40. Dr. Jason De Leon, Anthropologist and Author of Soldiers and Kings: Survival and Hope in the World of Human Smuggling

On the 40th episode of Immigration Today!, Angeline Chen welcomes Dr. Jason De Leon. Dr. Jason De León is a professor of Anthropology and Chicana/o Studies and director of the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is also the Executive Director of the Undocumented Migration Project, a 501(c)(3) research, arts, and education collective that seeks to raise awareness about migration issues globally while also assisting families of missing migrants to reunite with their loved ones. Since 2009, the UMP has been studying clandestine migration between Latin America and the United States using a combination of ethnographic, visual, archaeological, and forensic approaches to understand this violent social process. Dr. De León has published numerous academic articles and his work with the UMP has been featured in a variety of popular media outlets. He is a 2017 MacArthur Foundation Fellow and author of the award-winning book The Land of Open Graves: Living and Dying on the Migrant Trail. Dr. De Leon’s latest work is a new book titled Soldiers and Kings: Survival and Hope in the World of Human Smuggling, which is an in-depth look at the daily lives of smugglers moving migrants across the length of Mexico. 

In this interview, Angeline Chen deep dives into De Leon’s work. For much of his career, Dr. De Leon had focused on the archeological fieldwork of countries like Mexico. He would often work in communities that had high migration rates which eventually led him to grow an interest in the journeys people take to their destination while immigrating. He realized that human migration left an archeological footprint worth discovering. His first book, Land of Open Graves was a combination of archaeology, forensic science, and ethnographic works meant to shed light on the experiences of border crossers. Eventually, his involvement with immigration issues led him to take an interest in the stories of smugglers. Soldiers and Kings was a 7-year-long project that led him from Guatemala to Mexico and back to follow the stories of smugglers and learn about the way organized crime, drug cartels, and transnational gangs have shaped the migration process. Dr. De Leon gives us a new perspective: Are smugglers all “bad”? 

You can follow Dr. Jason De Leon's work via their website, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Purchase your copy of Soldiers and Kings from your favorite retailer today! Please consider making a tax-deductible donation to the Undocumented Migration Project via this link.

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Transcript

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Hello, everyone. It's Angeline Chen. Welcome to Immigration Today, where I interview leaders, advocates, experts, and volunteers in immigration and immigrant rights on the issues, their experiences, and how you can make a difference. This podcast is intended for general informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice or a solicitation to provide legal services. The information in this podcast is not intended to create and receipt of it does not constitute a lawyer client relationship. Listeners should not act upon this information without seeking professional legal counsel. The views and opinions expressed in the podcast represent those of the individual speaker only and are not necessarily the views of Clark Hill PLC. Today we have Jason DeLeon. Jason DeLeon is a professor of anthropology and Chicano Chicana studies and director of the Coatson Institute of Archaeology at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is also the executive director of the Undocumented Migration Project, which is a 501c3 research, arts and education collective that seeks to raise awareness about migration issues globally, while also assisting families of missing migrants. Reunite with their loved ones. Since 2009, the U. N. P. Has been studying clandestine migration between Latin America and the United States using a combination of ethnographic visual archeological. And forensic approaches to understand this violent social process. De Leon has published numerous academic articles and his work with the UMP has been featured in a variety of popular media outlets. He is a 2017 MacArthur Foundation fellow. An author of the award winning book, The Land of Open Graves, Living and Dying on the Migrant Trail. Jason's latest work is a new book titled Soldiers and Kings, an in depth look at the daily lives of smugglers moving migrants across the length of Mexico. Jason DeLeon, welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you. Thank you so much for your time and everything that you're doing. Um, can we just get into kind of some questions and discussing what you do and about yourself? Absolutely. Okay, great. Thank you. So can, would you mind kind of, I did read your bio, but tell us a little bit about, you know, your background and why you do what you do. Sure. So, um, I am a, I guess, formerly trained archaeologist who began, um, my research career here at UCLA as an undergrad. Um, I