Korin Anderson

Associate Producer, NGT

There were some very sketchy happenings on the street today. We are getting the feeling that someone is watching us very carefully. While I was walking down the street with our assistant cameraman, a man approached us and said “I hear you are staying in the Altar Inn.” We were both a little baffled because we didn’t remember meeting this man before. David tried to divert him and claimed that we couldn’t really remember the name of our hotel…it was somewhere over there, on the edge of town. But the man assured us that he knew exactly where we were staying. He wasn’t threatening us but he was letting us know that our actions are not going unnoticed. Today we learned that most of the industry in Altar is controlled by one person who somehow is involved in virtually every step of the migrants’ journey. Almost everyone who is attempting to cross takes a van from Altar to the edge of the U.S., a town called Sasebe that is right at the border. This van must travel up a private toll road that is owned by this same person. We were eager to travel in a van so we could film the very start of the migrants’ journey. The priest had helped us to find a van driver who might be willing to let us take a trip with him. Unfortunately our plans fell through and we were unable to make van journey. It was disappointing to not be able to film that part of the trip. David and I did manage to take some excellent still photos of a van being loaded on a side street in Altar. We were outside watching our gear while the other crew filmed an interview inside (and of course we grabbed a little excellent Mexican ice cream from a darling street vendor)--as we were sitting there we watched as person after person climbed into a van with “Altar – Sasebe” painted on the window. It seemed pretty clear what they were up to. We had heard that they packed 20 – 30 people into a stripped down 15-passenger van, but I still couldn’t believe how many people fit inside and drove off into the dust. Despite the sense of lurking danger our trip to Altar was successful and informative, and gave us the opportunity to meet some truly lovely people. The priest invited us to film a service in the local church especially for migrants, blessing them as they head northward. The church was packed with hopeful people who had shared a few days of their lives with us.