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 Editorials | Issues | February 2008 
The Devil's Highway
 C4
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Unreported World comes from one of the most hostile places on earth - the Sonora desert in Northern Mexico. Hot, waterless and full of rattlesnakes, it's crossed every day by thousands of migrants desperate to reach the USA - many of whom die a lonely death trying to fulfill their dream of a better life.
Reporter Aidan Hartley and producer Julie Noon begin their journey at the San Miguel Gate crossing. There, they meet Marta, a young woman who will pay people smugglers known as coyotes $3000 to get her across the border. She tells Hartley that she owes the coyotes the money which she will pay off once she gets a job, putting her into a form of bonded labour.
Travelling deeper into the desert, the team comes across a monument to the more than 2950 people, including children, who have died in this part of the desert. They are just some of the estimated million people who try to cross the border every year.
Hartley and Noon find one exhausted group, some of whom have been travelling for weeks already. They are only carrying tiny bottles of water in the scorching heat and are ill-equipped to survive the freezing nights as they begin their walk of up to fifty dangerous miles through the desert.
Crossing the border into the USA, the team meets a volunteer group in Tucson. They've produced what they call a death map, showing the distribution of some 4000 people who've died while crossing the desert since the mid 1990s. As border security and immigration move towards the top of the agenda in the upcoming US elections, the authorities are cracking down on migrants. The volunteer group tell Hartley that every time additional personnel or more technology are added to secure the border, the migrants are forced to take ever more circuitous routes and are exposed to the elements for longer periods, resulting in more deaths. A local forensic anthropologist tells Hartley that some migrants take their own life rather than die a painful death lost in the desert.
The team moves on to Phoenix where authorities have begun a crack-down on illegal migrants, which has sharply divided opinions and polarised the city. Local Sheriff Joe Arpaio tells the team that he believes all illegal migrants should be removed from the country. "We have a lot of money, I'm sure we could hire a few buses and go state by state, I'm sure they could load up the buses and spend some gas and deport take them to Mexico," he tells Hartley.
People trafficking has now become mixed up with narcotics gangs who are preying on migrants. Hartley visits the Drug Enforcement Administration's office in Tucson, which seizes nearly half of all marijuana entering the USA. Head of the Office, Anthony Coulson tells Hartley that traffickers are arranging for migrants to carry rucksacks containing 50lbs of the drug across the border, in return for a promise of transport to their final destination.
The team returns to the Mexican side of the frontier, where thousands of people are being returned across the border in buses. And just where they are dropped off, a gang of coyotes is waiting to pounce as the migrants to begin yet another attempt to fulfill their dreams and reach the promised land. |
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