Forbidding terrain and foreboding feelings at remote border crossing

Antelope Wells is 170 miles southwest of El Paso, a three-hour drive through forbidding terrain, where stray dogs and deadly snakes roam and where even the water in wells can prove poisonous. It’s at the southernmost tip of New Mexico known as the Bootheel. Once you leave Interstate 10 for the last half of the drive to Antelope Wells, civilization dwindles.

Last month, Jakelin Caal Maquin, a 7-year-old Guatemalan girl crossed the border here with her father and a group of migrants after a bus dropped them on a similarly isolated stretch of north Mexican highway. After they turned themselves in to seek asylum, Border Patrol agents were driving them to the closest station eight hours later when Jakelin fell ill. Shortly after being flown from there to an El Paso hospital, about 27 hours after the crossing, Jakelin had a heart attack and died.

Critics of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown say the case illustrates the dangers of funneling migrants toward harsher, more dangerous crossings, and question whether agents were negligent. President Trump has blamed immigration policies shaped by Democrats and also Jakelin’s father for placing her at risk, stoking fears of a border crisis that he repeatedly says necessitates a wall.

A drive down the desolate road Jakelin traveled from this desert crossing makes clear both how harsh the landscape can be, and how fear of a border crisis continues to spread.

https://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-antelope-wells-nm-20190107-story.html