Other side of the line

IT took only three years in the U.S. Border Patrol for former agent Judy Cox to see enough action to drive the plot of a major Hollywood movie. The high-speed chase across deadly Paisano Drive. The night she saved a drowning man. The wreck that destroyed her patrol car.

But her best stories don't reveal much about her decision to quit the force, enroll in law school and help the American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada take up the cause of the immigrants she used to send back across the border.

"There wasn't one huge event," Cox says. "It was just little things that added up. They started to overshadow the excitement of high-speed chases with drug smugglers."

One little thing involved a Mexican immigrant caught re-crossing the border after he'd been deported. The second time he was apprehended, Cox and another agent arrested him, removed his belt, shoelaces, wallet -- everything but the small picture of his daughter he carried in his pocket -- and took him to county jail.

A detention officer at the jail searched him again, found the picture and ordered the man to throw it away. The inmate started crying, so Cox offered to mail the picture to his daughter with a note explaining what happened. The experience left her with a bad aftertaste.

"A lot of the problems with immigration is that it doesn't allow for adequate family reunification," she says. "Family reunification petitions are a main staple -- a big chunk of immigration law is trying to keep families together. And here was this guy who made such an effort to get back and see his kid, but under the law, he's not allowed to."

So she started applying to law schools and ended up at UNLV's William S. Boyd School of Law, where she graduated last spring. Two weeks ago she became the inaugural Beverly Rogers Fellow at the ACLU of Nevada, a position that will allow her to advocate for immigrants in the courtroom and the Legislature.

Cox will join a working group of immigration specialists that includes attorney Peter Ashman and UNLV law professor Leticia Saucedo. Together the group will tackle issues like English-only laws, due process in deportation and day labor regulations. Cox is already working on a booklet that explains immigrants' legal rights and outlines how they should deal with law enforcement.

"[Cox] has a real commitment to this particular issue, in part because of her training and in part because of her life experiences," says Gary Peck, executive director of the ACLU of Nevada.

Cox has had some personal experience with immigration, too. Before she was a border patrol agent, Cox was the concerned girlfriend -- then wife -- of a foreign student angling for legal residency. She was an undergraduate at North Carolina State University when she met her future husband, who was a visiting student at the school.

With Cox's help, he successfully petitioned for a visa that would allow him to graduate from State and stay in the country an extra year. After that, his employer got him a work visa. Then the pair got married.

"Trying to do the family petition was so incredibly hard," she says. "There were so many forms and so many different standards."

And stipulations, like the one that required Cox, a newly minted college graduate, to prove she could fully support her husband. Out of desperation, she enrolled in Marine Corps Officer Candidates School, a scheme that ended prematurely when an accident snapped her Achilles tendon three weeks into the program.

"So there I was -- right back at square one," Cox says. "By then I had gone to the [Immigration and Naturalization Service] website so many times I knew they were hiring."

The agency, which was subsumed by the Department of Homeland Security and renamed Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), sent a recruitment video to the former forestry student and outdoor enthusiast. She and her husband were divorced by then, but the agency had cast its spell.

"They have a horse patrol," Cox says. "So of course that's what they put in their video. And I love being outside anyway, so I thought, 'I'll get to be outside! I'll get to ride horses! I'll get to fly helicopters!'"

After Cox completed 20 hours of training, she moved to El Paso, where she was stationed. For a while, she enjoyed her work, especially the pursuit of smugglers and criminals.

"A common misconception people have about [the Border Patrol] is that people join because they hate immigrants," she says. "Most people join because it's a good job with good benefits, and in El Paso, it was one of the better opportunities."

Eventually the feel-bad moments outweighed the feel-good ones, Cox says. Immigration policies, and by extension the Border Patrol, kept families apart. Literally. The agency posted a truck at the spot on the New Mexico border where family members on opposite sides would meet to talk and trade photographs.

"I just realized that most of the people we were catching and deporting were the poorer ones," Cox says. "The wealthier people could find ways to get through."

Her co-workers and mother, who relocated to Las Vegas, encouraged her to try law school. An immigration clinic Cox took during her second year at Boyd thwarted her plans to pursue criminal law. In the course, she helped abused women and crime victims apply for legal status.

She also met a high school student unable to go to college because her parents had smuggled her into the country at age two. The student's story convinced her that the federal government needed to create a pathway to citizenship for children brought into the country illegally by their parents.

"She was the poster child for [immigration reform]," Cox says. "She came over when she was a really little kid, spoke perfect English and was a really good student. It's just such a shame to say, 'Well, you're illegal, so you can't go to college.'"

During her last year of law school, Annette Appell, who directed clinical studies for the Boyd Law School, encouraged her to apply for the ACLU fellowship.

"She was just very committed to the issues the ACLU deals with, especially social justice. She's really smart and really dedicated and when she worked in the immigration clinic, she just had a really transformative experience."

Cox, for her part, says she thinks the ACLU is in a better position than the Border Patrol to advance sensible immigration policy.

"It's not about switching sides," she says. "You join because you think it's a worthwhile job and you're serving the community. And I felt like I did do that. We caught a few wanted criminals and some smugglers. I just feel like I can do more for families here."