H/M/S

Vison

Audio

03:57

Tim Foley patroling the border

How the cartels work in this area is, they pretty much have all the high

mountains, they have scouts sitting on. And they have a string of them that

goes from south to north all the way up to where their drop-off points are.

Regardless if it's human or drugs that is coming they have a guide with

them. And the guide is called the coyote and the coyote has

communications with the guys on top of the mountains.

„Which way they go Rocko? (talking to his dog) Well I think that went that

way.“

In the five years it's getting worse. The violence is escalating because it's no

man's land. Yeah, there is a track right there.

05:01

Desert impressions

Atmo

NGO volunteer Paige Corich-Kleim

Paige Corich-Kleim:

driving her pickup truck

My name is Paige Corich-Kleim and i work with the humanitarian aid

organization No More Deaths. We go out to different places in the desert

where we have mapped migrant trails and so we leave food water and socks

and sometimes blankets in strategic locations where people are likely to just

find them. Yeah the work can be tiring but I think it's really important and I

think I'm in a pretty unique position where I speak good Spanish and have

05:08

some medical skills. It can be hard because I think a lot of the time when I

just think about what we're trying to fight against and what people who are

crossing are dealing with, what were able to do is actually really really small

and that can feel really disappointing a lot when you just see a lot of

suffering but you can't do anything about it because there's this whole

system setup to create this suffering. And it's very intentional. I think one of

the most difficult things for me is just seeing this constant violence by

Border Patrol and violence by just the border in general and what people

are kind of coming from and dealing with as they cross.

H/M/S

Vison

Audio

Paige:

Not shure

Agent:

Well we're gonna go check this area out right now

Paige:

Oh ok

Agent:

If you guys gonna go back there to make your water drops we just come

back later

Paige:

06:43

Alright

Agent:

You guys are going down?

Paige:

Yeah we are going down there in a bit

Agent: (talking to cameraman)

How is it going?

Paige:

Have a good day

Agent:

No. The guy with the camera

07:22

Paige packing her backpack with water and food

Atmo

08:20

Tim Foley and John Spartan patroling the border

Tim (talking to cellphone):

with their SUV

Hello this is Tim with the Arizona Border Recon down in Sasabe giving you a

heads-up. We'll be out for the day on the Sasabe east side. We're gonna run

the fence and then we're gonna go up through Camaro up to TV Road. We'll

be in a copper-colored suburban. Yes sir.

08:53

Border impression

Atmo

09:18

Tim Foley showing the border fence

Tim:

This is what we like to classify as the pedestrian walk around. If you don't

want to take the three seconds to climb the fence you can just walk in a mile

and walk around it. See the fence? They can't even do a straight fence. And

the interesting thing about this, the Normandy, you know it's so rigid that

when they go across washes they don't go down in and they go across and

you just walk underneath them. You see and this is how ecologically minded

we are you know. You don't want to hurt the little tree so they brought that

but it doesn't connect. Save the tree. Doesn't even tie in together. A tree is

probably a better barrier than the actual fence.

10:26

Interview Tim Foley

When people say you know this is a big race thing. It's not really a race thing

because they're 78 different countries that are coming across our border

right now. You've got Russians, Chinese, Brazilians, Pakistanis Somali, you've

got everybody and their brother coming across this thing because it's

hanging so wide open .Who are all these people? We don't know.

11:03

Impressions Border Security Expo

Atmo

11:30

Female speaker at panel

On a typical day law enforcement numbers might look like this. We

apprehend 1300 illegal aliens between the ports of entry. We arrest 20

wanted criminals. My favourite. We intercept 425 agricultural threats, such as

the Giant African Land Snail. Which by the way is highly invasive and

destructive. Our imperative is to stay ahead of those who do us harm by

predictive modeling of their strategies and their use of technology and

resources.

H/M/S

Vison

Audio

13:08

Interview Tim Foley and John Spartan

John:

The awesome virtual fence that the Border Patrol put up, the billion-dollar

camera system that they have is fantastic, absolutely love it. It's a brilliant

idea and it works like a champ, If somebody's watching the right screen. If

the cameras pointed in the right direction. If the camera can see down a

wash. If there's an agent on the ground available to respond.

