The article is the story of a group of illegal Mexican immigrants on their way to New York. Mario Kaiser joined the group for the whole journey, from their village in the south of Mexico, across the border and to New York. The result is a first-hand account of a dangerous odyssey that thousands of Mexicans embark on every day, a journey that has become ever more difficult and dangerous since the sealing of the border after September 11, 2001.

Mario Kaiser is a reporter at large for the German newsmagazine Der Spiegel and lives in Berlin. He studied American Literature, Political Science, and Economics at the University of Bonn, Germany. After graduating from New York University’s Graduate School of Journalism, he lived in New York for seven years as a contributing writer for the German weekly Die Zeit and Geo Magazine. In 2004 he returned to Germany. He is a co-author of the books “The Beslan File” and “Tsunami: Story of a Global Quake”, and a recipient of the Henri Nannen Award, the Axel Springer Award and the German Award for Social Issues Reporting.