I have crossed the border with ease more times than I can count. Nothing I have done in my life, except for the accident of being born, has given me this ability. I am the daughter of a refugee, a first-generation American. Since 2020, I have traveled along the U.S.-Mexico border, volunteering with various humanitarian aid organizations. Armed with my 8×10 large-format camera, I have seen every landscape this man-made line runs through and lived in community with those waiting for asylum in shelters in Mexico.
I have seen every landscape this man-made line runs through and lived in community with those waiting for asylum in shelters in Mexico.
Many people who migrate have been forced to leave their homes because of gang violence and political persecution, extortion and threats. When they arrive at the border of the United States, they find that asylum is no longer an option due to an executive order on “Securing Our Borders,” implemented on Jan. 20, 2025. Families cannot return to the homes they fled, yet they have nowhere else to go.
I think about the faces of the mothers I have befriended in shelters in Nogales. Blanca. Chelo. Sara. I think about their children, the way they would paint in the art classes the shelter offered. Brows knitted in concentration, they created landscapes, night skies, flowers for their mothers. Sometimes they painted families crossing the desert. I remember one boy who made a painting of a family walking through the desert: Jesus is walking past them, carrying the cross, and they hand Jesus their only bottle of water. The number-one cause of death for people migrating through the Sonoran Desert is dehydration. Water is life — even children understand that.
And yet grown men, filming themselves for their social media accounts, will vandalize, shoot at and dump out the water left in the desert for people who are migrating. A representative from Humane Borders said in March that the water stations the group leaves in the desert have been vandalized at least once a week since President Donald Trump took office.
Water is life — even children understand that.
Nogales, Sonora, México, 2022; Julio and Fernando, Kino Border Initiative, Nogales, Sonora, Mexico; Julio y Fernando, Iniciativa Kino para la Frontera, Nogales, Sonora, México, 2022; Maichol, Kino Border Initiative, Nogales, Sonora, Mexico; Maichol, Iniciativa Kino para la Frontera, Nogales, Sonora, México, 2023; Hansel, Roman, Alan, and Sara, Kino Border Initiative, Nogales, Sonora, Mexico; Hansel, Roman, Alan, y Sara, Iniciativa Kino para la Frontera, Nogales, Sonora, México, 2023. Lisa Elmaleh
Without a legal pathway to asylum, the only other option is to attempt to cross the desert. During Title 42, the COVID-19 era provision that halted asylum long after lockdowns were lifted, I went on a search in the Sonoran Desert with the nonprofit group Aguilas del Desierto. This was in November 2022. We found seven sets of human remains in one day. One of them belonged to a young boy, his bones still entangled in his pants and shoes. He was about the same age as the boy who painted the picture.
Humanitarian Aid Organizations that Work along the U.S.-Mexico Border
As a documentarian, my intent is to communicate the necessity for compassion. The large-format camera I use is entirely relevant to this: The time it takes to set up and make a photograph allows for conversation and collaboration with the person, or people, in front of my camera. The media continues to churn out sensationalized and dehumanizing narratives, reducing migration to spectacle and politics. The work I do stands in opposition to this narrative. It is an act of witness — a way to affirm the dignity, humanity and resilience of those caught in an unrelenting cycle of forced migration, punitive detention and deportation.
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This article appeared in the June 2025 print edition of the magazine with the headline “Tierra Prometida.”
