How Migrants Navigate Dangerous Crossings as US Politicians Debate Borders

From San Ysidro, on the US side of the Mexican border, I crossed into Tijuana, known for its drug violence.

In 2015, during his presidential campaign, Donald Trump remarked, “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.”

During the 2024 campaign, Trump claimed that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were eating cats and other pets belonging to local residents.

Illegal immigration has been an important issue in the last many US presidential elections. Securing the US borders, especially the southern border with Mexico, is a key topic in discussions and debates.

Many candidates focus on strengthening border controls, such as building walls and using advanced surveillance, making it a central part of their plans for national security.

A few years ago, while traversing the Americas from the Arctic to the Antarctic on the Pangea One World Expedition, I drove along the Mexico-US border for over a thousand kilometres and got a first-hand feel of the treacherous terrain and the dangers faced by the migrants attempting to cross illegally into the US.

From San Ysidro, on the US side of the Mexican border, I crossed into Tijuana, a Mexican outpost known for its drug violence. My baggage was scanned by the customs department but the passport was not checked. "Hey! This is Mexico, a free country. You don't need any passports and visas over here. We welcome everybody. Not like the gringos," said a Mexican passenger, pointing to the long rows of crawling vehicles lined on the other side to enter the US.

From Tijuana, I got on a bus for the long haul to Guadalajara, a 36-hour journey covering 2,400km. Soon after leaving the city limits, we got into the mountainous region of La Rumorosa. It seemed that all the rocks and boulders in the world had been brought here and piled high into heaps.

The canyons in this barren landscape provide a route for adventurous immigrants from all over the world to enter illegally into the US. Many do not survive the harsh conditions. These mountains and the sandy dunes are littered with bodies of those who could not make it. 

Many of the corpses are eaten away by scavenging birds and animals. Pieces of denim – with which their feet had been bound to ensure they don’t leave any trace in the desert – provide the only evidence of their existence.

In the shallow depths of this desolation were tunnels used for smuggling drugs and migrants into the United States. A few months earlier, Mexican authorities discovered a tunnel, 10 metres deep and 300 metres long, complete with a lighting and ventilation system. Its entrance was located in a warehouse, close to the Mexicali-Calexico border.

After San Luis Colorado, we entered the beautiful Sonoran Desert that stretches from northwest Mexico into Arizona and California. For hundreds of kilometres, we drove along the Mexico-US border where the Americans had constructed a solid metal-and-concrete fence to keep their neighbours away.

A Mexican lady, working as a maid in San Diego, had boarded the bus from San Luis Colorado and was going to Mexico City. "These gringos keep us away after usurping half our country! California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Florida... the land all the way to Canada belonged to us. They made such a fuss about the Berlin Wall in Europe. Here you see, they have constructed their own Berlin Wall," she said, agitated, and followed it up with some fluent profanities in Spanish.

Border enforcement costs the United States $25 billion a year, more than all other federal criminal law enforcement agencies combined. Besides the fence, Predator drones monitor from the sky, tower-mounted cameras scan the desert, and ground sensors observe land movements. With the US economy in the doldrums and Mexico clocking a cheery, employment-creating four percent growth rate, the number of Mexicans wanting to migrate to the US had been shrinking.

However, Mexico is increasingly becoming a transhipment point for migrants from Central America fleeing crime and poverty at home. The US Border Patrol calls them OTMs (“other than Mexicans”). The number of caught OTMs grew from 51,000 in 2010 to 171,000 in 2023. Dead bodies discovered of OTMs more than doubled between 2000 and 2023.

Yet, they keep coming – braving the risk of robbery, kidnapping, and death. Mexican authorities themselves admit that 20,000 of these OTMs are kidnapped every year.

There is a cargo train called La Bestia (The Beast) that plies from southern Mexico to the north with migrants from Central America clinging to the roof. Organised criminal gangs wring them out of their money. Four months earlier, ten Hondurans were seriously injured after being thrown off the train for refusing to pay.

We continued through the desert as the full moon rose and brightened up the bleak hills. The entire route is considered extremely dangerous. Buses, on this highway, have been made to halt at roadblocks manned by armed guards who board posing as police undertaking an inspection. Due to recent successes of the Mexican government’s war against the drug mafia, several gang members have been killed. The cartels were replenishing their ranks by kidnapping people from buses.

Migrants from Central America – Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras – trying to get illegally into the United States, were especially targeted. Those who refused to fight for the drug warlords were killed. A mass grave was found in 2011 with the bodies of 72 illegal migrants who were shot dead for refusing to work for the Zetas.

Miguel Angel Trevino Morales, the leader of the Zetas, had been captured in 2013 by Mexican marines as he came out of hiding to visit his newborn child in his hometown of Nuevo Laredo, close to the Texas border. Known in Mexico by the nickname Z-40, or simply Death, he was the country’s most violent Mafia Don. He relished hijacking buses and forcing abducted passengers into gladiatorial fights to the death, with the survivor being allowed to join his band of assassins.

Among the long list of crimes for which he was wanted included the massacre of 265 migrants whose bodies were found buried near San Fernando. They had refused to work as drug mules.

As Donald Trump and Kamala Harris – and, increasingly, European politicians – continue to harp over the issue of migration, the treacherous journey migrants undertake, the dangers and the exploitative criminal organisations they face, reveal harsh realities that go far beyond political rhetoric.

With increasing global economic disparities and conflicts, migration will continue to test the strength of borders and the resilience of human dignity – Trump or No Trump.

(Akhil Bakshi, an author and explorer, is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and Explorers Club USA, and Editor of ‘Indian Mountaineer’. He is also the founder of Bharatiya Yuva Shakti, an organisation that ensures good leadership at the village level. He tweets @AkhilBakshi1. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)