“Here’s the schedule: Active shooter at 12,” says El Paso area high school teacher Louie Jimenez in the first minute of At the Ready. “Hostage negotiation, 1:30. And then drug raid at 2:30.” He’s addressing a class of students in the school’s criminal justice club; they wear fake plastic pistols in holsters and bulletproof vests. This schedule is part of the Border Challenge competition they’ve been preparing for all year, where they compete in staged, high-stakes scenarios designed for police and Border Patrol agents. The kids hope winning the competition will make them stronger candidates for getting hired in the field.
Even before they start the drug bust, making arrests and handling civilian observers played by other high schoolers, Jimenez gives a pep talk. “Somewhere, in this world,” says Jimenez, a former police officer himself, “somebody is doing this right now, for reals. All this stuff, it only makes you stronger. You guys are all partners. We’re family.” Family, it turns out, is the moral ground this issue turns on. And as the year proceeds, the kids aren’t all convinced that this club is family enough.
At the Ready premiered at Sundance on January 31. A documentary from three Texan filmmakers, it follows three Latinx students at Horizon High School just outside of El Paso. Director Maisie Crow is the documentarian behind the award-winning Jackson and the editor-in-chief of the Big Bend Sentinel and Presidio International newspapers, where co-producer Abbie Perrault is managing editor. The third member of the trio, Hillary Pierce, produced the award-winning documentaries The River and the Wall and Tower.
