BORDERLINE CHAOS

America’s broken immigration system has spawned a national fight, but Congress lacks the will to fix it.

- DEXTER FILKINS

Earlier this year, in a helicopter above the Mexican border, a team of Texas state troopers searched for people crossing into the United States. As they flew over a neighborhood west of El Paso, the radio crackled with the voices of Border Patrol agents on the ground below, calling out migrants who were evading them.

“We got four bodies headed north.”

“Five out in the northeast quadrant.”

“Behind you—six bodies.”

While people fled across the landscape, the troopers in the helicopter tracked them and passed their locations to the Border Patrol agents, who raced after them in trucks. “I got ten bodies to the southwest,” Captain German Chavez, the pilot, said into his radio. “There’s two,” he announced, maneuvering the helicopter above a row of houses, then said, “I lost them.”

All day, groups of migrants rushed to find cover, while federal agents fanned out after them. By nightfall, dozens had been apprehended. But, Chavez said, “for every five or six groups we see, we’ll get one or two—if we’re fast enough.”

The team in the helicopter had been dispatched as part of a campaign to stanch the flow of migrants, who have crossed the border in record numbers in the past two years. The following afternoon, Chavez was flying across the West Texas scrubland when the Border Patrol called again, to report that about a thousand migrants were charging the border at the edge of El Paso. “We need your help,” the agent said.