"In all his thrillers of the late forties Mann evoked two worlds diametrically opposed, one of innocence and purity, the other an evil domain which extracts a sacrifice in its defeat. Nowhere was this interaction more harshly in evidence than in Border Incident, (about) an immigration racket operating in the American Southwest. However, here the melodrama was extended by an elemental violence, one agent ground into a field by a tractor, the other nearly suffocating nightmarishly in quicksand. In a fragmented way (like T-Men, the film has a documentary framework), the metaphorical drive of the imagery--especially in its climax where gangsters march along the rim of a steep canyon through which wind peasants on their way to the slaughter--gives Border Incident an almost symbolic level of action. Promising a thriller, Mann delivers something of a cosmic conflict which hints at the play of superhuman forces that can shape destiny." Jim Kitses, Horizons West