Two Texas Monthly journalists were driving through West Texas last week, reporting a story on Spanish missions when they became the story themselves.
Texas Monthly Editor José Ralat and photographer Rodrigo Bravo Jr. were pulled over in West Texas not once, not twice, but three times recently – first by a local county officer in Sanderson, then by ICE near Presidio, and finally by DPS outside of Marfa.
Each time, they were let go with a warning – but for what exactly?
Ralat and Bravo Jr. joined the Standard to talk about their experience. Listen to the interview above or read the transcript below.
This transcript has been edited lightly for clarity:
Texas Standard: Well, let’s start with your first encounter in Sanderson. This is a small west Texas town in a border county. José, what were you stopped for and how did that interaction go?
José Ralat: We were stopped for going five miles over the speed limit, and it was jovial, but it was odd because we probably deserved to be pulled over, but the guy just seemed bored and wanted to talk about elk.
That’s fine, but as I wrote in the piece, no one asked to see papers.
The second stop was the headline of your story and involves Immigration and Customs Enforcement. This happened when you were checking out a historical marker near Presidio.
Rodrigo, do you wanna tell us what happened then?
Rodrigo Bravo Jr.: Yeah, after we had our first stop and then we passed through Marfa onto Presidio, we went to a cemetery, pretty much a forgotten cemetery. José’s working on a great piece and we’re exploring these lost missions and cemeteries and whatnot.
And as we often do, we stopped at the cemetery, took in the moment, wrote our notes, took some pictures, and the marker for the cemetery was actually further down, another mile down. You always see these brown signs that promote these historical markers throughout Texas. José and I love to stop there.
In fact, José has to tell me sometimes, “Rodrigo, this is the last stop we can do right now. We gotta get somewhere.” And we did that.
And during this whole time, there were ICE patrols going back and forth down this road. Pretty desolate, to be honest. And when we went back and then we turned back, that’s when the ICE truck also turned around and looked at us and observed us.
And once we made it back to the main road to head back to Marfa, the ICE truck had already made ground and was directly behind us. We turned left going towards Marfa and maybe about a quarter mile or a mile down is when they pop their lights.
So you wrote ICE agents had you guys for half an hour after you gave them your business cards and identification. José, do you know what they were looking into?
José Ralat: They wanted to know why we turned around and why we stopped twice, but that’s not a crime. Maybe they don’t have anything to do. I don’t know.
They can check plates while they’re driving, but there was no indication about what they really wanted. They just asked us just a series of questions that they repeated – trying to trip us up is what it seemed like. I’ve had such experiences with police officers before, so I immediately braced myself.
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Well, shortly after the ICE agents let you go, DPS pulled you over, the third agency, same day. Rodrigo, what did you make of that?
Rodrigo Bravo Jr.: We had just left the Marfa border checkpoint, and it’s only about five miles outside the city of Marfa. And we passed through without incident.
The gentleman that stopped us, asked us a couple of questions, actually made some conversation and let us go. And as we drove off, we noticed that there was a DPS officer in front of us, way in front us, off to the side of the road. She ended up popping her lights before we even passed her.
I really thought she was gonna get somebody on the other side of the road. There was maybe about three or four cars driving. But no, once we passed her, she actually got behind us and pulled us over.
We both were kind of in disbelief as in “why are we getting pulled over?” She came up and as José has already mentioned, the emphasis was on IDs. No insurance paperwork was ever asked of me on any of the stops – no registration, anything like that. Grabbed our IDs, made some small talk.
This encounter was much shorter, but it just felt so targeted because we literally just drove by and we were trying to do everything we could to just blend into the environment and we were still picked out.
You say “targeted.” Did you feel targeted because of your skin color or what exactly?
Rodrigo Bravo Jr.: I’m not sure if it was my skin color per se. I feel that maybe the second stop, they took so long because perhaps they couldn’t access some type of information. So they went ahead and did a second stop with the DPS, maybe some coordination or whatnot. I’ve had friends and people that tell me now that the DPS is in coordination with ICE and that’s likely what did happen.
But it just felt so overbearing that, you know, two citizens in the United States who actually enjoy Texas – we’ve traveled thousands, tens of thousands of miles across Texas and we love the history of Texas and the lore and the stories – that we just can’t travel freely, that we’re targeted for whatever reason it may be and that José and I at the end don’t feel like we belong here.
José, you wrote that these officers in each case looked a lot like you guys. What did you make of that?
José Ralat: There are stories of Latinos who join law enforcement on the border to get out of poverty. And this has been recorded again and again and again.
I don’t know whether they wanted to feel like they belonged. I don’t know. But it was scary that they were being so quietly forceful.
How are you doing now, José? I mean, being pulled over like this three different times in a single day is a lot.
José Ralat: It is, I am processing it. Writing the story with Rodrigo was cathartic, but when I got home, I hugged my family really tightly.
Rodrigo, what would you add? How are you doing?
Rodrigo Bravo Jr.: You know, I have struggled myself with the story because at the end of the day, I’m still here. But I also know that José and I, for a small part of our charmed lives, we ended up in this spectrum, this range of possibilities of outcomes that could have happened.
But as José and I were writing this piece that Saturday morning, we received notifications that a protestor had been killed. And then later on, when we finished, we got the official word of Alex Pretti’s murder by ICE agents in Minneapolis. (Editor’s note: Pretti was shot by U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers).
So it really came home and it really brought everything so much closer than it needed to be.
