The Border Crossed Us

Intimate, meditative and suspenseful look inside the fight against human traffickers in de border region between Texas and Mexico. Local US police are entangled in a seemingly never-ending cat-and-mouse game. As one of them says: ‘The impact of stopping somebody makes you doubt sometimes: is this all working?’  
 
While a big white surveillance blimp constantly hovers over the small border town of La Joya, Texas, local police officers patrol the neighbourhood looking for human smugglers. The region is littered with traces of people who have attempted to get into the US by crossing the Rio Grande. But rather than arresting the immigrants, the officers are gathering intelligence on the smugglers and smuggling bosses tied to Mexican cartels.  
 
With a visual style that alternates between intimate verité moments, meditative reflection and suspenseful sequences, the film tells the story of Chief Ramon Gonzalez, detective Manuel Casas and officer Mayra Garza, as they navigate the complexities of their existence on the border. As irony would have it, the area they are patrolling was once Mexican national territory.