The men and the boys scanned the Mexican desert from the shade of a tree. They walked down a hill toward the border wall to pick up water, socks and rosaries. The heat hit hard and the men and the boys, who had been on foot for months, blended in with scrub brush and cactus, keeping an eye on the cartel gunmen camped on a ridge beneath a blue sky where vultures circled.

“We came from Guatemala,” said a sturdy man with a gold tooth stopping a few feet from American soil. “I want to work over there at whatever I can.”

“Make sure you wear socks or you’ll get blisters,” Alma Schlor, a volunteer with Tucson Samaritans, told one of the boys, handing him a rosary and a pair of sneakers across a low spot in the wall. The migrants thanked the Samaritans and returned to the shade, passing scattered pieces of identities dropped by those who had come before, passports, licenses and phone numbers from Nepal, Cameroon, Brazil, India and other distant places.

They would wait under the tree on a late September day until a smuggler led them to a gap in the wall, where 70 miles of arid terrain stretched between them and Tucson. Crosses marked the land for those who didn’t make it. The men and boys knew this, but they had come this far and there was no stomach for turning back, even as Schlor worried that the kid with the new sneakers, who was only 13, would grow weak and get left behind.

Such scenes play out daily along the border and often go unnoticed, yet the more than 11 million undocumented people in the U.S. are at the volatile center of the November election.

The number of migrant apprehensions and other encounters with Border Patrol agents at the southwestern border has fallen sharply — from nearly 250,000 in December to 58,000 in August — since President Biden’s crackdown on asylum seekers in June. Over that same period, the monthly number of encounters with migrants from Guatemala fell 81% — from 34,693 to 6,420 — and there was a 76% drop — from 18,993 to 4,465 — with those from Honduras, according to an analysis by the Pew Research Center. But decades of failed policies and Donald Trump’s incendiary rhetoric against migrants have kept the issue a top priority for voters and forced Vice President Kamala Harris to take a tougher stand on immigration.

A drive with Tucson Samaritans along 21 miles of the rust-colored, slatted border wall in Arizona highlights the economic, political and human complexities in stopping a flow of people at a time when climate change, authoritarianism and economic uncertainty grip much of the globe.

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Immigration animates the American conversation on schools, jobs, crime, housing and the cost of healthcare. It is an unsteady balance of compassion, the nation’s economic needs and bipartisan calls for stricter regulations often distorted by weaponized statistics and divisive politics. For men such as Jim Chilton, whose 50,000-acre cattle ranch runs near the Arizona border, it’s a matter of security: “We need to finish the border wall,” he said. “Our nation is built on immigrants. We need them. But we have to have legally accepted ones, not people coming in and saying, ‘I’m here. Process me.’

At the border west of Nogales, Ariz., rancher Jim Chilton points to the dirt roads that Mexican traffickers use to transport drugs right to the U.S. boundary.

(Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)

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“There’s some really bad guys coming onto our ranch,” he continued. They’re packing drugs [fentanyl] and guns. I don’t like it. They’re coming to poison our country.”

Chilton’s concerns resound in this critical battleground state. Joe Biden won here by fewer than 11,000 votes in 2020. Although border encounters have fallen across the country, they remained persistent here over much of the last year, rising about 40% in the Tucson region to roughly 450,000. Those figures have dropped significantly in recent months but furor over immigration has led to a November referendum, known as Proposition 314, that would allow Arizona officials to arrest and deport undocumented migrants.

“The migrants coming illegally are a slap in the face to those who came the right way,” said Strahan Branower, who runs a tattoo shop in Pinal County, where Trump won 58% of the vote in the last election. “In one breath we’re saying don’t come illegally and in the next we’re giving them money and jobs when they get here. I agree with Trump 100% on this. Cut the money off. Get rid of a lot of them, especially if Venezuela is emptying their prisons and they’re coming here.”

At the height of the migrant influx last year, up to 1,500 asylum seekers a day passed through Tucson, whose network of churches and nonprofits helped provide temporary shelter and supplies. Mayor Regina Romero said the U.S. “immigration system is completely broken. The House and Senate need to fix it.” A Democrat and daughter of immigrant farmworkers from Mexico, Romero said that Trump and Republicans have turned immigration into a “wedge issue” while “spewing lies” about migrants with “cruel and dehumanizing” language.

Tucson Mayor Regina Romero said that Donald Trump and Republicans have turned immigration into a “wedge issue.” Above, she speaks at the state Capitol in Phoenix in 2023.