Tim:

If the weather permits it to operate properly.

John:

.. if.. They're great, they work great when all these things are in place and the

sun and the moon and Venus are lined up just right and you know,..

Tim:

The only thing you gonna see is Uranus.

13:55

Desert impressions

Atmo

14:17

Native american Orphelia Rivas standing at her

Orphelia:

property

My name's Ophelia Rivas.

14:24

Interview Orphelia Rivas

Orphelia:

The house that standing here to the right of me is the third house that has

been built there I was born there and when I was a child we didn't have

electricity or running water and my parents, we're all from O'Odham they're

all O'Odham, and our lands are now divided by an international border in

the size of Connecticut but it’s only a third of our original land, original

homeland.

15:40

Orphelia Rivas crossing the border

Orphelia:

Like I said, this is O'Odham land and this is O'Odham land. I have every

right to be here I have right to collect my food, collect my medicines, visit

my family be a part of my family on both sides of the border. That's what I'm

saying. You know there is something wrong with this picture.

16:16

Orphelia Rivas at the border

NGO-Volunteer:

How much does this cost to do?

16:55

Landscape

Atmo

H/M/S

Vison

Audio

17:10

John Ladd driving in his pickup truck

It's been in our family 118 years. My great-grandparents came in 1896. It's

not as bad as it used to be but there's still enough people coming through.

There's more dope coming across now than ever. So even though there's

fewer illegals, the damage caused by the people packing drugs is more

substantial. Because now you've got to go find where the fence is cut then

you got to put the cows back where you want to put them. So you spend

half a day doing something like that that you shouldn't have to do if they

would control the border. We can get out and I'll show you these drive-

through's in here. Where they cut the wall for the trucks to come in

18:23

John Ladd at the border wall

They cut the wall right at the ground. Right down at ground level up the side

up to here, take all of it down, drive a truck through full of marijuana then

they get up on my ranch and then go to the highway. Then there's one, two,

three, Right here there's two more down there and there's one more up

here that's just one spot where they have done this. There are three spots on

the ranch that they're doing this kind of stuff.

19:00

Impressions from life stock auction

Atmo

19:40

Veterinarian Gary Thrasher at work

Gary:

I'm Gary Thrasher, Im a veterinarian my practice is almost entirely ranch,

cow, calf and horse practise. I travel about 200 miles of the border, have

clients all along the border.

Worker on horse:

How are you doing doc? Pretty good?

Gary:

Pretty good.

Worker on horse:

Lot of work today? Busy?

Gary:

The Border Patrol doesn't feel that they can properly secure the border at

the International bounding, …

20:14

Gary Thrasher driving his pickup truck

so their philosophy is to protect the border in depth.

20:20

Interview Gary Thrasher

This means a few people at the border to detect what has come across. And

then a lot more people farther in the border to capture those that crossed

and then farther up even more to capture those that got away from there.

What that does though is that space of time between the international

border and their secondary place where they catch up with them after they

chase them, is the ranches that I work with. And those ranches are really a

chasing field, a big playing field for the Border Patrol to make their captures

and they have to make the captures, some at least so that they have metrics,

so they have statistics to report back to Congress.

22:43

Impressions of border security equipment, and

Music

border patrol pickup driving through desert

24:05

John Ladd talking to Border Patrol Agent at the

Atmo

border fence

H/M/S

Vison

Audio

24:17

Interview John Ladd at border fence

John:

My real big impact is my privacy. I've got cameras i got Border Patrol I got

sensors I got radar and they’re watching me all the time, Border Patrol. And

I'm used to it now but if you think about it you know how would you like

that? You got three cameras around your house What do you think? When

they put the cameras up my wife says we need to plant some trees, so we

got trees in front of all the windows now. It bothers her more than me but

when my mother was alive it bothered my mom and those people are

watching. I know, I can see that camera looking right at us. Sure they are.

25:02

Impression little border town

Atmo

25:21

At „Robertos Electric“ Impressions and Interviews

Roberto:

with electrician Roberto Carranza and his wife

I've been living in Arizona for the last 20 years. Before that, I got a degree in

Antonia Gallagos

agriculture in Mexico. I worked in agriculture for a while. Then came the

economic crisis and I had to quit the cattle market. Then I became an

electrician. Fortunately everything went well.

