Between the Fences: Before Guantanamo, there was the Port Isabel Service Processing Center

By Tony Hefner

Something at the Texas detention facility is terribly wrong, and Tony Hefner knows it. But the guards are repeatedly instructed not to speak of anything they witness. In the Rio Grande Valley, one of the most poverty-stricken areas in the United States, good jobs are scarce and the detention facility pays the best wages for a hundred miles. The guards follow orders and keep quiet.
For six years, Tony Hefner was a security guard at the Port Isabel Service Processing Center, one of the largest immigration detention centers in America, and witnessed alarming corruption and violations of basic human rights. Officers preyed upon the very people whom they are sworn to protect. On behalf of the 1,100 men, women, and children residing there on an average day, and the 1,500 new undocumented immigrants who pass through its walls every month, this is the story of the systematic sexual, physical, financial, and drug-related abuses of detainees by guards.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Jan 4, 2011
• ISBN: 9781609801748

Reviews for Between the Fences

[angelic55blonde · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This book, Between the Fences, is the author's eyewitness account of Port Isabel Service Processing Center. He worked there for 6 years as a guard and he wrote down what he say in notebooks throughout his time there. This gives the reader a unique perspective into the center. However, the reader needs to be aware that the author does carry a bias and this colors the entire book. Since this is a memoir of sorts, there are no references, no recommended reading lists. This book details the struggles the author, as a guard at an immigration detention facility in Texas' Rio Grande Valley, faced as he tried to bring to light the numerous human rights violations such as sexual and physical abuse that was experienced on a day to day basis by the guards and the prisoners. There are not only male guards but female guards. And these female guards suffer sexual intimdation, so they themselves are victims of the center but they also are complancent in the abuses that go on. I don't think any review can really do this book justice as one must read it to understand the horrors that occurred.This book is hearwrenching and draws the reader into Tony Hefner's world. He brings to life what he experienced and saw while he worked there. This is definitely a must read. It focuses on a lesser known detention center, which I belive is one of the reasons why this book should be read. It's an easy read in that it only took me a short time to read through it. However, the subject matter is disturbing and will put the reader through a wealth of emotions.I definitely recommend this book. I think it's a great read, an eye opener, and due to recent events with other detention centers, a politically relevant book.

[andyray_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

this work tears my head up. if it were issued as fiction, i think it would be very successful, but as non-fiction, THERE IS NO ACCREDITATION. The only abusive act author Hefner saw himself was that of the mentally ill young Hispanic who sat naked and unwashed in his own feces and urine and snot for days and at the time Hefner was immediately in charge of this man. One wonders: why didn't Pasto Tony DO SOMETHING? The whole work is written in a whiney narrative that says: Look at me, Daddy! Aren't I a good little boy? So what if the other kids don't wan tot play with me? I am right, and they are wrong. Gee, I wish it could be thazt simple, "Pastor" Tony (when someone has to keep throwing in the church thing to prove they are a good boy something's not right). The writing itself has obviously been ghostwritten, and all the narrative proves is that either (1) the south Texas security people are a buinch of animals or (2) that Tony Hefner may be wrong. Gosh! Wrong? An author who uses beneficial superlatives when writing about himself and damning, crippling modifiers when talking about hius enemies? Too many things are wrong with the facts. As noted by the author, there was instituted in Texas the "whistle-blower law," which protects those who lodge complaints. The "lose my job" fear is invalid. Can not these people move? And last but surely not least, why did Hefner keep working there and leave only when booted out? And if he was so afraid of physical reprisals to him, his family and friends, how is it that during the whole story there were none of such. No. This dog don't hunt, as they say in South Texas. In fact,. it doesn't even get up from in front of the fire.

[oldman_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

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.

[cutiger80 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

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.

[beezie_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Between the Fences… is not a report filed by serious journalist. Rather, it’s a personal account of a disturbing and transformative episode in Tony Hefner’s career. His stint as a guard for the Port Isabel Processing Center exposed him to the harsh realities of life in a federal detention center for illegal immigrants, awaiting various stages of the deportation process. Abuses of all varieties appear to be deeply rooted in the institution’s culture; clearly the system Hefner saw was not working. This book provides important insights and information relevant to immigration reform initiatives. As any first person narrative will be, it is biased. Authorial bias alone is not necessarily disqualifying. It is the responsibility of the local and federal governments operating these facilities to investigate claims made by people like Mr. Hefner. We citizens are responsible for demanding change, based on the results of such investigations. Unfortunately for the non-citizen detainees, their rights are not advocated for as ardently as they could be. Books like this push us toward awareness. And that is the first step up to action against the xenophobic, racist arrogance systematized by the federal detention centers. Such facilities are our shame to share. Hefner’s active response is faith based, and will not appeal to many readers. He ministers to the people affected by the INS and their families. It’s an admirable response. I hope he continues to advocate for human dignity.

[kristincedar · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

“Between the Fences: Before Guantanamo, There was the Port Isabel Service Processing Center” is a good book on a terrible topic. Coming from the perspective of a guard at detention center in southern Texas, the stories of corruption and wrongdoing are hard to read, but Tony Hefner’s approach to the book allows the reader to not feel overwhelmed by the subject matter at all. Hefner’s personal life doesn’t really add much to the account, and does distract, but the book does not drag or feel rushed. Compared to the movie screen (examples of guard/inmate struggle see: 50 Dead Man Walking and Hunger) this book is up there on the gruesome nature of the way things can work, but not a bad “story”. I would recommend it to those who would like a different look at the immigration problem in America today, and to those who have already been though this process, it could help start a dialogue on the matter.