Lisa Elmaleh

Lisa Elmaleh is a photographer whose work has appeared in The New York Times and Harper's Magazine. She plans to return to the border in the fall to photograph again.

By this Author

A group of Ajo Samaritans and volunteers pause for a moment before returning to Ajo town after spending half a day dropping off water and food for migrants in the Sonoran Desert of Arizona.

Frontera: Arizona Samaritans soothe dire need on migrant desert trails

A photographer and a writer join the Ajo and Tucson Samaritans to highlight the harshness of the experience of migrants who cross the U.S. border into the sprawling Sonoran Desert — where it's mostly about the water.

From left, Brian, Alejandro, and Humberto were among the men expelled in the middle of the night in late October at the U.S.-Douglas, Texas, border crossing. (Lisa Elmaleh)

Frontera: Compassion has no boundaries at the US-Mexico border

In U.S. border communities, staff and volunteers at the Migrant Resource Center and similar organizations help migrants expelled from the country rest and get advice while they figure out their next step.

Twilight in Naco, Arizona, extends a haze against its border wall, a "scar on the landscape," as Elmaleh saw it: "Beautiful mountains, vast desert, difficult to cross, and then this massive 30-foot wall is part of the landscape." (© Lisa Elmaleh)

Frontera: Where the limits of a wall and the promise of the unknown intersect

Upon seeing Lisa Elmaleh's camera, the Catholic sisters and volunteers at migrant shelters whom Elmaleh met along the U.S.-Mexico border "understand they're being documented in a historic way."