went on to do a PhD in archaeology in Latin America and primarily in Mexico, um, looking at things like ancient stone tools and, um, ancient trade and exchange. And so for a long time I was very interested in, in the past. But during the course of that archaeological fieldwork in Mexico, I ended up working in quite a few Communities that had high out migration rates of people headed to the United States and it was through the course of that work Where I was spending hours and hours a day With people who were getting ready to migrate people who had been deported after trying to migrate. And I just found that I was getting increasingly more interested in the stories that people were telling me about their migration experiences than I was about the things that were that were coming out of the ground. And then this is coupled with the fact that. You know, both of my parents are immigrants. My, my dad's from Mexico. My mom's from the Philippines. I grew up partly in South Texas, about eight miles from the U S Mexico border. I spent a lot of time moving back and forth between Mexico and the United States as a kid. Um, and I grew up with, you know, with lots of family members who were, you know, migrants who were undocumented. Um, and so it was kind of always, it was a theme that was always there around me, but it wasn't until I was in my kind of mid twenties that I kind of realized that this could, this was something that was. you know, a big part of my life and, um, and I got really, really passionate about, you know, trying to understand the difficulties that people experience, um, you know, migrating and all of the brutalities that happen along, along the U S Mexico border. Wow. Yeah, that's amazing. It's I, I never thought about connecting archeology with, you know, immigration, migration, but it makes perfect sense. Um, it makes perfect sense. And I'm so glad you're on here because it's very, it's definitely very unique. So then what made you decide to kind of really, so are you doing your, your professor in, in the archeology department and are you kind of include including immigration, migration in that? Like, how do you do that? Yeah, so it in the beginning, you know, I when I decided to shift gears and think about migration I had decided I had completely written off archaeology. I said, I'm gonna be now a sociocultural anthropologist. I'm interested in just talking to people And at that point I kind of felt like I had maybe wasted ten years of my life doing archaeology because now I wanted to shift gears to something more contemporary. And when I went to, when I went to Arizona for the first time to look at the desert and to see the places where people were having these brutal experiences crossing the U. S. Mexico border, you know, the first thing that I noticed was that there were thousands, if not millions, of objects that people had left behind in the desert that they were carrying with them. Water bottles, clothes, backpacks, personal possessions. And then so immediately it became clear that the experiences that migrants were having in the Sonoran Desert of Arizona, like all great human migrations, was leaving behind an archaeological footprint. And so then suddenly I could talk to people about their experiences, I could interview them, but then I could also use archaeology as a lens to, to try to understand that, that process. And if you look, I mean, people thought that that was weird in the beginning. Um, but you know, if you look at like, I mean, you go to the American History Museum, there's lots of stuff that we have on display that people were bringing with them, you know, 100, 100 years ago. And so for me, it was like, well, this is just a natural progression. Of course, there's an archaeological fingerprint to this. You know, humans, part of, of, you know, of our way of being in the world is, you know, For good or for bad is producing things that we leave behind. And so, um, you know, I think archeology can be a very, I mean, it is a, it's a, a useful lens to think about, um, you know, human behavior, even in these highly politicized, you know, ongoing social processes. Right, right, right. Definitely. Um, in, in, in terms of now in your writing, it seems very much focused on, um, you know, migration. Right. Um, and. And do you, do you then like, tell me a little bit about maybe, why don't you tell me a little bit about soldiers and Kings? Yeah, so, Soldiers and Kings is my, my second book that just came out in March of, of this year. Um, my first book, Land of Open Graves, really was a combination of archaeology, forensic science, um, ethnographic works, I was interviewing families of missing migrants, I was in the desert, I was collecting stuff, um, and really trying to understand what the experiences of border crossers was like in that context. Um, Soldiers and Kings, completely different. I mean, I, I wanted to, to To come up with a new project that was going to challenge me to think about migration in a different way. And one of the things that became of interest to me was, um, was smugglers. And this is partly because we spend all this time and energy talking about migration. Um, and smugglers