The group of between 25 and 28 Mexicans were seeking a new life of better jobs and higher wages but at least half of them died of heat exhaustion.

Fourteen people from the group of 28 died and the US Border Control is still searching for two more people.

Dreams of a better life

Regarding the US border controls, Mr Aleman said: "There should be more understanding, there should be more flexibility."

Atzalan: the home of seven of the dead

Reynaldo Ambros, whose 24-year-old son Julian was among those who died, called on Washington to adopt a more humane approach to immigration issues.

"I would just ask the people up there (in the United States) to lend a hand to these poor guys... We're all human beings.

"It would be good if everyone could come here, and see how hard it is, so they understand why they left," said Minerva Barreda. Her father and 14-year-old son, were among the seven who died from Atzalan.

"They left because they had to."

Left to die

The immigrants paid smugglers, known as coyotes, up to $2,000 per head to guide them across the border and through the treacherous Arizona desert.

When rescuers found the corpses they said they looked like mummies, burnt black by the sun

But after just one day, the coyotes abandoned them in the American desert with no food and no water in temperatures that reached 46C.

The smugglers told the weakened group that they only had to�walk another hour or two to reach a highway. In fact the nearest road was 60 miles (97 km) away.

For five days the increasingly weak men, and one 10-year-old boy, stumbled along a sandy valley known as The Devil's Path.

Terrible death

At least 14 of them died of dehydration and heat exposure. When rescuers found the corpses they said they looked like mummies, burnt black by the sun. Their bodies were pricked by cactus spines.

Smuggler Jesus Lopez Ramos has been arrested

The 12 survivors said they only made it by eating cactus leaves and drinking their own urine.

Police in Arizona announced on Wednesday that they had arrested a 20-year-old man, Jesus Lopez Ramos, who is suspected of being one of the smugglers who led the group.

A journey for survival

Mexicans know the immigrants' dreams all too well. Every year, hundreds of thousands brave the desert heat just as this group did.

They are driven on by the fact that workers in America can earn in an hour what workers in Mexico earn in a whole day.

Those who survive the crossing send the money back home and many Mexican communities simply would not survive without those remittances.

But the cost is very high. In the past three years, 851 border crossers have died and more than 4,000 have been rescued on the verge of death.

Officials in both countries place the blame very squarely on the shoulders of the coyotes who abandon the migrants in the desert.