- Welcome to Independent Lens.
I'm Pete Schwaba, host of PBS Wisconsin's Director's Cut.
Tonight, we bring you a film the Boston Globe calls,
"One of the most nuanced and disturbing films
about the immigration crisis"
in the film Missing in Brooks County.
The film follows two families
who travel to Brooks County, Texas
to search for their missing loved ones
in an area of the country
that sees hundreds of migrants go missing every year.
Brooks County is located near
one of the busiest immigration checkpoints in the country.
In an effort to circumvent said checkpoint,
those seeking a better life here in America
often find themselves on some its most rugged terrain,
which can be downright treacherous.
Some of these exhausted migrants
find themselves walking through miles and miles of sand
in the hot sun with no water.
In addition to focusing
on the families trying to find their loved ones,
the film also shows the crisis
from the perspective of migrants,
law enforcement agents, activists, ranchers,
human rights workers and experts
trying to help identify remains
and help loved ones achieve closure.
Missing in Brooks County
is directed by Jeff Bemiss and Lisa Molomot,
who visited the county 15 times over four years.
Molomot says that American citizens
have no idea what's going on in Brooks County
and that most people, even in Texas,
have no idea what's happening.
She and producer Jacob Bricca
intimate that funneling migrant traffic
to these dangerous areas
was a calculated plan in order to prevent through deterrence,
but what its led to
was a system so broken and complicated...
well, a film needed to be made to help explain it.
Missing in Brooks County
starts now on PBS Wisconsin,
your home for independent film.