Antonia:

Two young children arrived to one day at about four o'clock in the morning

on sunday morning. Roberto went out and there was two children on the

fence because our dogs were barking a lot he went to see what was going

on and there was two little boys, one about 10 and 8 I think we're their ages

and they had been lost three nights. This was sunday morning and they've

been lost since friday evening. They were coming across with a group and

had gotten separated when they ran from the Border Patrol and they were

never able to get back together with the group. So they started wandering

through the desert and finally to days later they found a way to our place.

Roberto:

One of the boys had a Mexican phone number with him. He gave it to me

and I called. I reached people from Guerrero. The man I spoke to seemed

very upset. He was the grandfather of the two boys. He wanted to know

what happened to them. I told him: Don't worry, they are OK They are with

me now.

I gave him my number and told him that everything would be fine. This

calmed him down. This calmed him down. Their mother lived in the US and

hadn't been able to reach them. The grandparents told her and several days

later, they came to pick up the boys. I don't know how they transported

them. I asked for an ID to make sure they were family.

29:00

Desert impressions

Atmo

29:14

Life stock Auction impressions

Atmo

29:41

Gary Thrasher at his barn

Gary:

There is probably a few cattle across the road there but you can't see them

from here. Probably they're all over there about a hundred head out there.

This is kind of an interesting barn.See this little door here? One time we had

lot of people coming Migrants coming across here coming from the border

and coming through here and they stopped here to try to find water hoses.

One morning I came out here and I heard noises in the top of the barn and I

thought a coyote had gotten into chase the cat. That's a door for the cat to

get in and out to keep the mice down so there’s no snakes.

Anyway when I got in here and went upstairs to see what was there it was a

group of men who had come from Mexico and I told them that they were in

trouble because they broke into a locked barn. They said: No, no, it wasn't

locked. I said: Show me the door that was open? They showed me that. One

small man crawled through there and open the door for everybody so they

could go in. And when I was in the barn the man were upstairs. And when I

talk to them up there and told him I was calling the Border Patrol I heard a

lot of noise downstairs. And water running and I said: Who's downstairs?

They answered: Nobody. I went down there there's two women they were

taking a shower, we have a shower in the barn here. So they were using it for

transport place before they went further on.

H/M/S

Vison

Audio

31:36

NGO volunteers at border patrol checkpoint

White person? Yes.

We are watching the border patrol and we're watching to see if there’s any

racial profiling. To see who is required to show identification and to observe

their behavior. How they talk to people, treat people.

Hi Kyle, how are you? That's a nice wood you got. They call him Kyle. It's

Greg.

There's a lot of irony there. It means that even though those tactics aren't

necessarily being directed at residents primarily. They're for people

crossing. But they they still get directed at residets because there's just such

a concentration of law enforcement so people have Border Patrol pointing

guns at them on their own property. They're being stopped at this

checkpoint anytime they try to leave their community and there's just a

general really like tense feeling living under all of this. Day to day.

33:!3

Driving through U.S. Border Patrol checkpoint

Agent:

United States Boder Patrol immigration inspection. Can I see passports

please

33:54

Interview Orphelia Rivas

We have four main exits out of the reservation to the South there is Arizona

Sonoita Sonora, there's a checkpoint. Leaving to the north to Gila Bend

there's another checkpoint. Leaving to go to Casa Grande there's another

checkpoint. That's north. And then east to Tucson there's another

checkpoint. So within that small space we're completely surrounded.

34:29

Border Patrol Checkpoint impressions

Music

35:26

Interview Orphelia Rivas

My daughter was working in Tucson, so we're driving back to Tucson and

now we got pulled over by a Border Patrol and he immediately asked me to

state my citizenship. Whether i was a U.S. citizen or Mexican citizen.I said I'm

an O’Odham and you are on my land. Where are you from? So he

immediately unclipped his pistol on the side and he put it at my head.

He said: You will say you are a U.S. citizen or Mexican citizen. And he did that

in front of my daughter and my grandson was little and both of them

started crying, but he continued to say that he would deport me, he would

throw me on the pavement, handcuff me and deport me. I said: I'm

O'Odham, you're on my land. Where are you going to deport me to? If

you're going to deport me to Mexico, that's my land, too. My community is

on that side too. At that point another Border Patrol came and saw what was

happening and it stopped and we went on our way.

