Border Work: Photographs by Alice Myers

About

Along the USA- Mexico border an average of 1,500 people are expelled every day through border towns. They are deported because they were found to be without papers. The majority are apprehended while attempting to cross into the United States through the desert but a growing number have lived in the United States for years and are now separated from family and friends. Nogales is one town used for expulsion. In the bus station people congregate while they figure out what to do next. Many are waiting to have money wired to them so they can travel to family and friends in other towns. Some are waiting to get their belongings back from the border control. Some are waiting to find a way to be reunited with family in the USA. Everybody wants to leave but nothing happens quickly here. Alice Myers is an Edinburgh based photographer interested in the stories people tell and the contradictions and complexities that form our sense of place as something beyond geographical location. She worked on this series while volunteering with No More Deaths, an organization that provides humanitarian relief for deported migrants and works to prevent the deaths of people crossing the border from Mexico to the USA.