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Death on the United States/Mexico border is never pretty. Migrants are thrown from the back of trucks, drown in rivers, suffocate in the back of trailers or are abandoned in the desert. Since the advent of Operation Gatekeeper in 1994, the journey from Mexico to the United States for Latino migrants has become increasingly treacherous, expensive and deadly...Former President Bill Clinton championed Gatekeeper as a means to close access to the United States by creating layers of physical barriers that would force potential migrants into the harsher desert areas. The program's intent was to deter potential migrants from crossing illegally into the United States. To many policy makers the idea seemed reasonable. In practice, though, it has only shifted the migrant population into more remote and dangerous areas and increased the overall number deaths. .During the past decade, millions of Mexican and Central American migrants have left their homes and families, faced death on the journey to the United States and lived under the specter of criminality once in this country. Despite these obstacles, these resilient immigrants are transforming American culture and posing fundamental questions of justice, citizenship, and labor to the country. (KEYSTONE/NOOR/jon lowenstein)