What's that under your nose? It's a border; Made you look.

The Yuma 14 died, but they obviously did not believe that they would, not until their situation became desperate. Logical, yes, but plenty of people are ignorant of the ax overhead. The coyotes leading them, meanwhile, were aware that the desert was something dangerous, but they were overconfident despite their incompetence because of their greed and their machismo. They were rather apathetic about their charges; They were "bad shepherds."
Everyone involved was trying to bust through some sort of financial ceiling that existed for them in their hometown. The coyotes, cleverly, actually made steady money by providing a service to the people who were willing to risk more than may seem sane. But the prospects portrayed by the coyote's middle man, Don Moi, were grand and potential clients were assured the risks were manageable...supposing you're manly enough (Urrea 49). And of course you would be manly enough just by being daring. Or so the broken logic seems to go. But this ain't Hollywood...not unless it's "The Treasure Of The Sierra Madre." Regardless of whether or not one believes in acknowledging a national or political border, the physical boundary of the desert should always be respected. The United States government might jail you or deport you for your audacity, but Mother Nature will kill you.

For too long, none of them wanted to give up, even though giving up meant survival. Granted, the promise to provide emergency care was sort of a trap, but it wasn't a lie. All the border crossers would be giving up was their potential life in the USA, which was a better option than losing the lives they had. Actually, they would have only been giving up their chance to die horribly and be made some sort of idolized characters. Sounds like a deal to me.

A national border serves to keep out people, groups, corporate entities, etcetera that do not adhere to the laws of the land, or do not share a common history with the inhabitants, or do not strive for the same collaborative goals, or do not hold the same values, or do not use the same language, or do not make the currently occupying group more prosperous, and so on. Is it then a recurring device of self-centeredness? In this case, the national border was in the same place as a physical boundary, but what if the national border was farther away from such a deadly environment? Would that demonstrate a greater openness to immigration? Was the border laid at the boundary to have nature do the dirty work of enforcement, or did the border stop at the boundary because the boundary wasn't worth "bridging"? The Border Patrol emphasized that they saved lives with every capture (http://sensoryoverload.typepad.com/sensory_overload/2004/05/the_yuma_14_aut.html). The Border Patrol agents will attempt to bring a walker in the desert back from the brink of death if they find them, giving the would-be border crossers water and trying to cool them down with air-conditioning in a vehicle headed for the nearest hospital (Urrea 124). While the Border Patrol are not international bridge-builders, it seems evident that being around the border constantly has created a bridge between them and the other people they find in the desert. They develop their own peculiar brand of sympathy despite the professional boundary established by their duty to apprehend anyone who attempts to enter the USA illegally. It is not a sympathy expressed in a deluge of words, but it exists nonetheless (Urrea 133-134). They recognize that the people they track and send back to Mexico are just people, which is the first footing laid down for building an interpersonal bridge. Perhaps a few years from now will show the Migra crossing borders themselves.