This twisted tale of kindness and cruelty begins 70 miles north of the Mexican border: Brooks County, Texas is the end of the line for many migrants looking to enter the United States the hard way. After a coyote deposits them at the crossing, it’s up to the human contraband to circumvent the checkpoint and try their luck against the forces of nature. If they’re among the fortunate, they won’t be counted among the 300-600 poor souls who each year die of exposure or dehydration. There is no protocol as to what to do when a family member turns up missing, and that’s where Eddie Canales comes in. Canales heads up the South Texas Human Rights Center, where each day, he fields calls from families hoping beyond hope that a loved one can still be counted among the living. And as the leader of the Texas Border Volunteers, veterinarian/militiaman Mike Vickers is the anti-Canales. “I’m compassionate,” says Vickers, the sound of Sean Hannity blaring in the background as the camera pans across the dozens of mounted deer heads that line the walls of his trophy room. Like duck hunters positioned deep in the tulies, Vickers and his conscripts spend their nights on the lookout for evacuees. Meanwhile, Canales maintains a system of water stations, a humanitarian gesture that Vickers laughs off as providing nesting sites for criminal activity. (Vickers does maintain a water trough for his cattle, a reservoir of sepsis from which the undocumented are free to sip.) Canales’ efforts are frequently rewarded with “Build the Wall Now” emblazoned across the bins, or worse. Sometimes, they’re kicked apart, and the 30-foot flagpoles designed to make them visible splintered into twigs. Vickers blames the vandalism on Canales, pronouncing it a ploy on the part of the immigrant rights defender to gain sympathy for his cause. Directors Jeff Bemiss and Lisa Molomot follow the plights of two families desperate to find closure: Juan Salazar crossed the border to make money after his girlfriend’s father demanded that his daughter marry a better provider, while Homero Román, deported on the basis of a traffic violation, had not spoken to his family in over two years. Needless to say, the outcome for both is the same. (2020) — Scott Marks