What does Harris do to Arnulfo at the end of 600 Miles, and why?

Question

In the beforelast scene of 600 Miles, we see Harris leaving a surprised Arnulfo in the middle of the desert alone; in the next scene it's revealed that what the agent said was a lie, and he's arguarbly casted under a somewhat unsympathetic light, being shown not to be the warm person he was until then.

I'm trying to figure out what exactly Harris did and why.

As far as I understood, Harris, once out of danger, needs to deal with Arnulfo. He has a few options:

1. bringing him to justice
2. killing him in a direct way (e.g. with a gun), to simply get rid of him
3. putting him in a position of great danger, although without necessary death (e.g. dumping him in the middle of the desert), to get rid of him and/or to have revenge
4. release him in a place where he can (try to) survive on his own

I think #3 happens for a few reasons:

• Harris doesn't want to be violent/conflictual (#1 and #2), possibly also because of legal repercussions
• at the same time, he wants to take some sort of revenge - the theme of the movie is that the bottom line is one's own interest/survival

Is this accurate? I'm stilly puzzled by why Harris just doesn't release him.

Answer 1

I think he saved him just not to kill him, but anything more than that was not possible, Harris lied to Arnulfo that his wife is dead but at the end of the movie we see it is not the case. He also lied to Arnulfo that he had no children but in the end of the movie Harris's wife asks him to drop their kid to school.

So in a nutshell, Harris's priority is clear, his family and his job. As he is the man of the law he could not kill Arnulfo so he left him to meet his destiny in the desert. Why he left him in the desert? If you watched the movie carefully you saw that all the people around Arnulfo knew of his betrayal so Arnulfo was dead anyway. Slow dead in the desert or fast death by the bullet in the Mexican city.