The opening titles explain that American corporations have been currently employing the North American Free Trade Agreement by opening maquiladoras right across the usa -- Mexico boundary. The maquiladoras hire mostly Mexican women to work long hours for little money as a way to create mass quantity products.Lauren Adrian (Jennifer Lopez), an impassioned American news reporter to its"Chicago Sentinel" wants to be delegated to the Iraq frontlines to pay for the war. Instead, her editor George Morgan (Martin Sheen) assigns her to investigate a number of slayings involving young maquiladora factory women in a Mexican bordertown.