36:49

Desert impression

Atmo

37:00

Tim Foleys home

Tim:

This is the bleeding heart newspaper of the humanitaian’s. I think.. They

believe what they wanna believe. Yeah, it … It's really weird.

Spartan:

You're making coffee? Oh good.

Tim:

They have an article here. So it' the ammount of death's in the desert from

1999-2011 are 2269 people dying in the desert. Well that's why you don't

try to cross the desert. Its inhospitable. You can't carry enough water. We see

more people in the summertime that we rescue. That's crazy.

H/M/S

Vison

Audio

38:36

Paige Corich-Kleim at water drop

Paige:

Alright, so here's the drop. Oh, ok. It looks that it's been slashed. I could

have been Border Patrol. It could have been hunters. We don't always know.

We do have footage of Border Patrol kicking over water gallons. I guess

there's no way to prove it either way but the agent that I just talked to said

that he knew there was a drop here, so that kind of leads me to believe that

they know it's here and might be cutting it because that fits in with their

strategy of just making it really difficult people to cross. The strategy of

prevention to deterrence. Basically they want to make crossing as difficult

and hard as possible to deter people from doing it.

But really this is just resulted in suffering and death on the border and just

putting people in a really really vulnerable situation. When they catch

people they now will put them through Operation Streamline and give them

criminal charges and jail time as a consequence for crossing, so they've

created the other system to just make it even worse to cross and it makes

getting caught more of an issue. Before you might just get deported back

but now if you’re crossing and you get lost, to turn yourself in might mean

spending six months in a jail or six months in a prison. So the consequences

are just higher and it's harder to do, because there's more enforcement and

it's just really set up to make people suffer.

43:13

Desert impressions

Atmo

43:50

Interview Gary Thrasher

Gary:

Ranchers really get irrated when somebody calls it a no man's land. They

believe that their ranch is their ranch and they don't believe that the federal

government is taking responsibility for their security like they would for

anywhere else in the country. They live long ways away a lot of times from

everybody else, so response time for the sheriff, for the Border Patrol, or

even the military is a problem. Our ex sheriff, the one who was killed not too

long ago, he told Ranchers that you're going to have to protect yourself. Do

not count on the sheriff. I can't get there in an hour and if you are in trouble

and it's going to take me an hour to get there or half an hour to get there,

you've got to be able to take care of yourself.

44:36

Border town impressions

Atmo

H/M/S

Vison

Audio

45:02

Walking through a typical western city with Steve

Steve:

Troncale

Arizona is atypical as far as most of the states are concerned. We have the

Open Carry Law, where you can carry a firearm open anywhere in the state

of Arizona.

How are you doing?

Woman:

Good, how are you?

Steve:

Do I get a hug?

Woman:

Yes you do. I always have hugs for you

Steve:

Thank you baby

Woman:

Your welcome

Steve:

Most people won't do it in highly populated areas like Phoenix or Tucson

but here in the rural areas like in Tombstone basically the only people don't

carry a gun that live here are kids in high school. There was a lot of different

gun manufacturers but this became one of the most popular firearms of its

time, the Colt Single Action Army. And this is what I carry. The only thing I

shoot with it now is blanks. When I get into a gunfight occasionally and it's

just fun, it's fun.

46:09

Touristic cowboy puppets

Speaker:

The Earp's enter the corral, Doc Holiday joined them. The sheriff tried to

stop them claiming he would disarm the cowboys, but they walked on into

this vacant lot, where you see them standing now. Suddenly Wyatt cries out:

You Cowboys have been looking for a fight. Now you can have it. Boy's,

drop your hands, I want your guns. Don't shoot me I don't want to fight. I

haven't got anything. I've come to disarm you. This fight has convinced.

Either fight or get away.

46:48

Cowboy show in front of audience

Cowboy:

Alright, let's try it out as loud as you can. Let's hear for the goog guys.

(Applause)

Bad guys

(Applause)

Good guys

(Applause)

Good looking guy

(Applause)

That was weird, Mr.

Are you folks ready for a gun fight?

