Border mountains: Popular with illegal immigrants

The two countries are also boasting of what they call an intense plan of bilateral co-operation to crackdown on the smugglers who are making a fortune from charging often poor migrants thousands of dollars to slip them across the border.

Illegal immigration is one of the biggest issues in the American south-west.

On the Mexican border with California, Texas and Arizona, literally hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants try to cross into the US every month.

Recent efforts by the US authorities to beef up the border at the most popular crossing points have increasingly forced migrants to try to enter the country in more remote and often more hostile desert areas.

Only last month, 14 bodies were found in the Arizona desert, casualties of the hot sun and dehydration.

But the new measures do not tackle the real roots of the problem, the draw of better paying jobs in the United States and the push of poverty at home.