My Understanding of the Border and The Devil's Highway

My understanding of the border between the United States and Mexico was very uninformed before reading some of these novels.  I knew that there was a wall but I actually thought it was across the whole border.  I knew there was a wall because I have been to the El Paso/Juarez border.  I did not expect what I saw.  There was a wall and a lot of border patrol all around it.  To get through it, there was a place to drive through that was like a toll booth.  On either side of it, there were cement barriers that created a small maze to drive through.  Someone said they change the formation at least every other month so that no one can memorize its formation and try to drive through it.  I knew that the border was an extreme place of trying to only let certain people in certain places.  But I didn’t realize the extremity until I saw it.  Then, I learned so much more from the novels.  It may have been something most people knew, but I didn’t know that there was only a physical wall on part of the border.  I didn’t know of the parts with sensors.  I also didn’t know that some people crossed more than once illegally. 

The thing that had the most impact on my view of the border was the book The Devil’s Highway. The way that Urrea describes the experience of crossing the desert, suffering and dying from the heat, and trying to find your way through it, and simply trying to survive changes a lot in how I think.  I cannot believe the things people are willing to go through to come to the United States.  People are willing to give up everything they have, try to cross a desert, to come to a place where they are judged and oppressed because of legal status and yet that is still their dream. 

The way in which Urrea describes the desert made it that much more real for me.  His use of language and descriptive words made it easy to relate to even though I have never had the experience.  I feel as though I had just a small taste of what it is like to go through that type of experience.  What I don’t understand is how nothing is being done to minimize the deaths in this desert.  Yes, I understand that technically they are people trying to come to the states illegally.  However, they are still humans.  How right is it to let them die trying to get here rather than doing something to save some lives?  Now, I understand that the wall and the sensor areas a very separating.  However, I would rather see a wall causing less people to go through the desert and die than people being stranded, having their organs harvested, being raped, or anything of the sort happen.