are a huge part of, of, of the world. undocumented migration, and yet we know so little about what the job is like, how it's structured, um, the role that smugglers play in providing essentially people with a service to get them to where they want to go. And so with Soldiers and Kings, you know, I spent about seven years in Mexico going back and forth from the Guatemala border up to the U. S. Mexico border, documenting the lives of, um, Honduran smugglers who were moving You know, their fellow, their fellow countrymen across, across Mexico. Um, but, you know, I spent a lot of time in safe houses, on the train tracks, interviewing people, talking about their lives, trying to understand their backstory and how they came to be in those situations. Um, but also really trying to understand how organized crime, drug cartels, transnational gangs like MS 13, how those have really shaped the migration process and really made. They both capitalize on smuggling, um, um, but also make it a very necessary kind of, um, you know, kind of thing as well. Yes. Yes. That's so interesting because in, in my over 20 years of, of practicing immigration law, I've never actually spoken to, to, uh, a human smuggler. Um, and I think that that's very important for people. Well, to see that perspective, I do, I obviously have seen effects of them and results of, of them and that industry, but I've never actually spoken to one. And did you feel, I mean, there's a lot of, you know, the perception of them being bad people. I think there are some who. Who are really are good and just trying to help people through and other ones like you said, you know It's hard to say good or bad, but not necessarily doing it for the right reasons. Yeah Yeah, I mean I think a big a big part of the problem with understanding it is that So many people, especially the media and politicians, um, conflate human trafficking with human smuggling, right? They're two very different things. And yet, you know, I open up the New York Times and they keep talking about, oh, human trafficking at the U. S. Mexico border. I'm like, no, actually what you're talking about is human smuggling. Um, and, you know, one of the things about, about this project was, uh, you know, I think getting people to understand that smugglers provide a service to people. Some of them are good. Some of them do the do what they say they're going to do. Others exploit people, you know, I mean, everybody's getting exploited in some form or another, but some to different degrees and, you know, trying to get people to understand that if smuggling was all bad. And only bad things happen to people. It would cease to exist as a, as an economy. Right. But there's enough smugglers in the world who do a good enough job getting people to where they want to go, even if they're overcharging them and doing other kinds of stuff, but it keeps that system kind of, you know, kind of, kind of working. Um, and so for me, yeah, it was, I mean, it was trying to understand all the different variations of, of what a smuggler actually is, how people kind of get into it and, you know, most of the people that I worked with, if not all of were associated with. with transnational gangs. They were, they were in MS 13, they were Bloods, and a lot of them saw the smuggling work as a way to utilize a skill set that they had developed in gangs being violent, you know, in Honduras, but now they could use it as a form of protection to take care of these migrants that they were, that they were sort of shepherding across Mexico. Um, and some of them thought about the work as, as a, also a form of redemption. Of like, well, I used to do bad stuff on the streets, but now I'm, I'm using my kind of superpowers, whatever you want to call them for, you know, for, for, for, for quote unquote good, even though they're, they're making money off of it, even though they're, you know, they're, they're nickel and diming people. Um, um, but yeah, it's a very, it's a very complicated kind of thing. And as I'm, you know, as I'm sure you over 20 years of work on the stuff that like you hear so many different stories about. about smuggling. And, you know, I think they're all true, right? It's this full range of, of, of experiences that people have. Um, but it definitely is a complicated and, you know, everybody wants us to be black and whites. And for me, this book is, it's just all about the gray areas. Yes. Yes. And did you ever feel kind of in your, in your research and experiences those seven years, did you feel in danger of yourself at all? Not so much. I mean, it's probably because I'm a little dumb about some of these things and like, do I don't, you know, maybe I should be, I should have been, there definitely were moments where I should have been more scared and then things got kind of got difficult. Um, but, you know, 1 of the things that. That I think for me as an anthropologist, the benefits of it, like being different from like a journalist is that I get to spend years working on a project and I spent a lot of time with the same people and these same people, you know, we become close over the over over time and I become heavily invested in them. They