and pinstriped, splattered with a thousand desert bugs. The perfect wanderer, inside and out, its plush leather seats comfortable, its bare vinyl floors up to the task of enduring the sand and grit we track in. We eat and aim for Big Bend National Park, some eight hours from Texas’ western-most city. It’s a long ride down I-10. Another reminder of how gargantuan our country is, of the impossible scope of us.

The daylight left us hours ago by the time we find Highway 90, and the sky’s spattered from horizon to horizon with stars, so many that my familiar constellations are lost in the wash. We drive for long hours, nothing in our high beams but two yellow lines and a few hundred hare.

The morning shows us what we were missing by staring at the stars. The landscape has changed. Just outside of Presidio, the Rio Grande is a green and living ribbon twisting its way through the Texan bedrock. Life clings to the banks. You smell it long before you see the river proper—the delicious aroma of water and the sweet perfume of wild and thriving desert trees. Mesquite and juniper hang on the cool morning air and come singing through our open windows. The land goes wild, the river slicing through deep gorges, taking the border with it. At Santa Elena Canyon, the rock faces that separate the U.S. from Mexico are 1,500 feet high.

“When you factor in the mountain ranges and a pretty remote and rugged desert area, there’s not a lot of water for wildlife, let alone humans.”

Jennette Jurado has been a park ranger at Big Bend for 11 years, and though she’s a Michigan native, it’s clear from the way her voice swells when she talks about the place that she thinks of this as home. Her eyes are bright and smiling as she tells us that there are two parks here. Between Big Bend and Rio Grande Wild and Scenic River, the park service manages 245 miles of the international border.

Both are part of the largest Border Patrol sector in the South, one that covers some 510 miles of border and blankets 135,000 square miles, including 118 counties in both Texas and Oklahoma. Despite its size, it’s the quiet-est sector for illegal alien crossings. In 2016, the area saw 6,366 apprehensions, less than half of the next busiest sector, Yuma. Agents apprehended a total of 415,816 individuals attempting to enter the country illegally last year, and though that’s a staggering figure, the agency says the number is a long way from the high-traffic era. Between 1980 and 2008, apprehensions averaged 1.1 million individuals per year.

Jurado says that in her 11 years at the park, she’s never personally seen or interacted with anyone trying to cross from Mexico into the U.S. through Big Bend. When I ask if she feels safe here, she offers a smile and laughs. She tells us she routinely heads out to hike in the park alone and has never had a problem. The biggest danger is the environment, she says, because hikers routinely underestimate just how much water they need.

There is no physical barrier between the two countries here. The land serves that purpose, and when we look across the Rio Grande, all we see is another few hundred miles of empty desert, the back door to Mexico’s Cañon de Santa Elena national park.

“When you factor in the mountain ranges and a pretty remote and rugged desert area,” she says, “there’s not a lot of water for wildlife, let alone humans.”

The cliffs of Santa Elena Canyon split the United States and Mexico at Big Bend. They’re breathtaking, taller than the Empire State Building, flagpole and all.

She has a hard time keeping the pride out of her voice. And later as we wander the 50-mile dirt road that hugs the Rio Grande, we understand why. This is a place to be proud of. The Chisos Mountains are stunning, rising 2,000 feet up from the desert plain like a fortress on our horizon. Ocotillo plants wave their alien, spiny arms at the sun as we pass. We see horses, wild or near to it, their flanks shining amber in the sunlight. Even in early spring, it is impossibly hot. Sweat wells and evaporates on your skin the second you step outside, leaving a thin and coarse trail of salt behind. There is no manmade barrier between the two countries here. The land serves that purpose. When we look across the Rio Grande, all we see is another few hundred miles of empty desert, the back door to Mexico’s Cañon de Santa Elena national park.

The sun is setting by the time we make the eastern end of Big Bend, the sky dimming to navy as the light fades. Eager stars flicker behind those old mountains, and a cool wind picks up. After the bake of the day it’s almost cold, and we find ourselves grabbing our jackets as we point the truck toward Laredo.

When we arrive the next day, we find an entire economy hanging on the border. The Laredo Port of Entry is the busiest land port in the Western Hemisphere. Forty percent of America’s trade with Mexico comes across its bridges.

