And the smugglers are not the only culprits.

In 2000, a Border Patrol agent in Arizona, Dennis M. Johnson, was charged with sexual assault and kidnapping after he forced a 21-year-old migrant from El Salvador to disrobe and perform oral sex on him while she was handcuffed with her hands behind her back.

In 2014 near McAllen, three Honduran migrants — a woman, her daughter and her daughter’s 14-year-old friend — crossed the Rio Grande and came across a uniformed Border Patrol agent. The agent, Esteban Manzanares, bound them with plastic police restraints, put silver duct-tape on their mouths and kidnapped them, driving them around in the back of his Border Patrol truck.

“I thought he was going to harm us, because from the moment that he duct-taped our mouths, I felt that that was not normal anymore,” said the woman, 40, who asked to be identified by her initials, M.G.

Mr. Manzanares tried to kill M.G. and her daughter, and then handcuffed the 14-year-old girl to a tree, her mouth still taped. He finished his shift, returned to the tree for the girl, drove her to his apartment and tied her to a bunk-bed, where he repeatedly sexually assaulted her. Her ordeal ended only many hours later, when law enforcement agents closed in on the apartment, and Mr. Manzanares, facing imminent capture, took his own life.

— MANNY FERNANDEZ, reporting from McAllen, Tex.

Manny is one of a team of New York Times journalists currently deployed along the border. Each week they’ll be sharing a slice of their reporting about the border and the people who spend time on both sides of it.

Do you have questions about life on the border? Or feedback about this newsletter? Email us at: crossingtheborder@nytimes.com.

Number of the week: 0

It’s hard to find one number that encapsulates the myths versus the realities of living in a border city. This one comes pretty close.