become heavily invested in me. And so I always felt like the people I was working with were quite protective of. Of, of, of, of me and sort of guided me and, and sort of let me, you know, told me when to keep my mouth shut when I had to leave. Um, so I really didn't feel, you know, despite the fact that I spent a lot of time with, you know, people who are getting paid to murder other people and doing all kinds of difficult things, I never felt myself, you know, um, in danger. And that's partly because. People also recognize that, that I really wanted to be there, that I wasn't there to kind of judge them, that I was, I was there to learn about their lives. And, you know, we're talking about people who for the most part have never been listened to. And people have told them that, you know, that their stories are not, that their lives are worthless and that, that it's not, it's not worth the time and energy to understand who they are. And so for me to come in and say, I'm ready to commit years of my life to do this. I think people recognize that, um, you You know, that, that I was there to, to try to tell their story. And so therefore they became really invested in helping me to do that. Wow, that's great. That's great that you're able to do that. And did you ever encounter, like, law enforcement at all? Did you have any trouble there? Um, not so much. I mean, at one point in the beginning of the project, I had been given quite a bit of access to the Border Patrol, um, because I had met a sort of higher up in, at, um, At customs and border protection who opened up a lot of doors. I mean, I ended up spending time with border patrol agents in Mexico city with border patrol agents in Honduras, who are helping to train Honduran special forces to stop their own citizens from leaving, leaving the country. So I did end up spending some time with law enforcement trying to, and they were very curious about smugglers just as smugglers were very curious about the border patrol. Um, but I will say the scariest, but probably the scariest thing that happened to me, this whole. During this whole project was, um, you know, having some run ins with corrupt Mexican, uh, officials, um, people, people who were kidnapped, who were supposed to be there protecting migrants, but who were in fact kidnapping and extorting people, um, and then who didn't, who didn't like the fact that I was, you know, You know, privy to that information and sort of understood what they were doing. Um, so, you know, at one point we had people by people following me, um, you know, it was just threatening. And, um, so that, that was, I was way more scared of law enforcement than I was of, you know, of, of smugglers. It's interesting, right? Like, I mean, there's, you don't know who you're supposed to trust. Yeah. People are supposed to protect you or, or, or they're supposed to hurt you. Oh, well, I'm glad you made it out. Okay. Oh my goodness. So many things could have happened, right? Seven years. Um, and it, you know, in terms of when you went in, you know, you had an idea of what you wanted to learn or what you, maybe you thought of them. What did you kind of learn afterwards coming out of there? I learned a lot about empathy. I mean, I mean, and you don't expect to spend. seven years with a bunch of people in a crazy, violent environment. You know, people, you know, one of the main people I worked with, uh, was murdered, um, the first, after the first year of field work. So a big part of the book was about his story and, um, you know, how he ended up where he, where he was. And I think all through that, you know, I, I learned so much about people trying to make. Making these difficult decisions and trying to get away from this thing that oftentimes felt kind of inescapable and, um, yeah, it was a very humbling experience. And I mean, and I think part of it too, there was a lot of soul searching that, that had to happen too, because I had to ask myself. Why am I here? And why is it that I have this kind of strong connection to these young people who are living these difficult lives on the edge of so much of so much violence and chaos and You know it turned out that That there was a lot of kinship between myself and I, I sort of under, you know, my own kind of background and, you know, I think I had a kind of a, a difficult childhood and grew up around, you know, certain things that, that were familiar to these folks. And so I, I think part of me gravitated towards this because I really understood elements of their lives and wanted to, you know, I could empathize with them easily and it was very easy for me to not be judgmental about the whole thing. Um, but I felt like I ended up learning a little, you know. A lot about myself and, you know, this project was so difficult and, and kind of heartbreaking that, you know, it sent me back to therapy after a 20 year, kind of a 20 year, um, you know, a break and that was good for me. I think it forced me to, to, to start thinking about stuff and. Uh, I feel like I'm happier and healthier now than I've ever been and I didn't think that that was going to come out of spending seven years in this violent, crazy context