When I first selected this book I was looking forward to an interesting history of an immigration detention center as a window on the evolution of immigration policy in the US. Instead, I found a poorly written memoir of Hefner's one-sided experiences within the Port Isabel Processing Center. While I disagree with other reviewers that Hefner's needed a different ghost-rider and other recommendations I believe the overall tenor of the book while a good idea, could have been more carefully and thoughtfully presented to greatly improve the book. ( )

Between the Fences by Tony Hefner, as advertised, was not a pleasant book to read, but he did have issues to present. The problem I had was just what problems he wanted brought to light. The book begins with the author describing a chaotic childhood with a complex interaction with his step-father being the key relationship driving the author's viewpoints. Mentally and physically abused he did not develop a mature concept of himself. After going to Bible school and marrying he moved to Texas to minister to impovrished people.

Good jobs were few and far between and the best jobs were at the INS Detention Center. Hefner went to work there and almost immediately began to notice irregularities in how inmates were transported and at what time of day. With further information collection a conspiratorial pattern of abuse, mental, sexual and physical was found. However, given the lack of jobs and the power of the center managers no change was ever enacted. The author became the lighchange of tening rod in a storm of charges and failure of institutional action. Not until several years had passed and the ministry's collapse the author and his wife had built was the author able to find resources to help with the problems at the detenton center.

Through this scenario the book flips back and forth to the author's childhood and the abuses of that time. Just as the issues of human rights were being addressed the author suddenly has a change of heart and decides to move to Michigan. The book ends with the author seeming to have come to an understanding of himself and the issues at the dentention center being to some extent resolved.

As I said, this was not a pleasant book, not only because of the topic, but the confusion about what was really the goal of the book. I give this book 2 stars. ( )

Between the Fences details the horrors of a processing center for illegal immigrants. Tony Hefner worked as a guard at the Port Isabel processing center, which provided one of the better paying jobs in the region. Hefner is a trained (and ordained) minister and was horrified -- although it is worth wondering why he waited so long to go public. It's worth noting the emotional and physical abuses were inflicted by prison employees on inmates and other guards, usually women.

It's difficult to state my feelings for this book. I feel this is a powerful document, and an important one, recounting the abuses of human rights in the United States. Oftentimes, I find myself forgetting that such things can and do happen here, within these borders. On the other hand, Hefner's account remains simply a personal, and largely uncorraborated, account. Without photos, documents or other hard evidence, I'm afraid this may be all too easy for policy makers to ignore or dismiss. (There have been at least three hunger strikes at the facility, so clearly there truly is something grossly amiss.)

The book also suffers at the nuts and bolts. It is part memoir of Hefner's personal journey and his ministry and part brutal exposé of the abuse of a forgotten group of people. Hefner never quite manages to knit the two together. Yet, in my opinion, the book is greater than the sum of its parts and is quite compelling despite its flaws. It's a reminder that human cruelty is harshest on those that society has forgotten about or never cared much for in the first place.

Such a hard book to read. I keep wanting to tell myself, "This can't be. This just can 't be. Not in my home country. Not in my lifetime." Such cruelty, such corruption, such injustice, such deception, so much pain. I keep wanting to say, "This just cannot be!"

My parents were always certain they were leaving me a better country, a better world, a better life than the one they inherited. I want to feel the same for my children, my grandchildren. But books like this one persuade me that it cannot be.

It's gonna take me a while to get my mind around this one. Someone must be held accountable.

If I, a US citizen, a voter, a taxpayer -- if I can't figure out something to do to help make this message clear and public, then I, too, must be held accountable.

So I am distressed in my reading of this book -- and I have not been able to finish it yet.

But I do have several questions that I am not finding answers for:

(1) Why is this book being written and published almost twenty years after the alleged events? This has to be well beyond the statute of limitations.

(2) Why did the publisher not provide Mr. Hefner with a ghost-writer, who could have told the story straight in good, sound prose and avoided the digressions that slow down the reading? Remember, even Malcolm X's autobiography might not have had the impact it did if it had not been written by Alex Haley. I think a good ghost-writer would have put the story in its geographical and historical context -- and have provided some documentation for the allegations of criminal behavior.

(3) What has happened since the events of this book to the people involved? Will this be brought to light in the latter part of the book that I have not read yet?

