PBS Film: Deadly Border Crossing.

More than 200 Mexican migrants died last year in the blistering heat of the Arizona desert as they crossed illegally into the United States in search of work. Now, as summer brings what the U.S. Border Patrol calls the “Season of Death”—the peak period for migratory workers—FRONTLINE/World tells the story of one man who lost his life on his journey north.

In “A Death in the Desert,” reporter Claudine LoMonaco recounts the life and tragic death of Matias Garcia, a chili pepper farmer and father of two from a small Zapotec Indian village in Oaxaca. Airing Thursday, June 24, at 9 P.M. on PBS (check local listings), the one-hour program also features “The Sex Workers,” a tale of two Indian cities: Mumbai (formerly Bombay), where more than 60 percent of the city’s prostitutes are infected with HIV, and Kolkata (formerly Calcutta), where a community outreach project has kept the infection rate among sex workers to approximately 10 percent; and a visit to Shanghai by night, where an underground art and youth scene is testing the limits of government tolerance.

“A Death in the Desert”—From the time he turned sixteen, Matias Garcia had been going north to California looking for work. Following the signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1994, however, the journey got much tougher, as the U.S. Border Patrol erected a series of fences between Tijuana and San Diego, extending into the Arizona Badlands.

The new fences sent illegal Mexican migrant workers like Garcia into the desert, where the searing heat claimed more than 200 lives last year. In the decade since NAFTA’s passage, more than 3,000 migrants have died trying to cross the U.S.-Mexico border.

In this intimate portrait, reporter Claudine LoMonaco pieces together Garcia’s life and tragic death from dehydration after walking more than 30 miles across the desert in search of work in America. Through interviews with Garcia’s family, including the younger brother who accompanied him on his fateful journey, “A Death in the Desert” puts a human face on the growing problem of migrant worker deaths. Co-produced by Mary Spicuzza, this story began as a student thesis project at Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism.