"Highway Camp, 2023"
Highway Camp, 2023
Don Bartletti
Media: Color Image, Archival Pigment Print
Seven friends from the Kurdish region of eastern Turkey recline on an abandoned rail line at the U.S./Mexico border in Jacumba Hot Springs, California on December 27, 2023. They flew to Tijuana and hired a Mexican smuggler to drive them 65 miles along the borderline to to where they stepped into the U.S. All expressed hope to be granted amnesty and to live a better life than the one they abandoned in Turkey. One guy said he was a mechanic; another said he’d like to do construction either in New York or California. It seemed they didn’t know exactly where they were. Another quipped that he hadn’t expected to spend 3 cold nights in America sleeping on the ground until the U.S. Border Patrol arrived.
