I do not think that it would be that dangerous. You have a lot better chance of something happening to you in Houston rather than on the border. As for all the stories of headless bodies and such that go around the oilfield, they are untrue. I worked for la migra for quite a while and there were never any intel reports, which surely would have been made if that would have happened. Think of it this way, drug trafficking is in the end a business. If they begin killing people and leaving things like that for US law enforcement to find what would happen? There would definitely be an increase in law enforcement and it would make it harder for them to cross their product and therefore hurt their business. Most of the people crossing the border will hide from you because they do not want to be called in on and then sent back. Most of these "horror" stories are made up to make people feel like they are brave and courageous. Now that kinda stuff does happen on the regular inside of Mexico, but that is more or less to people that are involved in some fashion or other with the drug trade or people associated with it. Just my experience and thought as someone who spent thousands of days playing the cat and mouse game on the border.