Part 1 - Altar, Sonora

Sacha Feinman, for the Pulitzer Center

We hadn't yet taken ten steps off the bus when I made eye contact with someone for the first time.

"Are you going North?" he hissed, walking towards me quick. "Let's go, let's go."

It was a strange way to be welcomed, no doubt, but one that reflected perfectly the town's character.

Altar, Sonora… As soon as you arrive, we'll try and sell you a way out.

There are plenty of trite analogies one can use in trying to explain Altar. It's like Grand Central Station, a gathering point from which people are moved in a myriad of directions across the U.S. border - or maybe it's like a migrant Walmart, where everything one might need for making it North, like backpacks, electrolyte-infused soft drinks or a guide to take you through the desert, are available within a few short steps.

None of these comparisons, however, hint at the paranoia that hangs over the place, the omnipresent sensation that although you're in a sleepy desert town just 60 miles from the border, things can go wrong very, very quickly.

People who are not residents of Altar, like the migrants (or journalists) who simply pass through, can never be sure as to what is safe or who to trust. It is this uncertainty that puts fear at the center of nearly every interaction and relationship.

Altar's economy is based on the export of a single commodity; foreigners. When you step into the town's central plaza every eyeball immediately sizes you up, guessing at ways in which profit can be generated off your presence.

Polleros looking to sell their services are the most obvious example. Just as a call to move North greeted David and I as soon as we turned up, so it does almost every migrant unloaded into the central plaza. Headhunters in charge of rounding up migrants for their bosses wait at the door of the bus, walking in stride with the town's new arrivals as they try to get a sense of their surroundings.

Beat up sedans with darkly tinted windows make slow laps around the plaza, stopping to whistle and wave at a new face. They look as though they've been waiting for you all day, and you feel almost embarrassed not to walk over and see what they want.

"What do you need?," they ask. "Are you ready to leave? Do you need a place to stay? There is a great hotel just around the corner. It's safe with air conditioning and cable T.V. I know the owner, let me give you a lift."

Everyone smiles and offers to help, but for those who've heard the stories, a friendly face is simply another reason to be paranoid.

"I came to Altar for the first time in 2007," says Savino Ramirez, a migrant from Oaxaca.

"I got off the bus in the afternoon, and I didn't know where to go. A cab driver came up to me and offered to help me find a place to stay. I got in his car and he took me to a nice house, a big house. When the door opened, I was violently pulled inside. There was no furniture there; just a table and a phone. Eight men with gun's and knives were standing around guarding thirty people. We had been kidnapped and, one by one, we had to call our families and tell them to send $1,500."

Ramirez never made it to the U.S. on that trip; the day before I met him he had arrived in Altar again, determined not to repeat the same mistake.

"This time, I got off the bus at night. I started walking to a hotel a friend had recommended, and I get mugged by two guys in the middle of the street instead."

A farmer back home, Ramirez had been hoping to get a job picking lettuce in California.

"Forget it, I'm giving up," he whispered, his voice trembling. "It's too dangerous."