BATTLE FOR THE BORDER

Few issues can be counted on to exacerbate raw feelings as reliably as
illegal immigration, and, for reasons no one has to be told, never
more so than now. That fact has everything to do with the power of the
National Geographic Channel's "Border Wars" series, soon to begin its
second season, and the source of the high tension that accompanies
every action and word in these documentary close-ups of U.S.
law-enforcement agents battling drug and arms traffic and,
unforgettably, the smugglers with their steady flow of human cargo.

The series kicks off with a special preview on Aug. 29th (9-10 p.m.
ET) called "Death on the Rio Grande," then moves to its regular slot
(Wednesdays, 9-10 pm) beginning Sept. 1, with an episode titled
"Checkpoint Texas."

That place is Falfurrias, Texas, known, for good reason, as the
busiest illegal-traffic checkpoint in the country.

A government report notes that in 2006, Falfurrias Customs and Border
Patrol agents apprehended nearly four times as many people trying to
enter the U.S. illegally as there were residents in the city itself.

Their number has doubtless increased in the years since.

These are travelers who have tried and failed, frequently more than
once, to elude the U.S. agents and who have, evidently, all learned
what they should say, when caught: that they will face death if they
are forced to return to their countries of origin.

What they have not learned is what they might confront at the hands of
those guides who have, for a price, led them across the border and
into the harshest wilderness, only to abandon them at the first sign
of a border patrol.

But it wasn't a patrol that caused the smugglers to run off and leave
them, a woman from Ecuador reports when she and her small daughter are
rescued, in desperate condition, after wandering alone for two days.
Once across the border, their guides had turned cold, and had demanded
that they proceed at an impossible pace. When the child twisted her
ankle and had to rest, the guides took the opportunity to depart.

The border patrol found the mother and child two days later,
dehydrated and starved, the usual condition of such abandoned border
crossers.

The film's brief encounter with this woman yields more than a portrait
of pathos. It speaks vividly for a kind of heedless determination
shown by masses of other illegal immigrants, an enormous number of
whom have been caught, after tortuous journeys through the most
inhospitable terrain, and deported-yet, despite all, have returned to
try again.

Those seen here don't look frightened. They have been at this long
enough.

The unnamed mother rescued, along with her child, by border patrol has
the look of weary expectation seen in many border crossers, including
those shown in this documentary. She had once before tried entering
the U.S. via a smuggler's route and was caught.

She returned to Ecuador where, clearly, she did not lose her life as
she had claimed would be the case if she were sent back. She did not
lose her will to find her way across the U.S border, either.

She had undertaken this new effort, with a child clearly unfit for
this most demanding of physical trials-an asthma sufferer.

She would now have to return to Ecuador again.

Still, we may deduce that even this nightmare might not suffice to
quash her belief that the next effort to cross could succeed. That 10
million people have succeeded in getting safely across U.S. borders
without scrutiny or legal documentation of any kind is not lost on the
countless others in the world like this mother, aspiring to do the
same.

The film's picture of the border and of the enforcement problems
confronting those in charge can't help but serve as proof of the
claims that security requires measures far stronger than the
government has so far been willing to provide.

The task of blocking illegal transports is a monumental one. Whatever
their stock, whether drugs or people, the transporters are a
resourceful lot and, like their clients, not easily
discouraged.

The smugglers know-as the footage shows in wonderful detail-how to
maneuver boats packed with drugs into the part of the Rio Grande that
marks the border with Mexico, so that it can't be confiscated. The
drug traffickers' elaborate efforts at concealment bespeak enormous
ambition.

This, of course cannot defeat the incomparable powers of the dogs
trained to sniff the stuff out, as we see them do when they nose
suspiciously around an 18-wheeler packed with bales of marijuana.

In their struggle with illegal immigration, drug traffickers and
violent cartels, border agents are equipped with drones, thermal
imaging and other military-grade technology. That's hardly
surprising-and many Americans think it's little enough.

As the current battles over illegal immigration in Arizona, Texas and
other states attest, and as this series' title declares, what is
taking place at the borders of the United States is, in fact, a war.