Scene 1
Scene introduces right-wing talk radio personality Lou Becker, host of “Take Back America.” He immediately launches into an anti-Mexican immigration screed in which he terms describes these “illegal aliens” as “cockroaches” who come to America to breed. His guest on this day is Ernesto Martinez, a natural nemesis. Ernesto is a liberal pro-immigration activist whom Becker deems a criminal for his practice of leaving gallons of water in the desert for those making an attempt at illegal border crossing to drink to avoid dehydration and death. Well into the interview, Becker brings aboard via phone Carl Dunlap, a member of the Minutemen militia whose mission in life is to counter every attempt to facilitate border crossing by people like Ernesto.
Scene 2
A young couple named Matt and Sandi are driving at night just a few miles from the U.S/Mexican border. Sandi is a second generation Latina who is just about to learn a secret about her new boyfriend. Matt is not actually Matt’s name; he is going an alias because he is a Canadian who has entered the U.S. illegally. This will very quick prove absurdly ironic after they park the car and are about to get steamy when an Arizona police officer approaches and very quickly racially profiles the dark-skinned Sandi as an immigrant trying to enter the country illegally by trading sex with Matt. The cop is overly zealous in his assurance of her immigrant status and while Sandi insists she is a U.S. citizen, she refuses to tender evidence supporting that fact on basic grounds of outrage at the cop’s quite clearly racist behavior. Meanwhile, he never bothers checking to see if Matt is a U.S. citizen, just naturally assuming he is from his looks.
Scene 3
With the stage bathed in darkness, the sound of a voicemail recording is heard. It is a recording, in excruciating detail, of the violent and unprovoked beating to death of a young Mexican man with baseball bats by two white racists. When the recording stops, the lights rise to reveal three mysterious figures with faces hidden behind ski masks. Lou Becker, the radio talk show personality, is tied up, gagged and blindfolded. Terrified and unsure of what is happening, Lou asks who they are and what they want. They replay the voicemail recording before untying him, making him take his clothes off, put on pink underwear and lather himself with barbecue sauce, mockingly inquiring how it feels now to be brown.
Scene 4
Sandi has been arrested by the cop and now finds herself in a detention center for illegal immigrants. She insists she’s a U.S. citizen, but a female guard, while sympathetic, does nothing to help her.
Scene 5
Lou is tied up again but this time the mysterious figures are in a more talkative mood. Lou learns that they are siblings of the victim of the racist attack heard on the voicemail. Lou, not the sharpest knife in the drawer under the best of circumstances, is having trouble under these extreme conditions connecting the dots. Finally, he realizes that they blame him for the attack by the two racist with baseball bats. One of the figures removes his mask, thereby revealing his face which leads to a discussion among the three of whether they will now have to change plans and kill him to keep from being identified. The other two figures remove their masks with the lights going out as it is revealed that the third one is a young woman.
Scene 6
Sandi gets a visitor after managing to fall asleep inside the detention center. It is Matt, telling her he contacted her mother to fax a copy of her birth certificate so she could prove her citizenship. This has become necessary since she threw her purse out the window of the car in her outrage at the cop’s behavior. However, she remains resistant to any sort of cooperation, insisting that as a U.S. citizen who has nothing wrong it is not up her to prove anything. She asks Matt to contact the local newspaper so she can get publicity about what happened. Because of his own illegal status, he demurs on the basis of being uncomfortable. Calling him by his actual name, she dismissively promises to see him later.
Scene 7
Ernesto in placing water containers on the ground in the desert, accompanied by a documentary filmmaker asking questions. Ernesto relates a gruesome story of finding the body of a dead immigrant woman he briefly thought was still alive after her body started moving only to watch in horror as a five-foot-long snake crawled out of her mouth. When asked why leaves the water even though people are bound to die in the effort to cross the desert anyway, he relates a story about Gandhi that his father told him about throwing starfish which had washed up on shore back into the water to save them. In response t the impossibility of saving the thousands of starfish on the beach is the moral of the story: the effort will make a difference to every starfish he can throw back into the water. Carl, the Minuteman racist, shows up and Ernesto suggests they leave before the militia members start acting stupid and shoot them. The filmmaker urges Ernesto to engage in some kind of confrontation since conflict caught on film will make it easier to sell his documentary.