We meet with Port Director Gregory Alvarez and Assistant Port Director Alberto Flores on a busy morning.

“NAFTA is really occurring in Laredo,” Flores says. “You see that raw material coming from Canada, transiting through the U.S., going to Mexico, then you see some of that raw material coming back as a complete product.”

Flores is a Laredo native. He speaks quickly, his dark brown eyes ready with a sharp and mischievous joke if the moment presents itself.

Every train car coming into the U.S. gets an X-ray scan. … we beg Them to scan the Ram, but the agents say no. “We’d hate to find something you didn’t know was there.”

Alvarez is tall but soft spoken, his words considered and precise. He pronounces the Spanish names of towns to the south with a fluent flourish. He’s been port director here since late 2015. The port’s activity forces Border Patrol to walk a hard line between border security and trade facilitation.

A Customs and Border Protection helicopter runs a drill outside our hotel in Laredo, Texas.

“You’ve got that dual mandate of economic security and everything that entails,” he says, “and national security and everything that entails.”

Alvarez isn’t shy about the drug traffic that continues to come across the border at ports of entry.

“Without getting too detailed on specific seizures and arrests, we have a lot,” Alvarez says. “You have large interdictions, and you have them often on World Trade Bridge.”

He says 1,000 pounds is pretty average for a marijuana seizure.

Local news reports are full of headlines about what the Port of Laredo has seized in the past year: $800,000 worth of heroin in March and $5.6 million in cocaine in February. Alvarez is proud of the work his agents are doing, but he’s not naive.

Agents will inspect auto parts on their way north from factories in Mexico.

“We recognize that it’s just not a problem we’re going to seize our way out of,” he says. “It’s got to be a much more sophisticated approach.”

I ask if Alvarez cautions his agents about crossing the border. There were restrictions in 2007 and 2008 but not now, he says. Many of his agents have family on the southern side of the border and regularly travel to Mexico to visit.

Alvarez says he knows the violence spun out of control with the cartels, and when it did it spurred a massive response from American law enforcement that continues to this day. Customs and Border Protection is now the largest, most well-funded law enforcement agency in the country with an annual budget of more than $13.56 billion, and it enjoys a breadth of function unlike any other organization in the U.S. government, with oversight of 44 other agencies.

“It’s bad for business if you’re a drug organization.”

That budget has afforded the Port of Laredo some impressive tools. Flores takes us on a tour of the facility, pointing out the various enforcement layers, from cameras focused on license plates and faces to the massive yellow radiation detectors.

Every train car coming into the U.S. gets an X-ray scan. The imaging is impossibly detailed. You can count individual ceramic tiles and pallets hidden behind the sheet steel of a boxcar. You can count the lug nuts on pickups headed north from sister plants in Mexico. And you can see contraband. Bales of marijuana hidden in lead-lined crates. People lying in pickup beds.

Later, at a similar scanner for semis, we beg to scan the Ram. The agents say no.

“We’d hate to find something you didn’t know was there,” the agent manning the display says, his deadpan delivery betrayed by the smile that leaps to his lips.

North Korea sails cargo ships off the coast of California with intercontinental ballistic missiles hidden below deck, and China is stockpiling weapons in Mexico. So says Texas resident Rusty Monsees.

After the miles we’ve covered, Brownsville shows up quickly. The land quits being a desert, trading the brown plains for flat, humid Gulf marshlands. That’s where we meet Rusty Monsees. He’s a man who can’t decide where his tall tale ends and reality begins. He’s 69, his face and scalp a patchwork of skin cancer craters. Gifts from a lifetime under the Texan sun. He smokes like the world’s running out of Pall Mall menthols. Says his family has owned a spit of land up against the border here since the 1940s.

Monsees has had a clear view of Border Patrol’s efforts over the years. It’s a strange sight. The border here spends much of its time on private land, well beyond the levee that protects the town from storm surges, upon which the border fence rests. In some places, that’s more than a mile from the international line.

