Trash left behind by people attempting to illegally
cross the border is scattered throughout the Arizona desert. In the
mid-1990s, the Immigration and Naturalization Service and the Border Patrol
focused on tightening control of urban areas along the 2,000-mile-long border
with Mexico. The assumption was that crossing through more-rural desert areas
was so risky that few would try it. But that assumption was wrong. Migrants
are still coming at the rate of hundreds of thousands a year.
