Bordertown (2006 film)

Directed by	Gregory Nava
Produced by	Executive Producers: David bergstein Cary Epstein Tracee Stanley-Newell Barbara Martinez-Jitner Producers: Gregory Nava Jennifer Lopez Simon Fields Tony Mark (Co-prod.)
Written by	Gregory Nava
Starring	Jennifer Lopez Martin Sheen Maya Zapata Sonia Braga and Antonio Banderas

The opening titles explain that American corporations are using the North American Free Trade Agreement by opening large maquiladoras right across the United States–Mexico border. The maquiladoras hire mostly Mexican women to work long hours for little money in order to produce mass quantity products.

Lauren Adrian (Jennifer Lopez), an impassioned American news reporter for the "Chicago Sentinel" wants to be assigned to the Iraq front-lines to cover the war. Instead, her editor George Morgan (Martin Sheen) assigns her to investigate a series of slayings involving young maquiladora factory women in a Mexican bordertown.

Worker Eva (Maya Zapata), originally from the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca, takes a bus to go back to her shanty-town home after work. After a while she is the last passenger still in the bus. The driver asks her if she minds if he goes to a gas station to fill up, and Eva agrees. However, he takes her to a remote place and assaults and rapes her, together with another man, who then tries to strangle her. The two men, believing her dead, bury her alive. With the little energy she has left, Eva escapes.

Adrian heads to Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, on the U.S.-Mexico border to investigate the murders, hoping that if she does well she'll be assigned to Iraq by Morgan. In Juárez, she meets up with Diaz (Antonio Banderas), whom she had been working with six years before, and who is the editor for the local newspaper El Sol de Juárez. She also meets Eva.

The three try to find the two killers and have them prosecuted. For this purpose she starts working in the factory, in order to act as bait on the bus ride. The driver tries to assault her in the same way he did Eva, and although police assistance has been arranged, they are at the wrong place. She manages to escape her attacker. Later Diaz gets shot and killed in a drive-by shooting. Eva changes her mind and does not want to testify any more for fear of revenge, and tries to flee to the US, together with others in the trunk of a car. She gets caught and is sent back. Adrian convinces her to testify after all. For political reasons the Chicago Sentinel refuses to publish Adrian's story. Adrian quits and becomes the editor for El Sol de Juárez.