where people were, I knew were getting killed and, you know, there was all kinds of stuff happening. Um, so yeah, I felt like, like these folks really taught me. What quite a bit much more than I didn't expect that to come out of this project, but I'm glad that it did Wow Well, thank you for sharing that story. It's uh, it is interesting what doing research and Experiencing other lives can do for you and you probably didn't know that this is what you needed For you. Yeah. Um, so I'd love to segue into your, uh, to the nonprofit, to the undocumented migration project. Can you tell me a little bit about how you got involved in that? Yeah. So the, you know, the UMP. It's this kind of weird mix of, you know, I do a lot of research, I do, um, arts and education with, with migrant communities. Um, I do exhibition work. Um, and we also do direct services with, with families of, of missing migrants. And part of it, you know, the UMP for the longest time was just really about research and arts and education. Um, about three or four years ago, I started working closely with the Colibri Center for Human Rights, which is an organization based in, um, In in Tucson, and they're kind of the liaison between the medical examiner there in Pima County and then various consulates from Latin America and elsewhere. You know, if someone goes missing, they call the consulate or they, they call the medical examiner. We oftentimes then get involved as a kind of intermediary between those things and advocating for families. Um, and for many years, we're, we're doing that. You know collecting dna samples from family members helping to process those samples to be compared to Recovered human remains from from the arizona deserts And so you know a big a big part of the work has just been trying to to support families because there's not a lot of support for You know for people who go missing or who die crossing the u. s. Mexico border I mean, it's a federally constructed problem that the federal government wants nothing to do with That they don't put any money towards kind of, um, um, solving it or, or helping it. Despite the fact that it's the policies that the federal government has put into place that funnel people towards the Arizona desert that has killed thousands of people and disappeared thousands. And yet, um, there's literal, there's like practically no help for, for the families who then experienced one of these tragedies. It's so sad. It's, it's so, so tragic. Can't even imagine trying to look for them because they could be anywhere. And, oh, man. And, um, thank you for doing that. Could you give me kind of give us an idea? An example of, of somebody who was missing and, and then found through your organization, if you can remember. Yeah, I mean, there's, um, there are unfortunately thousands of open cases of people who have, we don't know where they are. Um, you know, Colibri has had some really good success, you know, um, in helping to identify, um, um, folks. And sometimes these cases can be very, very old. You know, a body is found. It sits, it gets, DNA sample gets, gets, gets, um, gets taken. And then, um, years go by before you have a, cause you need the comparative DNA sample to, to, to run the match. And, um, you know, if a family member doesn't know that someone has gone missing in the Arizona desert, they don't know who to call. Um, and even if they do, you know, they might live in some rural part of Latin America where it's difficult to get a DNA sample. And so, um, these processes can be, can be very, um, Prolonged, um, because of a variety of reasons. Um, I think for me, the probably the, you know, before I was involved with. With Colibri, but still working on this, on this, on this topic. Uh, and this is kind of the subject of my, of, of part of my first book, you know, we, we found the, the body of a, of a 31 year old mother of three from Ecuador in 20, in 2012, a woman named, uh, Carmita Maricela Zawipuya, who was from Ecuador, had migrated to kind of help support her, her children who were, who, who stayed behind. Um, she got very sick, uh, walking in the desert. And, um, you know, had a pre existing kidney condition that probably exact was exacerbated by extreme dehydration and she was left behind, you know, by her smuggler and unfortunately died in, in the desert. Um, when we found her, she had only probably been dead a couple of, a couple of days. Um, and so they were, they were able to, um. You know, take her fingerprints and we're able to match it through, you know, the work at Colibri and through the medical and through the medical examiner. Um, but a lot of people. You know, they die and the desert has, the forensic work that we've done has shown that, you know, the desert can destroy a body in a matter of, of days or weeks. And so, there are many people who have expired out there and who will never be found because the remains have just been, have been destroyed by, um, you know, by, by, by nature. Um, but it's a, yeah, I mean, it's a, it's a, you know, and we've, we, we, over the last probably five years, we've done this exhibition called Hostile Terrain 94, which is a, Um, uh, interactive exhibition about