The shadow catcher: a U.S. agent infiltrates Mexico's deadly crime cartels

 by Hipolito Acosta.  Illegal immigration across the southern U.S. border remains a hot-button political issue, especially when it is linked to the various organized criminal gangs in Mexico. So this timely, tense, if uneven account by a U.S. Border Patrol agent is likely to elicit considerable interest and even controversy. Acosta, born in south Texas to Mexican-American migrant farmworkers, writes with compassion about those who illegally cross the border in an often desperate search for a better life. Yet he makes clear that the vulnerability of illegal migrants makes many of them willing or unwilling accomplices to the gangs who engage in drug smuggling, human trafficking, counterfeiting, and murder on a systemic basis. Acosta's own exploits, including decades working undercover on both sides of the border, are chronicled in sometimes sensational and sometimes rather methodical fashion, which may well reflect the nature of his tasks. Still, he provides an interesting and often gripping glimpse of the seamiest aspects of an ongoing problem that both the U.S. and Mexico must confront. --Booklist (Check Catalog)