Life on a deadly border
Two men are taken into custody by the U.S. Border Patrol near the town of Falfurrias in Brooks County, Texas - a place that has become an epicentre for illegal immigrant deaths in the state.
Sheriffs' deputies in the county found 129 bodies in 2012, six times the number recorded in 2010. Most of those who died succumbed to the punishing heat and rough terrain of south Texas ranch lands.
A member of the U.S. Border Patrol (USBP) walks past a rescue point, where people can call for help in the scrubby desert near Falfurrias. The town is part of a 17,000-square-mile USBP region known as the Rio Grande Valley sector, where Border Patrol agents are recording a rise in immigrant deaths and apprehensions.
People are taken into custody by the Border Patrol near Falfurrias. According to the USBP spokesman for the Rio Grande Valley sector, Enrique Mendiola, the number of people caught has grown as smugglers, or "coyotes," have continued to capitalise on the demand for guides into the United States.
With their wrists handcuffed together, men are taken into custody by the Border Patrol. Most immigrants pay several thousand dollars to gain passage across the border and the checkpoint south of Falfurrias.
A sign at the Falfurrias U.S. Border Patrol checkpoint shows figures of "undocumented aliens" and drugs that have been seized.
A USBP agent looks out at the treacherous desert. Each time someone finds a body, a deputy must respond to the scene, often miles from any roadway, and the justice of the peace must officially declare the person dead.
Gabriel Cantu, who has a ranch near Falfurrias, says that he has noticed an increase in the number of people crossing his property recently.
A U.S. Border Patrol agent inspects cars at the Falfurrias checkpoint.
A car filled with bales of marijuana stands with its trunk open at a police station in La Grulla, close to the Mexican border. When police tried to pull the car over, the driver led officers on a high speed pursuit, driving the vehicle into the Rio Grande river, then abandoning it and fleeing back into Mexico.
A boy runs along the shore by the boundary between the United States and Mexico, where the Rio Grande river meets the Gulf of Mexico in Brownsville, Texas.
A man sits on a couch at Casa del Migrante in Reynosa, Mexico. Casa del Migrante is a shelter that provides short-term housing, food, clothing and medical care to people who are planning to cross the border, and to those who have been deported from the United States.
A man is reflected in a mirror at the shelter, which is run by Catholic nuns.
Another man stands in a dormitory at Casa del Migrante.
Shoes and socks are left out to dry at the shelter.
A memorial cross for people who have died crossing the border stands at Casa del Migrante.
A man at the shelter is given a haircut.
A memorial stands in the desert near Falfurrias. More than 50 unidentified immigrants were buried in a cemetery at the town after dying in the heat and punishing terrain while they tried to seek new lives in the United States.
Small metal placards mark the graves of the unknown dead, generally by gender, while others simply say "bones" or "skull case."