There are gaps where people and vehicles come and go through the fence, and though a Border Patrol agent watches the traffic from his vehicle, he doesn’t stop or question anyone while we’re there. It’s easy to understand Monsees’ frustration.

There’s no way that the Border Patrol can get down here and adequately enforce it,” he says.

It’s harder to follow his logic. It wanders in and out of conspiracy theories. He tells us he’s seen uniformed ISIS soldiers streaming across the border, complete with AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenades. He says he’s buried 150 of his own dogs over the years, all killed by Mexican coyotes moving people and drugs across the border. He says North Korea sails cargo ships off the coast of California with intercontinental ballistic missiles hidden below deck and that China is stockpiling weapons in Mexico. He says he once saw a U-Haul in Matamoros packed with the decaying corpses of children slain by a cartel for their organs.

Living on the Edge: Rusty Monsees hosted a militia camp on his property a few years back. The group disbanded, and at least two of “Rusty’s Rangers” wound up in federal prison over gun offenses.

He moves so fast, jumping from apparent fallacy to fallacy, it’s impossible to mine the truth from the slurry of lies that churn from his lips. It would be tempting to write him off entirely, but he thoroughly believes the things he’s afraid of. He believes them even if there’s nothing there, and he’s not some insane panhandler. He’s a land owner. A voter.

He says something that rings clear and true just as a Border Patrol Chevy Tahoe rattles past us, stirring up a haze of grit from the dry levee road. Monsees lifts a hand in greeting.

“If [the Mexicans] would sincerely work with the local officials,” he says, “because they want this stopped, too. Their people are being killed. They want their people to have a decent wage. … What they’re saying is this: Give us an equal standing, and we can take care of our own politicians if you give us a reason and help to do it.”

A Border Patrol Chevy Tahoe inches its way down the beach in Las Palomas Wildlife Area outside Browns from Performance Junk WP Feed 4 http://ift.tt/2idK0u2 via IFTTT

[jonathanbelloblog]

Exploring the Southern Border in a 2017 Ram Power Wagon: Arizona to the Gulf of Mexico

Arizona dissolves into yellow plains as we push through New Mexico and into Texas, stopping in El Paso just long enough for a meal. We’re never more than 30 miles from the border, and our hours have caught a cadence of gas stations, hole-in-the-wall food joints, and roadside motels. The Ram Power Wagon shows the marks of our miles, dusty and pinstriped, splattered with a thousand desert bugs. The perfect wanderer, inside and out, its plush leather seats comfortable, its bare vinyl floors up to the task of enduring the sand and grit we track in. We eat and aim for Big Bend National Park, some eight hours from Texas’ western-most city. It’s a long ride down I-10. Another reminder of how gargantuan our country is, of the impossible scope of us.

The daylight left us hours ago by the time we find Highway 90, and the sky’s spattered from horizon to horizon with stars, so many that my familiar constellations are lost in the wash. We drive for long hours, nothing in our high beams but two yellow lines and a few hundred hare.

The morning shows us what we were missing by staring at the stars. The landscape has changed. Just outside of Presidio, the Rio Grande is a green and living ribbon twisting its way through the Texan bedrock. Life clings to the banks. You smell it long before you see the river proper—the delicious aroma of water and the sweet perfume of wild and thriving desert trees. Mesquite and juniper hang on the cool morning air and come singing through our open windows. The land goes wild, the river slicing through deep gorges, taking the border with it. At Santa Elena Canyon, the rock faces that separate the U.S. from Mexico are 1,500 feet high.

“When you factor in the mountain ranges and a pretty remote and rugged desert area, there’s not a lot of water for wildlife, let alone humans.”

Jennette Jurado has been a park ranger at Big Bend for 11 years, and though she’s a Michigan native, it’s clear from the way her voice swells when she talks about the place that she thinks of this as home. Her eyes are bright and smiling as she tells us that there are two parks here. Between Big Bend and Rio Grande Wild and Scenic River, the park service manages 245 miles of the international border.

