The influx of migrants across the southern US border has become a critical factor in the US presidential election. But what is little known is the role of drug cartels in making a dangerous journey across Mexico even more perilous.

With its strip clubs, taco stands and buzzing motorbikes, San Luis Rio Colorado is typical of Mexican border communities.

In a migrant shelter, a stone’s throw from the towering, rust-red fence that separates the town from the US state of Arizona, Eduardo rests on a shady patio.

On one wall, there’s a large wooden cross. And it’s here that Eduardo began to process – and recover from – his terrifying ordeal in Mexico.

Eduardo, who is in his 50s, used to run a fast-food restaurant in Ecuador. But organised crime has tightened its grip in his former, mostly peaceful, South American home.

“As business people we were extorted,” he says. Eduardo was threatened with death if he didn’t pay a ‘tax’ to the gang. “What could we do? To save our lives we had to leave.”

Eduardo never wanted to migrate, but he was frightened and decided to head to the US to ask for asylum.

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