Border Film Project

Sixty miles across the Mexican border, at the end of a long dusty road, there's a small dusty city called Altar.

Altar is last-stop shopping for migrants looking to cross into America illegally. Backpacks are sold in just about every shop.

Behind this tortilla factory there is a hostel where Steve Hartman found about a dozen migrants getting their last "comfortable" night's sleep...

...if you consider sleeping on a wooden platform "comfortable."

One of the people who caught Steve's eye was a 15-year-old girl named Wendy. She and her mother had come by bus from Guatemala and were on their way to Washington D.C., where Wendy's father has been living for the past four years.

Wendy was looking forward to seeing her dad. But to be perfectly honest, she and her mother were ill-prepared for the journey that lay ahead.

It typically takes two to four days to cross the desert, yet all Wendy had was an extra shirt, 2 extra pairs of socks, half a roll of toilet paper, and a couple of plastic garbage bags that she said she would use as jackets if it got cold or rainy.

After meeting Wendy and her mom, Steve went to visit Father Peraza Garcia. Fr. Garcia is a Catholic priest who runs a mission in Altar. The mission feeds, clothes and prepares migrants for crossing the border.

Business is good (although not quite as good as McDonalds).

Fr. Garcia says migrants often think they can just cross into America without a problem. Even though many know someone who has made the journey before, he says they all seem to think it's going to be much easier than it really is.

That's partly why he says he cooperated with the Border Film Project. The project gave disposable cameras to migrants in an effort to capture, for the first time, the reality of border life. Fr. Garcia helped distribute about 600 cameras with stamped, self-addressed return envelopes to migrants who passed through Altar.

The project also gave disposable cameras to civilian border patrol volunteers called Minutemen. The result is now a traveling photo exhibit showing the border like we've never seen it before.

This is a picture from a migrant's camera. It is a border patrol helicopter. It was the last shot on the roll. We can only assume whoever took the picture got deported shortly after.

Wendy was scared to death the same thing would happen to her. But she said she missed her father too much to not at least try. Her mother said they'd call and let Steve know if they made it into America or not. But as of yet, he hasn't heard from them.