(4) I cannot find that Mr. Hefner's story has been picked up by any reputable Texas newspapers. Am I wrong about this? If not, why would this be so?

No, I simply don't want to believe the assertions repeated time and again in this book, but the details make it so difficult not to believe.

So I'm disturbed. There's another story here somewhere that I'm not discerning yet. Maybe . . . .


MORE LATER

An engaging, if frustrating, story of government corruption & abuse

(Full disclosure: I received a free copy of this book for review through Library Thing's Early Reviewer program.)

In BETWEEN THE FENCES, Tony Hefner tells a harrowing tale of corruption and human rights abuses, committed by both the United States government as well as contractors tasked with fulfilling governmental responsibilities (in this case, caring for detained, undocumented immigrants). Employed as a prison guard at the Port Isabel Service Processing Center – an immigrant detention center in the South Texas’s Rio Grande Valley – from 1983 to 1986 and again from 1988 to 1990, Hefner either witnessed personally or was privy to first-hand accounts of various crimes that took place at Port Isabel, including the sexual, physical and emotional abuse of detainees, both male and female (and sometimes, children); the sexual harassment, assault and rape of female guards; the physical and emotional abuse of male employees; drug trafficking; blackmail; nepotism and racism in hiring and firing decisions; and countless other illegal and immoral activities, including repeated cover-ups of these incidents, and the protection of those involved.

Hefner’s account of these human rights abuses is both engaging and enraging, but his constant digression into his own life history detracts from the story. For example, as a child Hefner himself endured physical and emotional abuse at the hands of his stepfather, who thought him worthless because of his Mexican parentage. Although I sympathize with his plight – no child should be bullied, hit, or made to feel worthless, and certainly not by adults – Hefner repeatedly points to this abuse as one reason (“excuse,” you might say) for his relative inaction on behalf of abused inmates. While Hefner’s power to intervene directly was no doubt limited, he also didn’t do much behind the scenes; for example, he might have clandestinely collected hard evidence in order to build a case against his superiors, and/or anonymously leaked this information to the media, thus remaining an inside whistleblower at Port Isabel – but he didn’t. While Hefner did record those abuses that took place out in the open (in a notebook, after the fact – not exactly irrefutable proof), he also didn’t go out of his way to uncover the hidden, more egregious cruelties that were kept from him and others. Too often, he seemed content to go about his own work, nose down, ears closed – see no evil, hear no evil.

Many guards and employees tolerated the abuse of both prisoners and, not uncommonly, their own persons because of financial hardship. In the 1980s, at least, Port Isabel was one of the largest employers in an economically strapped area. Far removed from the situation, it’s easy to sit in judgment of guards who refused to speak up in the interest of self-preservation. But this unfair at best; no one can really know how he or she would react in a similar situation without actually living it. Here, though, Hefner makes frustrating excuses as well; if he had simply chalked his lack of action up to poverty, I might be able to understand. But he claims to have stayed on at Port Isabel in order to keep his ministry, the Bearing Precious Seed Ranch, viable. In other words, he was content to proselytize to vulnerable children on the one hand, while utterly and spectacularly failing to live the actual tenets of his religious teachings on the other. “Do as I say, not as I do.” In the name of “caring for” some people’s children, he ignored the abuse of other people’s children (some of them, it’s worth noting, actual children – minor boys raped by fellow inmates while indifferent guards looked on, or underage girls forced to dance naked for the possibility of clemency).

The many, many pages Hefner devoted to writing his own autobiography would have been better spent, I think, placing the abuse at Port Isabel in context. According to the book’s promotional materials, 400,000 immigrants are detained by the U.S. government every year; these individuals are held in a number of jails across the country. How do the conditions at Port Isabel compare to those at other centers? What steps, if any, are the INS and the U.S. government taking to ensure that the individuals detained in these facilities – and the guards employed therein – are treated humanely and respectfully? How does the government justify its lack of action on the complaints lodged against Port Isabel officials? What steps do Hefner and his allies plan to take next? And how does our broken immigration policy, too often marred by racism, sexism and xenophobia, contribute to these horrific conditions?

http://www.easyvegan.info/2010/11/17/between-the-fences-by-tony-hefner/ ( )