...and you shall know it by the trail of dead.
- More people have died illegally crossing the southwestern border of the United States in the last 16 years than were killed in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and Hurricane Katrina combined. From October 2000 through September 2016, the Border Patrol documented 6,023 deaths in Arizona, California, New Mexico and Texas, while more than 4,800 people died in the Sept. 11 attacks and Hurricane Katrina.
For a really really excellent book-length treatment, see Jason DeLeón's The Land of Open Graves. I read it for an anthropology course a few weeks ago and sections had me in tears.
I have a book called High Risk Photography which had a photoessay of a lot of that stuff 20 years ago. It's fucking amazing. I also knew a guy in high school whose grandfather had a ranch on the rio down in Texas. He kept a rifle on the porch to take pot shots at migrants crossing at night. This is the world we live in.
It is really hard to listen to, but The Green Line podcast is something that liberals should be listening to. This is a podcast by and for Border Patrol agents. We can bitch and moan about our border policies, immigration reform, building a wall, and debate who's gonna pick our crops this summer, but these are the guys who have to stand with their toes on the line and enforce stupid policies put in place by stupid politicians who don't give a shit about whether the policies make sense or not. The Green Line is where Fox News soundbites come into uncomfortable contact with reality. They even dedicated a whole episode to answering my questions! We liberals need to listen to these guys if we want to build a better future for everyone.