Visit Slate to view related slideshow by David Rochkind
ALTAR, Mexico—I hadn't yet taken 10 steps off the bus when I made eye contact with someone for the first time.
"Are you going north?" he hissed, walking quickly toward me. "Let's go. Let's go," he implored.
After leaving Altar, migrants face a variety of threats, like drug cartels, bandits, the environment and US Border Patrol. They often get lost or disoriented in the desert and depend on the Border Patrol, or Mexico's Grupo Beta, to find them and save them from dehydration or hypothermia. The ones who are picked up by the border patrol are usually deported or repatriated to Nogales, Sonora, where they will rest up and prepare for their next attempt at crossing.
David Rochkind / Pulitzer Center
Migrants flood into Altar, Sonora before making the dangerous journey across the Sonoran Desert and into the United States. They often pass through here after being deported from the US, as they try to get back home or to organize another crossing.
See Related Slideshow by David Rochkind on the Los Angeles Times site.
Reporting from Altar, Mexico — On a cloudless afternoon in northern Sonora, migrants and drug runners lounge in equal numbers under scattered mesquite trees, playing cards or sipping water. The sun climbs high and the temperature rises well over 100 degrees Fahrenheit. In such heat, nothing, human or otherwise, moves more than required.
Please follow the link below to view the slideshow.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-migrants19-pg,0,7067...
Sacha Feinman, for the Pulitzer Center. Photo by David Rochkind
Sacha Feinman, for the Pulitzer Center
A Borderland Pictures production
A film by Jordan deBree and Clayton Worfolk
Produced in association with the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting
Begins airing Friday, March 20, 2009
On his last day in Culiacán, Pulitzer Center grantee Clayton Worfolk witnessed a traumatic crime scene—an embodiment of what has made this city one of the most dangerous in Mexico.
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