Agents regularly arrest their “own kind,” unbothered by that, it seems
Pecola Breedlove, an 11-year-old Black girl in Lorain, Ohio, in 1940-41 is routinely mocked by other children for her dark skin, curly hair and brown eyes in Toni Morrison’s 1970 novel, “The Bluest Eye.” Yearning for acceptance, Pecola prays daily for her eyes to change color.
The girl is not alone in her hunger to fit into white middle America, in her desire to deny who she is so she can slip into the dominant culture. Other Black characters in the novel mock one another over their skin color, with one of the light-skinned girls saying “I am cute! And you ugly! Black and ugly.”
Might a similar dynamic be taking place for the two Latino agents who fired on – and killed – the Minneapolis protester Alex Pretti? Indeed, might that same sort of process animate the large number of Latino Border Patrol and Customs and Border Protection agents who regularly round up other Latinos for deportation?
ProPublica named Pretti’s shooters as Border Patrol agent Jesus Ochoa and Customs and Border Protection officer Raymundo Gutierrez. Both are veteran agents from south Texas. Ochoa, 43, joined the patrol in 2018, while Gutierrez, 35, signed on four years earlier.
Gutierrez works for CBP’s Office of Field Operations. He is assigned to a special response team, which conducts high-risk operations like those of police SWAT units.
Ochoa, who prefers the Anglo name “Jesse,” graduated from the University of Texas-Pan American with a degree in criminal justice, according to his ex-wife, Angelica Ochoa. A longtime resident of the Rio Grande Valley, Ochoa had for years dreamed of working for the Border Patrol and finally landed a job there, she said.
As ProPublica noted, Ochoa has a thing for weapons. By the time the couple split in 2021, he had become a gun enthusiast with about 25 rifles, pistols and shotguns, Angelica told the news outlet.
Ethnically, both men fit in well with perhaps half the officers in the Border Patrol who are Latino and nearly 30 percent of ICE agents who are.
Of course, we don’t know what drives Gutierrez and Ochoa. But we do know that their jobs pay well; such agents can earn between $64,200 and more than $137,000 a year, not counting recruitment and retention bonuses.
As experienced officers, they may also be eligible for generous retention incentives. Such incentives can now total up to $60,000 for supervisors and officers eligible to retire in certain locations. Similarly, new agents are eligible for up to $60,000 in incentives, including $10,000 after completing the training academy and an additional $10,000 if assigned to a remote location.
So, really, it’s all about the money. Such pay is crucial for Customs and Border Patrol agents, according to David Cortez, an assistant professor in political science at Notre Dame who has researched the motivations of Border Patrol and ICE agents.
“But for many of them, this job is not necessarily about stopping immigration,” Cortez told NPR in 2019. “This isn’t about their dedication to immigration law or their dedication to keeping migrants from crossing the border illicitly or anything like that. This is about economic self-interest. This is about survival.”
Many, Cortez said, come from poor border towns and work for the immigration enforcement agencies – often in teams with fellow Latinos – as a matter of economic opportunity they might not otherwise have. He pointed to one ICE agent who before joining up was barely surviving on rice and beans
Claudio “CJ” Juarez, 48 when Cortez met him, appears to have signed up for the money. Juarez said: “I wish I could say that it was idealistic or more sexy, but it really was as simple as they [ICE] were the first ones that called me, and I jumped on the first opportunity.”
Still, Cortez found that such Latino officers do feel a connection with the people they arrest — one they either set aside or use to their advantage.
The kinship such agents feel “raises this interesting kind of dilemma,” he said. “[T]hey find themselves coming face to face with men, women and children who, you know, might remind them of their own children, who look and talk, sound like they do or whose stories kind of mirror those of their own families.”
But the agencies find that the ethnic backgrounds of such officers are invaluable in carrying out ICE surveillance and raids. “It literally is a key to get through doors,” the professor said. “For example, if you are Latinx and a person with a brown face is at your door, you’re more likely to open it.”
Seemingly, many agents don’t feel any difficulties in using that edge or, apparently, in making life very uncomfortable for others who look like them. CNN in a December report on Border Patrol recruits raised that issue.
Juan Peralta, a 20-year-old trainee featured in the CNN piece, admitted that friends asked him, “How do you feel about arresting your own kind?” His answer: “They didn’t come in the right way, so they aren’t my kind.” Peralta was the son of an immigrant raised in a border town.
And another agent, Claudio Herrera, offered a more expansive answer.
“I’ve been asked, ‘aren’t you ashamed of apprehending your own?,’ he said. His answer: “I say, ‘of course not, because I’m protecting my community. I’m protecting both sides of the border.’” It took Herrera 11 years to become a citizen, and he joined the Border Patrol six years ago. He urges those coming from Mexico to do so legally.
Crossing legally scarcely seems like an option now, of course. More people have been leaving the U.S. than coming in, according to Brookings, which pegs the net loss in migration at between 10,000 and 295,000 last year. Numbers are hard to come by; thus the yawning range.
Since February 2025, the first full month of Donald J. Trump’s current term, the Border Patrol has recorded fewer than 10,000 encounters with undocumented migrants each month at the southwestern border, according to Pew. Those are the lowest totals in more than 25 years.
Recent totals have been even lower than the 16,182 encounters in April 2020, when international migration plummeted in the early months of the coronavirus pandemic.
Still, people have tried. The Border Patrol reported 237,538 encounters with migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border in the 2025 fiscal year, which began in October 2024 and ended last September. That was down from more than 1.5 million encounters in fiscal 2024, more than 2 million in fiscal 2023 and a record of more than 2.2 million in fiscal 2022. The 2025 total was the lowest in any fiscal year since 1970, according to historical data from the Border Patrol.
“Encounters” here refers primarily to apprehensions of migrants crossing into the U.S. between official points of entry. The term refers to events, not people. So, Border Patrol agents may encounter some migrants more than once – for example, if a migrant is apprehended and deported but tries to enter the U.S. again.
As for Ochoa and Gutierrez, perhaps in time — and if there’s a trial — we’ll find out whether Alex Pretti’s killers feel any remorse about shooting him as he lay defenseless on the ground, pinned down by a group of immigration agents. Aside from being a fellow American, Pretti was not one of their “own kind,” not Latino.
Still, maybe then, too, we’ll get a better sense of their sentiments about dealing with fellow Latinos. Are their identities things that, like Pecola Breedlove, they’d rather deny? Or are their backgrounds assets that they — like so many other agents — can use, even if that makes life miserable for others who look and speak just like them?