Documentary ‘Border’ Delivers Rarely Seen Side of Illegal Immigration
September 14, 2008



Documentary Border shows human cost of human smugglers who rape and enslave those seeking a better life in the US as limited enforcement and porous borders enable the tragedy.

Fort Worth, TX (WiredPRNews.com)—The shocking documentary ‘Border’ shows how a porous border and limited enforcement enables human smugglers and drug traffickers to extort, rape, murder and humiliate those seeking a better life in the United States.

Destroying the notion that those who want to secure the border are racist xenophobic bigots, filmmaker Chris Burgard shows how the predominantly Hispanic property owners and law enforcement personnel on US side of the border are fighting a war against drug cartels that move people and drugs across the unforgiving and desolate desert terrain.

Contrary to the talking points of the so-called ‘immigrants rights’ groups, Burgard shows how illegal immigrants are sometimes locked into indentured servitude to the smugglers who’ve delivered them to safe houses in cities like Tucson and Phoenix. The smugglers, commonly known as ‘Coyotes,’ threaten to kill the families of the newly arrived immigrants if they don’t pay extortion money. Sometimes, this servitude can go on for years.

Burgard, a former bull rider and native of Wisconsin, decided to make the documentary after working with a group of laborers, who turned out to be illegal aliens. Shocked by the stories the immigrants told about their journey into the US, Burgard discovered that Coyotes would often sexually assault women in the migrant groups, and display the victim’s undergarments on ‘rape trees’ near the border. This sick display is a competition that human traffickers engage in to one-up each other.

The lack of a solid, border fence and limited enforcement actually contribute to the carnage that these smugglers have wrought. In the sector that Burgard covers in the film, border ranchers routinely talk about finding corpses of illegal immigrants on their vast properties. Some have died at the hands of the Coyotes while others die of dehydration after walking for days in the desert.

The Mexican government may be complicit in helping drug cartels smuggle aliens and terrorists into the US. An example Burgard cites is that para-military groups have violated US sovereignty and held American border patrol agents at gunpoint, preventing them from stopping the smugglers.

http://www.bordermovie.com/
http://www.wiredprnews.com/2008/09/14/d ... 14708.html