Al Jazeera America is taking a critical look at the controversy of immigration in the premiere of its four part docu-series “Borderland,” at a time when immigration reform is at the center of the nation’s political conversation.
In the first episode, we meet the cast of the series: Alison Melder, a 28-year-old Republican state senate aid from Arkansas, 54-year-old Washington farmer Gary Larsen, Lis-Marie Alvarado, a 28-year-old community organizer from Florida who became a United States citizen last year , 36-year-old Las Vegas fashion blogger Kishana Holland, former marine and Illinois gubernatorial write-in candidate Randy Stufflebeam and perennial hipster Alex Seel, a 31-year-old Brooklyn street photographer and artist.
This rag-tag group of strangers will spend the next four weeks together exploring the complexities of America’s immigration policy and the U.S.-Mexico border. For six people who have never seen the border in person until now, they couldn't be more entrenched on how they feel about border security and immigration.
The show starts off in the Sonoran Desert of Arizona, and things pick up quickly.
It doesn't take long for the cast's difference of opinion to flare up. In the first five minutes of the episode, the six are unknowingly taken to a morgue in the border city of Tucson, filled from wall to wall with the bodies of people who died trying to cross into the United States.
Pima County Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Gregg Hess leads them into the central holding space, where bodies are stored dozens across and six high. As the smell of dead bodies and the visual of countless "John Doe" labels set in, so did the debate over who was to blame for the massive loss of life.
"These are my people, right here. This could be my family right now," Alvarado said, choking back tears of frustration.
“This is what the law does, the law that you have here. That kills people like you see right here. I’m angry! Because all of these people shouldn’t be dead.”
Stufflebeam has a completely different take on what’s in front of him.
“This isn’t about what our country is doing, unless you’re showing that this country is so good that people have been willing to die try to make it here,” he said.
A predictable argument ensues.
Things quickly calm down as the group continues on their journey, still not fully aware of what lies ahead. As they move to the next phase – actually seeing and touching the border – you can see the self-reflection written on their foreheads. It looks as if opinions are already being challenged within the first few hours of the series.
The group is taken to meet a local sheriff who works along one of the most dangerous sections of the border in Cochise County. This is the first time any of the six have ever actually seen the border dividing the two countries.
"There it is, this is America’s fear,” said Seel.
“Whether justified or not, this is the representation of the fear."
Only about a third of the 2,000 mile border has actually been fenced off – the Sheriff points out where the fence simply ends, and the group is understandably shocked. For all the talk of securing the borders, it is a bit strange to see a massive fence just stop and give way to wide-open, sparsely patrolled land.
On their third day, the group hears from ranchers, who have gone from living along the once-peaceful border to having to fight off drug cartels, and the humanitarian organization “No More Deaths,” which leaves out water to keep immigrants crossing illegally from dying of thirst and heat exhaustion.
While these meetings have gotten the group thinking differently about immigration, nothing they’ve done so far has prepared them for what they will really be doing.
They return to the morgue, where Dr. Hess breaks them up into three groups of two, then hands each of them a file of a deceased migrant. They will retrace their journeys in an effort to better understand why they tried to cross the border.
As they set off on their separate journeys, they are confronted with the harsh realities of immigration.
It’s only been a week, and already long-held beliefs on immigration are being challenged by the harsh realities of life on the border.
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