Welcome to Our American Stories, where we share the incredible journeys that define our nation. Today, we meet Vincent Vargas, a name many know from his powerful portrayal of Gilberto ‘Gilly’ Lopez on Mayans M.C. But long before his acting career, Vincent’s story began in Los Angeles, a tale woven with the grit of immigrant ambition and a family striving for a better life. From his grandmother’s resourceful path to American citizenship to his father’s tough decisions and dedicated work, Vincent’s early years were shaped by struggle and resilience. Baseball became his refuge, a way to navigate a childhood marked by ever-present gang violence and academic challenges like undiagnosed dyslexia. It was a time when he yearned to find his purpose, to make his family truly proud.
That yearning for meaning led him to the U.S. Army, where he became an elite Army Ranger, bravely serving in a time of war. Inspired by images of service and the camaraderie he sought, Vincent deployed to Afghanistan, testing his courage and finding a profound sense of belonging. After his military service, he continued to defend the home front as a U.S. Customs and Border Protection agent, a journey he chronicled in his book Borderline: Defending the Home Front, published by Jocko Willink’s company. Now, as an actor bringing depth to characters like Gilly on Mayans M.C., Vincent Vargas shares his unique American story of transformation, sacrifice, and the relentless pursuit of a life well-lived.
📖 Read the Episode Transcript
I was born in Los Angeles, California, in 1981. My grandmother wasn’t a legal immigrant. She actually was born in Mexico, just on the other side of the border. Her sister was born on this side of the border, on the American side, and was an American citizen by birth. She died at a very young age, and my grandmother took her identity just so she can be a legal citizen. And my mother, she wanted more for herself, and so when she turned eighteen, she had a family member out in Los Angeles. She had a change of clothes in a paper bag, toothpaste, toothbrush, and I think it was fifteen dollars and a bus ticket to L.A. My parents met. When my mom, she stated in an apartment building that my uncle, by chance, was…
A manager at. He was managing.
He was like making sure everything was good, and he calls my dad, who was in the Marines at the time.
My father was forced to go to the Marines. It was either that to go to prison.
He got into a gang fight moving to L.A. The Puerto Rican kid joined a Mexican gang because that’s what you do. And he was part of that era where the fights were more with belts and chains and pipes and nothing else, kind of the greasers versus the socials kind of thing. They settled right there in the L.A. area. You know, they struggled for a little bit. My father got out of the Marines and got into construction. He was a framer. He just was a hardworking person. During a rainy season, as a framer, he had a file for unemployment, and when he went to the unemployment office, he saw a big poster for L.A. City firefighters, and he applied, and I remember our life completely changing dramatically. One, you’re from selling a small house, a two-bedroom house, four kids sleeping in one room, two bunk beds, the boys on one bunk beds, the girls in the other bunk beds, and my dad’s in my mom and dad’s room, to buying a house with three bedrooms and me and my brother’s sharing a room, and my sister’s sharing a room.
And it’s just like I saw…
Our life change dramatically, and my dad getting a solid job for the family. I played baseball since I was four, travel ball—well, travel like year-round ball since I was seven.
It was a way to stay out of the gangs.
The gangs was very prevalent, from my dad’s air of gangs to my brother’s air of gangs. It turned into drive-bys and shootings quite often. We had friends who would succumb to gang violence.
You heard a drive-by.
Shooting, you’re like, ‘Oh, that was probably on Figure Row,’ or, ‘That was probably on Oryan.’ We were scared, you know, sometimes walking around at night, hanging out with friends, even if it wasn’t had anything to do with gangs. It was just being in the area at the time. If a vehicle was driving slow, we always dropped to the ground and stayed low until I drove by, and we’d pop back up and continue a conversation like nothing ever happened. I didn’t know myself to be good at anything other than baseball. I wasn’t good at reading. I was dyslexic as a kid. It was undiagnosed for a long time, so I didn’t know I had a problem, just thought I was dumb.
Got out of high school.
I didn’t pass an SAT, so I had to go to junior college for baseball, which was the path I wanted to go anyways, because I believed I can get drafted.
Faster that way.
So I went to L.A. Valley Community College, and eventually academics got the best of me.
Again, just immaturity. I decided to join the military.
I’m watching the news, and I’m seeing this Marine put the American flag over the statue of Saddam as they pull it down. It’s a very iconic visual. I think we’ve all seen it. And I remember them interviewing his family and how proud of him they were. They were crying, and they were just so, they were so proud of their own son. And I sat there watching this thinking, ‘I don’t know if my family has ever felt that way about me. I don’t know if I’ve ever given them something to be that proud of me,’ and that idea hurt. I had lost the one thing that I thought I was good at.
I have a daughter on the way.
Who I want to be a dad, like I want to be a dad, and I have no money…
To support her.
The next day I showed up to the Army and recruiting. I showed the recruiting station, try to figure out which one I wanted. Eventually I settled on the Army, the Special Operations. I saw the movie Black Hawk Down and inspired me to think if I would ever have the guts to take the fight to the enemy, I would like to test myself and see…
If I do.