(Matt York / Associated Press)

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“We’re here on the ground and we see it [immigration] firsthand,” said Romero, adding that the city would probably take legal action to block Proposition 314 if it passed. The measure, she added, would cut into municipal budgets and essentially turn local law enforcement into untrained Border Patrol guards. “I will not allow for our city’s taxpayer funds to go for something the federal government is responsible for.”

Washington’s approach to immigration appears certain to change with this election. Trump has vowed to deport millions of undocumented migrants, calling many of them rapists, vermin and murderers. Harris has promised to tighten border regulations, hire more federal agents and add restrictions to Biden’s asylum order.

“It’s an unsolvable issue,” said Nicholas Matthews, 24, a Tucson Samaritan who has opened his apartment to asylum seekers. “The U.S. has a 2,000-mile border with Mexico. We need more asylum judges to process cases faster. People are waiting three and four years, and the geography of where they’re coming from is changing. The majority of people we’ve been seeing are Africans. We’re having to speak French instead of Spanish.”

Nicholas Matthews, a Tucson Samaritan who has opened his apartment to asylum seekers, looks over passports and other forms of identification left at the Arizona-Mexico border by migrants who have crossed into the U.S.

(Jeffrey Fleishman / Los Angeles Times)

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“I’ve met people from 40 countries,” said Gail Kocourek, 73, another Samaritan who has been helping migrants along the border near Sasabe for more than a decade. “The numbers of people crossing are way down. Today, we had only three crossings overnight. The word is spreading about Biden’s policy. But one day in November, I made 528 peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for migrants. I never want to see peanut butter again.”

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The road along the U.S. side of the 30-foot border wall here rises and falls like waves in a sea, unspooling past thicket, saguaro and washes left dry with no rain. In the shadow of the tribal lands near the Baboquivari mountains, the Samaritans understand the intricacies of the geography. They keep abreast of the cartel violence on the Mexico side of Sasabe. They have been harassed on the U.S. side by vigilantes carrying cameras and rifles. The Samaritans know the moods of Border Patrol agents and the humor of a welder who fixes breaks in the wall. They leave water, food and supplies, stocking a few tents with blankets for cold nights.

“The people we run into down here are a good reflection of America’s politics,” said Matthews, an environmental scientist, who wore a ball cap as the temperature rose to 105 degrees. He piloted the Samaritans’ battered SUV while Kocourek, who was a hospital candy striper when she was a girl, pointed out rock formations and changes to the landscape.

“The asylum laws are bringing the numbers down, but they’ll go up again,” Matthews continued. “I’ve had three men who lived with me from Chad, Mauritania and Ecuador. The one from Chad was tortured by the government and his father was killed. They face cultural shock when they come here, particularly the role women play in society. It’s hard for them to assimilate.”

Tucson Samaritans, from left, Miranda Haley, Gail Kocourek and Nicholas Matthews look over abandoned documents. One passport told the yearlong journey of a man from Nepal who traveled to the United Arab Emirates, Nigeria, Brazil and Mexico before ending up at the border.

(Jeffrey Fleishman / Los Angeles Times)

“Yes, culturally it’s difficult,” said Kocourek, who was doxxed two years ago by a QAnon follower who chased her in a car and harassed her near the border, claiming she worked for the cartels. “I talked to a guy from Nepal who crossed. It took him two years to get here. He friended me on Facebook. Wouldn’t you do anything you could to make a better life for your family?”

Butterflies lifted in the dust. A lone rope dangled from the border wall.

“It’s hot,” Kocourek said. “Look at the ravens. Their beaks are open.”

Matthews navigated the SUV around a road crew and stopped. Miranda Haley, who wore pigtails and a long-sleeve shirt to protect her from the sun, got out and pushed a jug of water through an opening in the wall. She hasn’t told her parents she volunteers with the Samaritans. Her family has lived in Georgia, she said, since before the American Revolution. “They support Donald Trump. They wouldn’t understand what I do,” Haley, 41, a mother and writer. “My dad would be mad, and he’d be worried.”

“There goes a roadrunner,” said Kocourek, pointing to a flash in the brush. “We saw a badger and a fox the other day.”