(Applause)

I said are you folks ready for a killing?

We start in 45 minutes

47:21

Interview four touristic cowboys

Cowboy 1:

You have to understand that the white man was an invader in their territory

out here, It used to be nothing but the indians, Apaches especially down

here and of course of mexicans, because southern Arizona once was part of

Mexico. Cowboys, Indians, the Mexicans, they ran back and forth across the

border pretty much all the time. I mean there were organized military on

Mexican side but for the most part the borders really didn't exist that much.

Cowboy 2:

Which also was a large part of the problem with the Cowboys gang is that

they would go across the border steal cattle and sell them and vice versa.

48:04

Sandbuggy’s driving through desert dunes in

Music

front of the border fence

H/M/S

Vison

Audio

50:00

John Ladd driving his pickup truck

John:

The danger element is that the people running the drugs are all cartel and

they're not going to give up and that's where the danger for ranchers is and

you know we have to be smart. The mayority of the ranchers aren't going

out catching drug runners and we don't want to get killed. So we're smart

enough to either turn our.. I don't turn my head I call Border Patrol.

We advocated for the last 10 years that Border Patrol should hire veterans

Because they're trained and it wouldn’t be that hard to convert a soldier to a

Border Patrol. But they they won't do it. And you know Border Patrol are

federal agents but they're civilians Right there that's a problem In order to

control the border you have to have a military philosophy. And Border Patrol

doesn't have that

52:32

Interview Tim Foley

About a year ago I was driving the road then there was a lady standing on

the road. She was a pretty girl, she was 19 years old, but she had bruising all

across her face or she had a black eye, dried blood coming out of her nose,

broken lips from being punched and I asked her and she said she told the

story of making it six months to the fence and the night before she came

across with some other people and in the middle of the night 23 guys in her

group gang raped her.

And when she fought back they beat her and raped her anyway and took

all her identification and her money and left her. And she just said, she

wanted to go home. I said ok, put her in my truck and drove her to the

Border Patrol and she told them the story. So now once if we're out of the

mountains and we see groups of people sitting on the mountain with our

binoculars and we see big group of males and only one or two females, we

call the Border Patrol and say, hey, get somebody out there quick. Before

nightfall.

54:10

Border Patrol car driving along the Fence

Music

54:43

Border Security Expo impressions

Atmo

55:00

Panel speaker at expo

And that's probably job one. Counterterrorism, right we don't want those

people around us. How do you do that? What technology? Well we've got

some ideas In the end of the day I'm gonna bring that update. But you' got

any broad ideas? Because I don't know what the requirement is what we

want to stop bad people. We want to stop stop bad things. We dont't like

weapons of mass destruction. We don't want biological weapons. That's a

requirement, to stop bad things. And do you have ideas on how we might

do that? What the problem is? See, as Mr. Ragsdale was saying this morning

I gotta turn that into: What bad things? What are the steps, right? And when

I do that, we lose an opportunity for innovation.

55:51

Border Security Expo impressions

Atmo

56:15

Border security salesman

And this here is the picture of our first tower that went up its in the Tucson

area on the border down to Mexico. And basically what you see here is a tall

tower, on top you'll see we have a radar we have a day camera and a

thermal night camera. So that the agents at a command center located miles

away can see if anybody's crossing the border. And the beauty of this is it

can do it in all weather. If you just had radar and there was cloud condition

we couldn't see through the radar. With all three we fuse it into one

common picture and why we think we were the best product for here is the

ability to fuse it all into one common operating picture, called the COP. That

gives the law enforcement people the ability to see what's going along the

border regardless of the time of day or whatever.

H/M/S

Vison

Audio

57:07

Paige Corich-Kleim returning from water drop,

Paige:

interview at her car, Border Patrol Agent

I think the issue of categorizing people into good and bad people can be

approaches and talks to her

really problematic, because you know somebody who is carrying drugs

across the border might be doing that just to pay to get across. If you don't

have any money that's an easy way that somebody can pay for their trip,

they can carry drugs across. I think also depending on where you were born.

If I were born in Sonora that might be the only job opportunity I have. The

only way that I can make money might be to work as a guide leading people

through the desert or carrying drugs through the desert. That might be the

only opportunity. So I don't think that people wake up one day and decide

they want to do this bad thing. It's just a way that people are able to make a

living.