To watch these young men fight for something that they believe in. It felt like a baseball team, but with a different mission, you know. It felt like the camaraderie again, and I thought, ‘Well, if I die serve in this country, all things are fulfilled.’ My daughter gets money. At the time, she would have got four hundred thousand dollars. My parents would have had a son who’s a hero, and I wouldn’t have to continue facing this world where I don’t have baseball in it. And so I joined during a time of war, knowing that I was going to war as an infantryman with a Ranger contract. And after six months of waiting and two credit cards maxed out because…
Thinking, ‘I’m gonna die anyways, I ain’t never gonna have to pay this back,’ I went to the military, and thirty days after all my training, I find myself in Afghanistan.
Fast forward.
You know, in the four years of my military career, I lost a few friends, Sarm Bras and Sarm Brim, and who gets me when I say their names, who are two of probably the best in our career field to ever do the job. Which puts things into a weird perspective where you see life and say, ‘Well, they’re the best, and they were killed, and where does that put me?’ And maybe question if there was more out in the world that I could accomplish and that if I need to get out before it’s my time as well to be killed.
And you’ve been listening to Vincent Rocco Vargas share story and his family’s story, and there’s that moment he sees the statue of Saddam Hussein topple. These Marines are holding up a flag, and the family is so proud of their son, and he’s wondering if I done anything in my life to earn such regard, to respect from my own family. He joins the Army, and his life begins to change. When we come back, more of Vincent Rocco Vargas’s story here on Our American Stories. This is Lee Habib, host of Our American Stories. Every day, we set out to tell the stories of Americans past and present, from small towns to big cities, and from all walks of life doing extraordinary things. But we truly can’t do this show without you. Our shows are free to listen to, but they’re not free to make. If you love what you hear, go to OurAmericanStories.com and make a donation to keep the stories coming. That’s OurAmericanStories.com. And we continue with Our American Stories and Vincent Rocco Vargas’s story. Let’s pick up where we last left off.
While in the military and seeing it all and seeing what I could do, I realized I wanted to live and I wanted to accomplish more, and I wanted to be in my kids’ lives. At that time, getting out, I had three kids, and I just wanted to be better for them. And so after the four years of Special Operations, three deployments, eventually I got the call to be a Border Tuasian in 2009. And you know, up until this point, my race and culture wasn’t a topic of discussion. It was my race and my culture. I grew up in L.A., the Melting Pot. Even though I was Puerto Rican, I didn’t know what that was. I was the only Puerto Rican there. I knew what Puerto Rican was from my grandmother, my cousins, and uncles. But, like, genuine, I was Mexican by the way I was raised. I was Mexican by the culture my mother presented. But it wasn’t something that we pushed on to people or I felt I needed to, I need to be so proud of that; I just shared it. I don’t know, it wasn’t a thing for us, and not that I’m not. I’m super proud of being, I’m super proud of being Latino. I’m proud of being Mexican and Puerto Rican. I’m proud of both of those cultures, and I’ll never deny them. But it wasn’t that I ever had to, you know, I was in a world where everyone was a different race. In L.A. and in the military, I don’t care about color. We cared about surviving, you know what I mean. So it wasn’t as prevalent. When I went to Kentucky, I saw a bit of it, and I thought it was funny when someone said, ‘Hey, those guys are called the “amigos” when they’re washing dishes in Texas Roadhouse.’
I’m like, ‘What do you mean, “amigos?”‘ ‘What’s their name?’ And they’re like, ‘I don’t know, they call them “amigos.”‘ I’m like, ‘What the—’ So I say, ‘What’s your name is, Jose?’ I was like, ‘Okay, what’s your name, Luise?’ ‘Okay, cool. Jose, Luise.’ And I was like, ‘That’s so weird they call them “amigos.”‘
But it was—I was so dis from this race thing that everyone jumps on, but then they didn’t. We raised, like me in my clouds. There’s Asians, there’s Blacks, there’s Whites, there’s everything, and no one really cared. We just kind of existed, and sometimes we use our color of our skin or our cultures as a joke of connection, you know. And it was this really beautiful thing. And in the military is no different, so and in baseball it’s no different. So to see it outside of it, and I didn’t think anything of it. I’m just like, ‘All right, well, whatever.’ Now I’m a Border Tuasian, and I’m starting to get these comments of, ‘Hey, dude, you’re a Mexican. Where are you stopping your own people?’ And I was like, ‘Ah, what?’
And I don’t think I was…
articulate enough and had enough education on…
the topic to even speak on it. I was just confused.
And so I found it fascinating that people didn’t understand the difference of, like, being an American citizen, but as well as wanting to protect America, you know, after 9/11, this homeland security push, and then on the other side of also being proud of being Latino in Mexican, you know what I mean? And yeah, I remember my first apprehension, and in getting this job, I learned…
more about my culture.
I asked my mom about my grandmother, right? I asked about how they were raised. I asked about her, you know, working in a field if she needed to, right? I asked about all, and I was fascinated. I was actually—the way I saw it, with my perception of it, was: what a beautiful thing to see my family come from that to continue to grow. I saw it in a perspective of growth, and I saw that as the American way, the opportunity of what America presents, and so I was very proud of being American. I was very proud of my Mexican and Puerto Rican culture and what my parents have been able to provide for us and what I turned around want to provide for my kids. But then I’m getting the backlash of saying, ‘Hey, vodigask kip Us, all Fargus, what’s up?’
