Just outside of Ixmiquilpan, Mexico, is a new theme park that pushes the boundaries of political sensitivity and sanity. At Eco Alberto Park, tourists pretend to be illegal immigrants sneaking across the border into the United States for a night. For a nominal fee of $19.50, participants are driven to the middle of the desert, split into separate groups with one guide each, given the direction of the border and told to sprint into the desert night. Ixmiquilpan is nearly 700 miles south of Texas, but Eco Alberto comes complete with fake trails, border fences, and patrol guards. The guards drive authentic-looking Border Patrol Broncos with flashing lights and carry AR-15’s loaded with blanks to fire at tourists hiding in the bushes. Visitors that give themselves away or cry out in fear are hauled off and “deported” until the end of the game.

The park goes to great lengths to create a genuine, visceral experience for the tourist. Completing the night-long course is an athletic challenge; participants jump fences, crawl through handmade tunnels, sprint through thick woods in the dark, and cross rickety, hamstrung bridges. The park even fakes the deaths of other immigrants along the way to add a feeling of authentic danger for the tourists.

Sometimes the danger to the tourist really is authentic; a reporter for the BBC nearly drowned trying to wade across a fast moving river in the dark before four guides pulled him to safety. Just completing the all night trek requires a considerable amount of athleticism and durability, and there must be one nightmare of a waiver to sign at the beginning. The park is a complete experience, lacking only simulated redneck Americans shooting at the tourists from across the fence.

The political implications of the Eco Alberto Park might be half the fun of going. The park has drawn the ire of Amnesty International, who believes it “trivializes the struggle of real immigrants.” The park’s staff believes their profession pays homage to those trying to seek a life across the border, despite the danger. Tourists get the chance literally to walk in another person’s shoes for a day; one participant told the BBC that he felt a “sense of solidarity with real migrants.” The BBC’s Duncan Kennedy had such a good time that he suggested a Disney-version in Florida called “Migrant Mountain.” “It’s crazy . some manifestation of the schizophrenia of American economic policy,” said professor of Latin American history, Anore Horton. “We create an environment where tourism replaces an economy destroyed by American agriculture, and fuel anti-immigrant sentiment with an economic policy that creates an environment where immigrants come to work for American agriculture.” As truly insane, ludicrous, and possibly insensitive as Eco Alberto Park might be, perhaps it was inevitable.