Agent:

Hi, So it's quiet back there?

Paige:

We found some slashed gallons.

Agent:

Slashed gallons? Like somebody cut it with a knife?

Paige:

Yeah like somebody cut them with a knife.

Agent:

What do you guys do about that?

Paige:

Replace them and hope that somebody who needs supplies finds them.

Agent:

What you guys doing with all the old water bottles?

Paige:

What do you mean?

Agent:

What do you do with the stuff that has been used?

Paige:

We just take them back.

1:00:20

Boder Patrol towers

Atmo

H/M/S

Vison

Audio

1:00:51

Orphelia Rivas and NGO group returning to their

NGO-Woman 1:

cars

The terrorists can't walk around?

Orphelia:

They don't know how to climb mountains?

NGO-Woman 1:

I guess not.

NGO-Woman 2:

The terrorists came with passports. And they let them get on the plane.

Orphelia:

That's why i asked them you know, this towers that they're going to put up. I

asked them, you're protecting the american way of life in the U.S. - Mexican

border Canada-U.S. border. How many towers are going to go up? They

said: Well there's gonna be five in Douglas. Five in Arivaca and 15 on the

Tohono O'odham Nation. And I said so nowhere else? Nowhere else.

1:01:57

Interview Orphelia Rivas

They brought in the National Guard and they started working. Putting up the

pillars. Every month from that point on and elder passed away. For the

whole entire year we lost more than 12 elders that passed away that are so

vital to not only our ceremonies but our traditional council, that is on both

sides of the border called the Traditional O'Odham Leaders. When those

people passed away, everybody didn't understand. But I feel that they were

just heartbroken at what happened to the land and it really hurted

everybody.

1:02:36

Impressions of border town divided by border

Atmo

fence

1:03:44

Interview Antonia Gallegos

Antonia:

Impressions of personal belongings of migrants

We had already seen people crossing.We didn't have as much surveillance

left behind

back then. People came across more freely and stopped in and ask for

Impressions of „Las Madres Project“

food, but I wasn’t really aware of all the deaths that were going on around,

because it wasn't really publicized very much. And then I met Valerie.

An artist that moved into the area. And she had some big dogs and she

would go out walking with her dogs and while she was out there she started

finding all these artifacts we call them. These backpacks filled with personal

items. Everything you know, prayer-books, rosaries, clothing, lot of family

pictures and letters. Very personal stuff. So we started picking them up and

it was actually her idea to do a large memorial. To what was happening to

the people that we're just falling by the wayside and nobody was really

paying attention to them. We decided to focus on the mothers that are left

behind to really emphasize the sadness of families being torn apart. So we

came up with the „Las Madres" project. And we were going to do a lot of

figures.

We thought we were going to really be able to handle one figure for every

ten people that had died. Then we realized how many had died so we

decided to do one figure for every hundred. Turns out it was way more than

that so we did one figure for every thousand. We ended up with three at

that point it was over 3,000 people that had died at that point in 2003. So

we decided that if we used the clothing to make the paper it would have the

DNA of the crossers in them, because they're running, they're scared,

they're tired, they're thirsty and all this being poured out into their clothing.

So we said wow, this way the mothers will be made out of the same essence

as the people that they're representing.

1:06:12

Impression of border fence

Music

1:06:49

Interview Gary Thrasher

Probably about 300 a year die in Arizona that are people that are crossing

the border illegally for one reason or another that are just found there.

But there's almost no investigation about what was the cause of death

almost none. If it was happening anywhere else in the U.S., probably

anywhere else in the world that a body was found in your backyard or out

the woods someplace, there would be a crime scene investigation, a huge

people looking all over like you see on television. But not here. It's just pick

them up put them in a bag take them to the coroner, let it go.

H/M/S

Vison

Audio

1:09:07

Border Security Expo heroes memorial

Scottish music

1:10:27

Desert impressions by night

Atmo

1:10:54

Tim Foley at the roof of his house looking

Tim:

through his binoculars

I'm doing it for everybody. Until I feel it's safe. So probably the rest of my

life.

1:11:24

Border fence impression

Music

1:11:38

Desert impression with credits

Music