What are you doing? Vodagas, you know what I mean? ‘You’re Hispanic too.’ And it made me…
Really, you know, I apprehended a woman, a man, and a little girl, and I saw a reflection of my own grandmother in there, and I thought, like, ‘Wow, this is a… this is an interesting and very complex topic because my…’
grandmother came over illegally. Huh?
But here I am stopping those dreams. The duality of being a Border Troy Agent is being human enough to see the empathetic side of this immigration situation, but also being protective enough of your own people, your own family and friends to understand the security aspect needs also be upheld. You know, the interesting perspective of the border is that there’s some people that say, ‘Why do we even have borders right now?’
Other people say, ‘Lock all the borders.’ And…
It really comes down to, like, if you want to under stay in the border and why we need a border, it’s like, ‘Well, why do you need doors?’ You have a front door, I have a front door. But why do we choose to have a front door, because we want to feel protected? And I’ll take it even deeper that everyone chooses how much protection they choose to have on their own house, right? Some people have alarms, some people have gated communities, and we all choose that. Why? Because we all want to feel secure in that, you know, in that micro version of, like, us personally. In the macro, it’s the border, in that same version of you wanting to have a front door in your house and that you want to be able to address anyone that comes to your door and whether you allow them into your house or when you can tell them they can leave. Right? No one comes over for a party and stays for 12 days.
You’re like, ‘Oh, it’s time to go home, big guy.’ You know what I mean?
But with us in our own house, we choose who we allow in our house and who we don’t, right? Because of sometimes the fear of safety, security. And in that same thought process, it’s no different than our borders. We should know who comes across our borders, what’s their intentions, how long they choose to plan to stay, and if we don’t, well then, we open ourselves up for some serious risk. And I fear these outliers who don’t believe in the American way of life. It’s just the reality of it. And so when there’s an argument about the border, I’m always like, ‘Well, you choose to protect your house; we should be allowed to protect our own country, which inveriently is our house.’ And so I hope that when people hear that perspective, they kind of understand it a little bit better.
When you’re in the Border Patrol Academy.
There’s a portion of it where they want to make sure you know how to swim. There’s some, like, basics to that because you work potentially in the Rio Grande River, where we have a lot of drowning deaths a year. Not the Border Patrol, per se, but illegal migrants attempting to cross. One day, it was like, ‘Man,’ I was pretty new in the Border Patrol, and I was with a senior guy, and we’re driving, and we see a group try and cross, and we hear the commotion.
Someone’s drowning.
Someone, someone lost their footing in their starting to drowned. And I looked at my shower. I was like, ‘Well, we do?’ He’s like, ‘Nothing.’ I’m like, ‘What do you mean, nothing?’ He goes, ‘Well, I’m not gonna go in there.’ And I was like, ‘Well, do you mind if I do?’ He’s like, ‘I don’t recommend it, Fargus. I don’t recommend it.’ I said, ‘Well, look, I’m a really good swimmer.’ I grew up in L.A. I swim since I was four. I did the whole beach thing, so I know what I’m doing. He said, ‘If you want to.’ I took off my gun belt, I took off all my stuff, actually ripped my top off…
So fast that the sleeve cuff stayed on.
And so I’m in my underwear, a green shirt, and a cuff still on, and I jump in there to try and save this dude I jumped into.
The water was cold.
It took my breath away for a second, and I knew that was coming, so I was prepared for the mental. I said, ‘Okay, let’s go to star swim swims.’
We get closer to him.
Eventually, as I get closer and I’m thinking, like, ‘All right, I’m gonna grab him, and I’m the one to pull me down.’ We get washed up upon a short spot, and we stand up and look at each other, and it was a really odd moment of, in the middle of the Rio Grande River, where he hadn’t crossed anything, where he’s illegal, and I’m not crossing any further. So we kind of looked at each other, he said, ‘And…’
For what? ‘I didn’t do nothing,’ but, ‘Okay,’ I turn around and walk back. And it was a really weird moment.
But, you know, it raises the question: ‘Why is he crossing a river if he can’t swim? Why did any of these people do it?’ And that’s what most, I think, people who don’t understand this, they don’t get to see. And so they, I think, they lose the context of the human aspect of this. Their lives are in a position where they’re willing to risk their life for a chance at America. There’s people in America that don’t even appreciate our country that much.
And we’ve been listening to Vincent Rocco Vargas. He’s a former Army Ranger turned U.S. Customs and Border Protection agent, and he’s been showing with us the story of his family, his family, heritage, his time in Iraq, and his time just seeing carnage, seeing friends killed, coming back, wanting to do something for his family, wanting to be a good father, wanting to be a good provider, and also wanting to serve and describing the border situation in a way that very few people in America can is both a man of Mexican and Puerto Rican heritage, but yet…
Discover more real American voices.
