The Global Crisis That No Border Crackdown Can Fix

Photojournalist Go Nakamura witnessed desperation and determination in the border deserts of California and Arizona during reporting trips in November, December, and April, and captured how the US-Mexico border has become one site of an ongoing global crisis. The UN’s refugee agency estimates that nearly 40 million refugees and asylum seekers were displaced from their home countries as of April, which would break records set since the organization’s founding in 1950. While most of these people are living in refugee camps or on the margins of society in countries that are often struggling themselves, an increasing number are seeking a new life in America.

Twenty years ago, the typical person crossing the US-Mexico border illegally—the one federal border policy was designed to catch—was a Mexican adult, traveling alone to find under-the-table work. But after the Great Recession, the demographics shifted: more Central Americans, more families, often seeking out border agents to ask for asylum. And in the last half decade, with new smuggling routes and lightning-fast social media word of mouth, it has shifted again. In 2023, the majority of people apprehended by US Border Patrol came from countries other than Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador.