Students Explore a Complex Landscape of Fear

National security demands that "illegals" must be kept out of the country. Terrorists may be entering alongside Mexicans jumping immigration queues. So explain members of the self-appointed Minuteman Civil Defense Corps as they and 25 Vassar College students trudge a migrant trail across a parched, cactus-punctuated desert near Douglas, Arizona. The author has joined the students, visiting points just north and south of the United States-Mexico boundary, for part of their 12-day study trip about border and migration history and politics. In this article, the author discusses what the students discovered in this exploration.