Both are part of the largest Border Patrol sector in the South, one that covers some 510 miles of border and blankets 135,000 square miles, including 118 counties in both Texas and Oklahoma. Despite its size, it’s the quiet-est sector for illegal alien crossings. In 2016, the area saw 6,366 apprehensions, less than half of the next busiest sector, Yuma. Agents apprehended a total of 415,816 individuals attempting to enter the country illegally last year, and though that’s a staggering figure, the agency says the number is a long way from the high-traffic era. Between 1980 and 2008, apprehensions averaged 1.1 million individuals per year.

Jurado says that in her 11 years at the park, she’s never personally seen or interacted with anyone trying to cross from Mexico into the U.S. through Big Bend. When I ask if she feels safe here, she offers a smile and laughs. She tells us she routinely heads out to hike in the park alone and has never had a problem. The biggest danger is the environment, she says, because hikers routinely underestimate just how much water they need.

There is no physical barrier between the two countries here. The land serves that purpose, and when we look across the Rio Grande, all we see is another few hundred miles of empty desert, the back door to Mexico’s Cañon de Santa Elena national park.

“When you factor in the mountain ranges and a pretty remote and rugged desert area,” she says, “there’s not a lot of water for wildlife, let alone humans.”

The cliffs of Santa Elena Canyon split the United States and Mexico at Big Bend. They’re breathtaking, taller than the Empire State Building, flagpole and all.

She has a hard time keeping the pride out of her voice. And later as we wander the 50-mile dirt road that hugs the Rio Grande, we understand why. This is a place to be proud of. The Chisos Mountains are stunning, rising 2,000 feet up from the desert plain like a fortress on our horizon. Ocotillo plants wave their alien, spiny arms at the sun as we pass. We see horses, wild or near to it, their flanks shining amber in the sunlight. Even in early spring, it is impossibly hot. Sweat wells and evaporates on your skin the second you step outside, leaving a thin and coarse trail of salt behind. There is no manmade barrier between the two countries here. The land serves that purpose. When we look across the Rio Grande, all we see is another few hundred miles of empty desert, the back door to Mexico’s Cañon de Santa Elena national park.

The sun is setting by the time we make the eastern end of Big Bend, the sky dimming to navy as the light fades. Eager stars flicker behind those old mountains, and a cool wind picks up. After the bake of the day it’s almost cold, and we find ourselves grabbing our jackets as we point the truck toward Laredo.

When we arrive the next day, we find an entire economy hanging on the border. The Laredo Port of Entry is the busiest land port in the Western Hemisphere. Forty percent of America’s trade with Mexico comes across its bridges.

We meet with Port Director Gregory Alvarez and Assistant Port Director Alberto Flores on a busy morning.

“NAFTA is really occurring in Laredo,” Flores says. “You see that raw material coming from Canada, transiting through the U.S., going to Mexico, then you see some of that raw material coming back as a complete product.”

Flores is a Laredo native. He speaks quickly, his dark brown eyes ready with a sharp and mischievous joke if the moment presents itself.

Every train car coming into the U.S. gets an X-ray scan. … we beg Them to scan the Ram, but the agents say no. “We’d hate to find something you didn’t know was there.”

Alvarez is tall but soft spoken, his words considered and precise. He pronounces the Spanish names of towns to the south with a fluent flourish. He’s been port director here since late 2015. The port’s activity forces Border Patrol to walk a hard line between border security and trade facilitation.

A Customs and Border Protection helicopter runs a drill outside our hotel in Laredo, Texas.

“You’ve got that dual mandate of economic security and everything that entails,” he says, “and national security and everything that entails.”

Alvarez isn’t shy about the drug traffic that continues to come across the border at ports of entry.

“Without getting too detailed on specific seizures and arrests, we have a lot,” Alvarez says. “You have large interdictions, and you have them often on World Trade Bridge.”

He says 1,000 pounds is pretty average for a marijuana seizure.

Local news reports are full of headlines about what the Port of Laredo has seized in the past year: $800,000 worth of heroin in March and $5.6 million in cocaine in February. Alvarez is proud of the work his agents are doing, but he’s not naive.

Agents will inspect auto parts on their way north from factories in Mexico.

“We recognize that it’s just not a problem we’re going to seize our way out of,” he says. “It’s got to be a much more sophisticated approach.”

