The Texas checkpoint that forces migrants into dangerous terrain – and death

New documentary Missing in Brooks County looks at Falfurrias, one of the busiest immigration checkpoints in the US and the growing number of deaths plaguing the nation's border region

Just off US highway 281, south of a spit of a town called Encino in Brooks county, there's a cross made of wind-strewn flowers tied to a utility pole marking the spot where 10 undocumented migrants were killed last month when the speeding van carrying them crashed. The makeshift shrine on a stretch of the highway deep in south Texas also contains some candles, a pair of work boots and a small Mexican flag. All mark what is suspected to be an extreme example of the collateral damage that results from securing our international borders. Law enforcement speculate that the inhabitants of the van were to be dropped off to traverse dangerous, snake-infested backcountry and circumvent a US Customs and Border Protection checkpoint located a few miles north of the accident site.

The immigration checkpoint is called the Falfurrias border patrol station, which leads out of the busiest of the immigration agency's 20 sectors along both the Canadian and Mexican borders with the US. Its function is to interdict smugglers and drug traffickers. This landmark is at the center of Missing in Brooks County, a new documentary that details the growing number of deaths plaguing the nation's border with Mexico and the logistical challenges in identifying even a single migrant among many hundreds who die annually.