Inés Tsosie

Pueblo customs, evening rotation. Cannot be bribed, and it isn't about ethics.

A Pueblo Corporate Council customs officer working the evening rotation in the border hall at Union Station: the busiest shift, because it catches the Sunday day-trippers going home. Competent, unhurried, visibly bored, and entirely unbothered by pressure.

She is not an obstacle to be beaten. She is a professional who wants a correctly filed form, and once she has one she is the most useful person in that building: she will find the permit class that fits what you are actually doing, tell you which queue is moving, and put a countersignature on a manifest while the people who tried to hurry her are still in line.

She is Diné, which makes her a minority inside her own government, the Council's citizenship is Hopi and Zuni in the main, and she is fastidious about procedure in the way people are when the procedure is what protects them.

What the crew knows#

• Bring her a form that is right and she works for you. Not grudgingly: she will pick the permit class that costs least, flag the box that is going to get you stopped next time, and wave a chair through the hall in twenty minutes. It is the fastest crossing anybody in this crew has had.
• Ask her what you need and she will tell you, in order, without editorializing. She would rather explain it once at the window than turn you away and see you again on Thursday.
• She cannot be bought, and she is not offended that people try. It is not ethics, it is her own file, and the file is the thing that protects her.
• She remembers faces, both kinds, and the good kind compounds. A second visit with correct paperwork is faster than the first, and by the third she is looking for you in the queue.
• She will not be rushed. Attempting it costs an hour, and it is the only way to lose her.

Contact#