Unreported World - 2008 - USA - The Devil's Highway TAG unw

15 February 2008

Unreported World reports from the Sonora desert in Northern Mexico. Hot, ...

15 February 2008

Unreported World reports from 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.





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.

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