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A recent review of the TV docu-series ‘Border Wars,’ which appears Wednesdays at 8 pm on the National Geographic channel questions the producers' intent. From L.A.Times:


…accidentally or not, “Border Wars” plays like advocacy work masking as law enforcement propaganda. First there is the imbalance in scale between the officers and their targets. The show highlights not only the organization required to track illegal activity, but also the depth and organization of the illegal systems themselves. In one scene, an agent tears open a trash bag filled with all the provisions a border crosser would need for a long journey, provided by the people who steer the grueling trips. It’s as thought-through as any of the agent’s high-tech tools.

“Border Wars” documents an environment where practically everyone is criminalized. When a body is found floating facedown in the Rio Grande, the voiceover narration notes, “Agents can only speculate if the young man was an immigrant trying to cross or a drug smuggler.”

[…]

The immigrants, who are almost never named, are portrayed as threats, though hardly any effort is made to distinguish among them or their goals. The drug busts captured in other segments of the show at least deliver a sense of righteous victory, but the scenes where people are captured — with teams of agents assisted by all-terrain vehicles and helicopters with heat-sensing cameras tracking down packs making their way through harsh Texas ranchland — are far more emotionally ambiguous.


Read more here.