A small-town fire department is increasingly responding to calls to rescue migrants who have been abandoned or injured while crossing remote spots on the border in southeastern New Mexico and is only anticipating more calls as triple-digit temperatures set in for the summer.

Sunland Park, New Mexico, is a suburb right outside El Paso, Texas, with a population of roughly 20,000 people. Its fire department comprises two stations. While federal agents from the Border Patrol are responsible for encountering people who have illegally crossed from Mexico into the United States, it is the local fire department that gets called in to render medical aid to migrants. Lately, the calls have been every day, sometimes multiple times a day, as migrants get stranded or abandoned in the mountains or trapped while trying to climb over the border fence.