Southern Pacific train, SP1275, at station with Mexican workers looking out of window
Creator/Contributor:Higgins, Floyd Halleck, 1886-1975, Photographer Date:1942 Sept. (Calisphere) |
Undocumented Mexican immigrants searched by U.S. Border Patrol
Sympathetic But Cautious--Border patrolman makes search of four line jumpers while his partner stands warily back to cover him. Mexican alambristas, or border crossers, are quiet and tractable and patrolmen are sympathetic but determined to enforce the law. (Calisphere) |
The ways that men and women have been crossing the border has been through the desert, the all American Canal, and now the trains. Immigrants will do whatever they can to get over. All ages and genders. Men, Women, Kids, and teens have been found trying to cross the border by staying on top of a train that travels through southern California. Many immigrants take their chances of been on top of a crowded train in order to make it to the other side. The train ride is not a safe ride when one is on top of the train with hundreds of others trying to reach the “better life”. It is a faster way then the desert but it also has it’s temperature dilemmas. In certain areas where this trains pass there are heavy rains that men, women, teens, and kids go through. People ran out of food but there are helpful nice people on some of the stops that help all of the people on top of the rain throwing them water and food for their journey. People have made it over this way but as it became a more popular way to cross the border it also become more difficult when the border patrol knows about it. This year according to Inguisitr, about 50,000 illegal immigrants have been caught and given off to the border patrols (Inquisitr). The ones who have died on this trip have been killed by either people that know they’re immigrants and want to stop them, themselves or accidents that happen when there are many people on top of one train and people fall. There has been many immigrants that have defeated the “beast” as how they refer to it as the train. This is just another way that immigrants will do until the impossible to try to make it over the border for that better life that we all hope for.