Bad place to break down

We left El Paso heading East to San Antonio where we intended to stop and have the car fixed. The heat was still up in the high 90's and we were on 4 lanes of an insanely busy highway 10 travelling west. We were only 15 miles from Mexico and the Texas Border Security patrol funnelled the four lanes of traffic into one by blocking the lanes with huge red plastic barrels. At this point where the four lanes became one our bloody car decided to clap out again with three miles of traffic behind it and about half a kilometre to the checkpoint. We put the hazards on and began walking toward the checkpoint. We were met by a border patrol trooper with a smile and a hand on his pistol asking "Y'all have a problem?". We explained the car situation and that we wanted to bypass the check point because we didn't want to push it through the checkpoint in front of 500 eighteen wheelers. He took us to the check point. Inside were about 10 armed cops who listened to our story and decided to let us evade the check point. They checked our passports and then drove us in the patrol car back to our car, stopped the traffic and allowed us to go on the empty lanes to bypass the checkpoint. We had explained that the car went if the fuel tank was completely full and that we could get fuel at the next stop about four miles down the road. We headed for the servo and while filling up we noticed that the Patrol Car had followed us, presumably to see that we did what we had said we would do.