I ask if Alvarez cautions his agents about crossing the border. There were restrictions in 2007 and 2008 but not now, he says. Many of his agents have family on the southern side of the border and regularly travel to Mexico to visit.

Alvarez says he knows the violence spun out of control with the cartels, and when it did it spurred a massive response from American law enforcement that continues to this day. Customs and Border Protection is now the largest, most well-funded law enforcement agency in the country with an annual budget of more than $13.56 billion, and it enjoys a breadth of function unlike any other organization in the U.S. government, with oversight of 44 other agencies.

“It’s bad for business if you’re a drug organization.”

That budget has afforded the Port of Laredo some impressive tools. Flores takes us on a tour of the facility, pointing out the various enforcement layers, from cameras focused on license plates and faces to the massive yellow radiation detectors.

Every train car coming into the U.S. gets an X-ray scan. The imaging is impossibly detailed. You can count individual ceramic tiles and pallets hidden behind the sheet steel of a boxcar. You can count the lug nuts on pickups headed north from sister plants in Mexico. And you can see contraband. Bales of marijuana hidden in lead-lined crates. People lying in pickup beds.

Later, at a similar scanner for semis, we beg to scan the Ram. The agents say no.

“We’d hate to find something you didn’t know was there,” the agent manning the display says, his deadpan delivery betrayed by the smile that leaps to his lips.

North Korea sails cargo ships off the coast of California with intercontinental ballistic missiles hidden below deck, and China is stockpiling weapons in Mexico. So says Texas resident Rusty Monsees.

After the miles we’ve covered, Brownsville shows up quickly. The land quits being a desert, trading the brown plains for flat, humid Gulf marshlands. That’s where we meet Rusty Monsees. He’s a man who can’t decide where his tall tale ends and reality begins. He’s 69, his face and scalp a patchwork of skin cancer craters. Gifts from a lifetime under the Texan sun. He smokes like the world’s running out of Pall Mall menthols. Says his family has owned a spit of land up against the border here since the 1940s.

Monsees has had a clear view of Border Patrol’s efforts over the years. It’s a strange sight. The border here spends much of its time on private land, well beyond the levee that protects the town from storm surges, upon which the border fence rests. In some places, that’s more than a mile from the international line.

There are gaps where people and vehicles come and go through the fence, and though a Border Patrol agent watches the traffic from his vehicle, he doesn’t stop or question anyone while we’re there. It’s easy to understand Monsees’ frustration.

There’s no way that the Border Patrol can get down here and adequately enforce it,” he says.

It’s harder to follow his logic. It wanders in and out of conspiracy theories. He tells us he’s seen uniformed ISIS soldiers streaming across the border, complete with AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenades. He says he’s buried 150 of his own dogs over the years, all killed by Mexican coyotes moving people and drugs across the border. He says North Korea sails cargo ships off the coast of California with intercontinental ballistic missiles hidden below deck and that China is stockpiling weapons in Mexico. He says he once saw a U-Haul in Matamoros packed with the decaying corpses of children slain by a cartel for their organs.

Living on the Edge: Rusty Monsees hosted a militia camp on his property a few years back. The group disbanded, and at least two of “Rusty’s Rangers” wound up in federal prison over gun offenses.

He moves so fast, jumping from apparent fallacy to fallacy, it’s impossible to mine the truth from the slurry of lies that churn from his lips. It would be tempting to write him off entirely, but he thoroughly believes the things he’s afraid of. He believes them even if there’s nothing there, and he’s not some insane panhandler. He’s a land owner. A voter.

He says something that rings clear and true just as a Border Patrol Chevy Tahoe rattles past us, stirring up a haze of grit from the dry levee road. Monsees lifts a hand in greeting.

“If [the Mexicans] would sincerely work with the local officials,” he says, “because they want this stopped, too. Their people are being killed. They want their people to have a decent wage. … What they’re saying is this: Give us an equal standing, and we can take care of our own politicians if you give us a reason and help to do it.”

A Border Patrol Chevy Tahoe inches its way down the beach in Las Palomas Wildlife Area outside Browns from Performance Junk Blogger Feed 4 http://ift.tt/2idK0u2 via IFTTT