Scene 8
In the absence of Lou Becker’s unexplained disappearance, Carl is now doing guest hosting duties on his radio show. At the same time, Lou finds himself one-on-one with the lone female of his triumvirate of abductors. He tries to ingratiate himself with her in an attempt to win his freedom. In the process, he makes a startling revelation: he is not even an America, but a Scot who married an third or fourth-generation Mexican-American woman. Dropping his accent helped him land his radio gig which he insists is just an act. The only reason he stumbled into the extremist right wing radio game is because he had failed at everything else. Having bonded somewhat, a deal is struck: she will pretend to have an epilepsy fit after surreptitiously loosening the knots holding in place. In the confusing, he can make his escape into the desert.
Scene 9
In the detention center, a woman is despondent over being separated from her children. She says she was taken in the middle of the night while her husband was working a job in Texas. The children were left all alone by themselves. She further relates the children were all born in America and complains that she should never have left California to move to Arizona. Sandi discovers they both called the San Fernando Valley home. Sandi then tells a story about being at school where there was only one other Mexican girl, a student named Milagros who was being picked on by the white students calling her racist names. At one point Milagros looked to Sandi with a plea for help, but too terrified to do the right thing, she joined in the name calling which eventually turned into hair-pulling and Milagros being spit on by some boys. Milagros went home and never came back. The woman then tells Sandi that she is that very same Milagros. Sandi breaks down crying full of shame and now it is Milagros’ turn to offer comfort and assurance that everything’s all right. Milagros then tells Sandi that on the bus ride back to Nogales the next night, something is going to happen that Sandi needs to stay awake for. Sandi then falls asleep as the lights dim. When the lights rise again, she wakes to see that the cot where Milagros was sleeping is now empty. She asks the female guard what happened to the woman sleeping next to her, but is told that there was no woman sleeping next to her and she must have been dreaming.
Scene 10
The three figures who kidnapped Lou Becker are discussing whether to kill him, cut out his tongue or just shoot him. After applying more barbecue sauce onto him, the woman starts to choke and slips into an epileptic fit. As planned, Lou takes opportunity of the confusing to make his escape. No sooner has he done so than the woman’s fit suddenly stops and she stands up and joins in the laughter with her brothers the ease with which she manipulated him when they were alone.
Scene 11
Sandi, drenched in sweat and out of breath lies in the desert sand asking out loud where she is and where is the road. Suddenly, Lou Becker, in an equitable state of exhaustion and desperation and dress in pink underwear and coated with dried barbecue sauce appears. They find the water that Ernesto has left out for the immigrants crossing the desert. Sandi relates a strange story of being on the bus to Nogales when the driver lost control, followed by the sound of gunshots and people scattering in every direction. Lou tells her he has literally been running through the desert all day long trying to make his way back home. In the darkness they hear footsteps and then gunshots.
A Mexican man appears in dirty clothes, wearing a backpack and speaking only Spanish. He was detained in the desert and wants his wife to know that he did not betray her. He then asks that they take him with them. Suddenly, they realize he has disappeared and in their search, Lou trips over human bones. Sandi find s wallet with I.D. carrying the name of the mysterious man and realize that they are his bones and he wants them to take the bones with them. Sandi figures out that he was murdered and that the message of his ghost was to return the bones to his wife so she will realize what actually happened. She is also convinced that they are both going to live through the ordeal in order to make this happen. Ernesto shows up to save them and a voiceover of the wife of the man murdered in the desert is heard giving thanks for proving that her husband did not betray her.
Scene 12
Lou is back in the deejay booth explaining to his listeners that he is back from a vacation in Palm Springs where he fell asleep by the pool one day after forgetting to apply sunblock. Rather than hitting the red meat content he usually delivers to his audience, he confesses to not being an native born American before playing “This Land is Your Land” by Woody Guthrie and quitting on-air.
Scene 13
Ernesto is driving Sandi to California since her ex-boyfriend Matt stole her car and took off while she was in the detention center. He swears he sees spirits sitting in the backseat. Sandi asks what can be done to find the people who murdered the man in the desert, but Ernesto informs here the remains were so badly deteriorated nothing is left to provide any evidence. Sandi says she wants to help Ernesto with his water mission the next time he goes out. She wants to become an activist, too. Carl Dunlop is now the permanent new host of Lou’s old radio show and after he launches into an anti-immigrant tirade, Sandi borrows Ernesto’s phone, calls in and leaves a voicemail for Carl with the message from Ernesto that if unfair laws are created, they will protest to get them changed.
