Borderland: The Line Within is a 2024 documentary directed by veteran filmmaker Pamela Yates, which delves into the human and systemic impact of US immigration policies and border militarization.

The film is an incisive exploration of the “border industrial complex,” a term used to describe the profitable systems, worth billions of dollars annually, built around capturing, incarcerating and deporting immigrants. Through personal narratives and investigative footage, the documentary sheds light on the human impact of these policies while giving voice to some of those opposing them.

Borderland opens by presenting the work of  three “digital humanists” who, in the words of the film’s production notes, have:

scraped the web to produce an exposé of the brutal multi-billion dollar apparatus of the border industrial complex which they posted online as Torn Apart/Separados.

The central protagonists of Borderland ​​are Gabriela Castañeda and Kaxh Mura’l. Castañeda grew up in the Juarez Valley in Mexico, moving to El Paso when she was 15. Mura’l was raised in a Mayan community in the highlands of Guatemala, a country in which US-supported right-wing death squads killed tens of thousands, opening up the country to international companies coming in to extract minerals out of the ground.

“The meaning of the title Borderland: The Line Within is at the heart of the film.” asserts director Yates. “The border is not geographical line, but rather a vast border industrial complex entrenched in every corner of the U.S. It is inside each and every undocumented person because wherever they may be, the fear of being discovered and deported is looming, yet in the shadow of the border industrial complex, they are quietly creating networks and building power.”

The film highlights the devastating impact of US border policies on individuals and families. It portrays the struggles of migrants like Kaxh, a Mayan activist fleeing death threats in Guatemala, introducing the concept of climate refugees, and Gabriela, an undocumented mother whose DACA status was revoked due to her activism. Their stories emphasize the emotional and physical toll of stringent immigration enforcement. In the case of Gabriela, the father of her three children was deported to Mexico.

Yates emphasizes close-ups of individuals that capture important emotions—fear, hope and resilience in particular. This “geography of the human face” underscores the personal impact of systemic injustice. ​​Mura’l details the anger his 11-year-old daughter carries with her in his absence. If the human cost isn’t sufficiently communicated by other means, the image of a human skull resting among purple wildflowers in one of the most dangerous areas in the country is jarring.

One particularly striking scene shows border agents emptying water containers left by humanitarian groups in the desert. The sight of agents laughing as they kick over life-saving supplies in the harsh desert environment emphasizes the cruelty of these practices.

By opening with digital maps illustrating the border’s expansive reach, the film visualizes how enforcement policies permeate daily life for undocumented families. The maps reflect a synthesis of geographic and demographic insights to critique systemic oppression.

One of the maps, for example, reveals the “Cumulative ICE awards since 2014 to contractors by congressional district.”

It is worth noting in passing that those same researchers on their website report that:

While the sheer volume of money poured into ICE operations and its startling increase over time is enough of a story, we found other stories hidden in the data. Quantities of goods and services that support detention, enforcement, and deportation are overwhelming. Mundane awards for toilet paper, spray cleaner, and lotion are juxtaposed with carceral technologies: armored vehicles, body armor, and tasers. Ordinary goods and services that bespeak the banality of evil can be overshadowed by unfathomable sums spent on titans of the prison industry now in the immigrant detention game: $438,379,354.01 to GEO Group, $120,431,609.32 to MVM, and $151,008,676.20 to CoreCivic (formerly Corrections Corporation of America) in 2018 alone.

Yates observes that the researchers “bring us what’s actually going on with this money, these billions of dollars that are being spent on the back of the suffering of immigrants in our country.”

One of the “digital humanists,” Alex Gil, asks provocatively: “What if we knew the infrastructure that Hitler was building before World War II? What would we do with that knowledge?”

In an interview with Democracy Now! last September, Gabriela Castañeda denounced both Republicans and Democrats:

What we are hearing not only from President Trump, that he’s going to deport us and he’s been preparing this massive deportation apparatus, we’re also hearing it from Kamala Harris, in the terms that she is also not speaking in regards to immigration as something really good. She’s trying to say to the world that “I can be as tough as any other Republican.” And that is problematic, because we have both parties failing the people here in the United States.

Castañeda went on to point out that:

immigrants are used as scapegoats. We are blamed for all the problems in the United States. We are bombarded daily with the false and immoral idea that if there are no jobs or decent wages or access to free medical care or decent housing, it’s because of immigrants. We went from being rapists and criminals to now eating pets in Springfield [Ohio], which is obviously not true.

After commenting that the US had one of the most militarized borders in the world, she added that the authorities were deploying Black Hawk helicopters against immigrants, which “are used for wars. We have cameras, sensors, walls, more boots on the ground. And we just learned that the 2024 budget to protect the border is $25 billion.”

This is not an attack only on immigrants,” Castañeda insisted, “this is an attack on every poor people living in this country, because while they’re using this money to protect us from who they think is the enemy, which is the immigrant, that money is not being used to improve our schools or infrastructure, public transportation.” ​​And so,” she continued, “we need to understand that the problem of the immigrant is the problem of the white poor people and the Black poor people and that we need to come together to fight so that those needs become rights.”

Director Yates argues: “The Line Within is a critique of my country’s inhumane treatment of people arriving in the U.S. It’s about the use of immigration as a gateway to fascist ideology and political power. I’ve been making films internationally for the past 20 years but feel it is important to have a critique of my own country.” Yates has made several films about crimes committed by the authorities and the military in Guatemala and Peru.

Cinematographer Juan Hernández, captures the “majesty and terror” (Yates) of the landscape. David Fournier Castillo is the sound recordist and Sara Curruchich composed the score.

The frontal assault on immigrant workers highlighted here is the spearhead of a broader war on the working class and the dismantling of democratic rights.

The WSWS explained April 8:

In anticipation of imprisoning hundreds of thousands of people in concentration camps, last week ICE submitted requests for private contractors to supply $45 billion worth of detention facilities, security guards, transportation and other services. A review of the contract requests by the Times found that if all the ICE requests were funded, it would “represent more than a sixfold increase in spending to detain immigrants.”…
Conditions inside the mostly privately run migrant prisons were already deadly before Trump returned to the White House. At least 26 people died in ICE custody during the Biden administration, including 12 during his last year in office. In 2022, Customs and Border Protection reported that 52 people died in its custody.

Whatever Yates’ political perspective may be, and she speaks of “contributing” to the “national conversation about immigration,” the material here is devastating. Anyone paying serious attention will conclude that the fight to dismantle the “border industrial complex” and defeat dictatorship is inseparable from a struggle against the system that produces them—capitalism.