The Samaritans occasionally run into Chilton. They are on different sides politically but the 85-year-old rancher has witnessed all variations of America’s immigration story. He said 5,640 migrants crossed his property — much of which is leased from the U.S. Forest Service — in April: “Most of them generally walk west, looking to be apprehended so they can be processed and released into the country. The more troubling are the guys dressed in camouflage. Border Patrol told me 20% are packing drugs and some are MS-13 gang members.”

According to government officials, most of the drugs, including fentanyl, smuggled into the U.S. along the southern border pass through legal ports of entry, and much of the trafficking is done by American citizens. But Republicans have pointed to statistics from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement showing that there are more than 425,000 noncitizen convicted criminals in the the country who entered illegally over the last four decades and are not in ICE custody. Many are in federal, state and local prisons.

Chilton said armed men once came to his home and asked for a ride to Tucson. His wife was frightened and said no. She made them lunch, and they went on their way. “Yesterday,” he said, “I ran into a group that ran away and another bunch of guys with rifles. It’s dangerous out there. Thirty-five have died on my ranch over the last few years. One of my cowboys was riding along this April and came across a body separated from its head.”

Jim Chilton carries a rifle on his property. He says he has encountered drug smugglers along the border west of Nogales, Ariz., and hopes the wall will be finished and backed up by U.S. Border Patrol agents and electronic monitoring.

(Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)

The fifth-generation rancher and his wife, Sue, spoke at the Republican National Convention in July. She wore a skirt and a black top, and he had on a cowboy hat and a blue tie. “It looks like and it feels like an invasion because it is,” he told the crowd to applause. “We know firsthand that Biden’s open border is our greatest national security threat.”

Chilton often patrols his ranch, driving with a gun over skeins of dirt roads. He said he wants Trump elected and the wall finished. But there is a human question too, a reality that a man has to persevere when nature turns harsh and the desperate arrive. He has set up 29 drinking fountains on his land so fewer migrants will die of dehydration. They keep coming, he said, but he has a ranch to run.

“You live day by day,” he said. “We have to take care of our cattle and do our job.”

At a break in the border wall not far from Chilton’s property, the Samaritans called out to the men and the boys waiting in the late morning shade on the Mexico side. They came down the hill and collected supplies the volunteers offered. The sun seared, the water jugs were warm. The men and the boys didn’t talk long. They left and returned to the hillside in a slow ragged line. Matthews and Haley reached into the brush, collecting abandoned documents, including a passport whose stamps told the yearlong journey of a man from Nepal who traveled to the United Arab Emirates, Nigeria, Brazil and Mexico before he ended up at the wall.

“The whole dynamic is changing,” Matthews said. “From November to February we’d find 100 to 300 people a day in the desert. It was crazy. … I’ve met people from China to Yemen, from all over Africa to Eastern Europe. Now, it’s about an average of below 60 a day.”

Nicholas Matthews speaks with young men and boys from Central America who are seeking to cross the Mexican border into the U.S.

(Jeffrey Fleishman / Los Angeles Times)

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The Nepali probably crossed into the U.S. He had left his passport in the dirt, as if shedding one life for another. The men and the boys on the hill might do the same when it was time to go. They waited as the cartel gunmen, who control this land, watched from the ridge above. The Samaritans got into the SUV and headed back along the wall toward Sasabe. They tidied up a small camp, spotted ash from a few fires and checked to see whether vigilantes shot holes in water barrels. Kocourek put out food for a cat, but the feline hadn’t been seen in a while and she figured it had disappeared or was dead.

Schlor said she worried about the 13-year-old boy traveling with the men. He looked frail.

“I don’t like to think about it,” Kocourek said.

Since 2000, at least 3,977 undocumented migrants have died attempting to cross the southern Arizona desert, according to the Pima County Office of the Medical Examiner.

The Samaritans passed a small shrine to St. Jude — the patron saint of lost causes — on the Mexico side. They drove through Sasabe and headed to a mountaintop. A National Guardsman at an outpost scanned the terrain with electronic surveillance cameras. The border wall stretched out like a snake slithering up and down hills to the horizon. Dusk was not far off.

Kocourek said it was good to come up here, to see from this height the vast expanse, its beauty, cruelty and danger, the way the light moves.

“It gives you perspective,” she said.

Schlor had earlier handed the men and the boys rosaries that glow in the dark, telling them to hide them under their shirts at night so they wouldn’t be seen in the desert. It was a small gesture, but to her an important one, and it kept her coming out here along the wall. The Samaritans drove to Tucson, passing crosses left to remember the migrants who didn’t make it.