Borderland

Borderland is a limited-run 2014 television documentary series, produced by Australian production company In Films. It was the first original commission for Al Jazeera America's documentary unit, premiering on 13 April 2014. The series followed six Americans as they retraced the fatal journey of three undocumented migrants who died attempting to cross into the United States. Background Following the creation of Al Jazeera America on 2 January 2013, their factual department commissioned three award-winning documentary teams to produce original content for the channel. Newly formed Australian indie production company In Films were approached and despite geographical concerns, agreed to produce a series on undocumented immigration. The producers pitched a loose idea retracing the fatal last journey of an undocumented migrant. In addition to Borderland, the network also commissioned Joe Berlinger and Radical Media to produce The System - exposing cases of alleged injustices in the US prison system and Alex Gibney to produce Edge of Eighteen, investigating the lives of 18 high school students across the US. The producers visited the Pima County morgue in Tucson after reading an article about the number of unidentified migrants found every year in the Sonora Desert. Despite being in one of America's smallest cities, Pima County's is the busiest morgue in the nation. It is also home to the largest collection of missing persons reports for undocumented migrants in the United States. Bodies are stacked six high on industry shelves, which reach to the ceiling and stretch 30 feet to the back of the room. On any day, there could be 150 bodies inside the cool rooms and at least one hundred were people who died trying to cross the Sonoran Desert undocumented.