In northern Mexico, I interviewed and spent a long afternoon with a man who, after living for almost four decades in Los Angeles, where his whole family still resided, tried crossing the desert to reunite with them after being caught up in an immigration raid. He was caught by the Border Patrol, pushed into the back of a truck ("dog-catchers," they sometimes call them), where, after the truck slipped off the road and flipped, the man broke his back—luckily avoiding serious spinal damage. Border Patrol agents gave him a back brace and a bottle of pain pills, and then swiftly deported him. I remember him shaking his pill bottle like a maraca, somehow finding the strength to joke about the pain waiting for him after he'd swallow the last of the pills. Less than a week later, still planning his next move, he died. The cause of death was deemed a heart attack, though it's hard to imagine the stress and the recent severe injury weren't a factor. I spoke with his daughter in LA a few days later: she wanted to hear about her father's last days. I didn't have much to report, but explained that despite his intense pain and confusion, he was exceedingly polite with me, and that he lamented the fact that he had no money treat me to a Coke.

— Case for Open Borders by John Washington (Page 199)