If you find your way through the door of the Juan Bosco Shelter in Nogales, just across the border in Sonora, Mexico, it’s because you’ve got nowhere else to go. You’ll find a bed here, your own slot in one of the 30 trilevel wooden frames that line the walls. Chances are, you need the rest. And Juan Bosco provides. You can sleep now and figure things out in the morning.

The shelter has three cardinal rules: (1) Keep it clean. (2) Care for others. (3) "You can’t talk about polleros here," says a young man named José, using slang for guides who for a few thousand dollars bring immigrants over the border. "There are cameras and they hear the sounds." Most of the people settling into the bunks tonight were just deported. They aren’t talking much, anyway.

José once slept at this shelter when he had nowhere else to go. He was one of the nearly 55,000 people a year, 150 a day, that the Mexican government says are pushed off buses into Nogales by American authorities. Now José sleeps here every night because its owners have allowed him free board in exchange for work. "The shelter is like a family," he tells the new arrivals. "There are 3,000 people who come through here a month and we’re all equal."

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