Around a million Mexicans a year risk their lives in search of the American Dream by illegally crossing the US border.
Some are caught by border guards, but they're the lucky ones… an increasing number are perishing in the blistering heat of the Arizona desert, far away from civilisation and help.
Tonight's Dateline at 9.30pm on SBS ONE examines the never-ending exodus of people risking all for a better life and follows relatives desperately looking for answers about what happened to their missing loved ones.
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One of them is Marco Hernandez, who recently made the journey to the US. His father left later, but disappeared crossing the desert.
“The day he left, he said, 'Marco, you have to take care of our family.' Those were the last words I heard from him," Marco tells Dateline.
“My family, my mother, we all live with the hope that he is alive, and that wherever he is, that he is alright.”
In the scorching desert, hundreds of skeletal remains have been collected by border officials and have yet to be identified, and no one knows how many more people have died.
See Dateline's story on the efforts to deal with this human tide tonight at 9.30pm on SBS ONE, and read more now on the Dateline website.