migrant death, where people volunteers come to an exhibition space, they fill out toe tags that represent the over 4200 remains that have been found in Arizona, and then they mount them, um, onto a giant map of Arizona in the exact location of where those folks were found. And if you look at that, that map online, people can can search to search hostile terrain 94, and you'll see, you know, a lot of images of it because we've done it in over 100, 100 locations around the globe. Um, but the map itself. The toe tags are color coded. So there's manila tags that have are people who have been identified. And then the orange tags, which is about 1300, 1400 represent unidentified remains. And, you know, you can look at this map and just get a sense of how, of how, um, you know, how big this problem is. Um, and for people who. Oh, yeah. You know, who are, who are Los Angeles based, you know, we always do, um, a version of, of hostile terrain at the, the Hollywood forever cemetery on day of the dead. And so that, that, that exhibition will be up in, um, in about a, in about a month and a half. Um, but that's so important, you know, one of the ways that we, that we try to raise awareness about, about this issue and, you know, and kind of connect the dots from, you know, this, these stories of people to something that, you know, that's tangible that people can look at, they can engage with and hopefully learn more about, you know, what's, what's actually happening along the border. Definitely, you need a visual because people need to be able to see it and having a map like that will really wake people up reading statistics, you know, things like that is, is, is helpful, but it's not the same when you see it in front of you, and I'm looking forward to seeing that I'm going to look into that for sure. This work is incredibly, incredibly difficult. Um, how do you keep yourself going? No, kind of keeping positive. You said you're, you've been, you know, you've worked on yourself and you've become a lot better in general. Um, but what, what keeps you kind of going and not going down a rabbit hole of, of, you know, depression and things like that. I mean, people who work in this type of industry, it's, it's, it's very challenging even for the service providers as well. And I think that, you know, like, because I'm not, trained as like a social worker or, you know, I mean, I'm coming at this from the sort of lens of anthropology. And one of the things that, that struck me, um, was the fact that nobody was really talking about within my discipline about like self care. I mean, it's, it we're talking about now, but, you know, 15 years ago, it was like, you know, You know, you just suck it up and do it. And, and I think for me now, you know, and a big part of the, of the work that the UMP does in general is, you know, I work with a lot of students, graduate students, undergrads. I have a lot of collaborators who work, we work on various projects around this, around these issues. And I really try to foster a productive and supportive dialogue constantly. And so we have lots of. You know, of meetings where we just sit down and talk about how we're feeling, how are we going to keep doing this? Do we need to take a break? Um, do we need to pivot so that we can kind of recharge our battery and come back and do this again? And, um, I find that to be, you know, to be super helpful. And, um, but I've had to learn. Kind of along, along the way. I mean, even with, with soldiers and Kings, you know, after my, my friend Roberto died, was murdered in the first year of that project, I had to really step away from everything. And at that point I didn't know if I was even going to continue being an anthropologist. It just felt like it was too much. Um, and so it was just like going back. doing some readings, thinking about, okay, why am I here? Is this going to, is this work going to be beneficial to others, but also is it going to, is it going to help me, you know, can I do it in a way that it's going to feel productive and not, and not really just, you know, personally destructive. But it's, yeah, I think it's an ongoing dialogue. And I, and I imagine that it's like, I don't have it totally figured out other than I know that I've got to keep working on it and it'll be working on, I'll be working on it in different ways, probably for the rest of my, you know, my, my career. Absolutely. Absolutely. I don't think anybody's solved it for sure. Yeah. I mean, cause the, cause the burnout is very, very real. Oh my goodness. And our staff who, you know, who work in Arizona, I mean, who are picking up the phone and talking to someone who is missing a loved one, I mean, that really wears on you. And um, you know, I think there's a reason why there's such high turnover in these kind of nonprofit sectors that work on some of these issues because, I mean, it, it, it'll destroy you if you let it. Yes. Absolutely. Yes. Um, how, how can people help with that project, the undocumented migration project? You know, people can can check out our website, you know, that you could make a tax deductible donation that that money goes to help families, it goes to help DNA, it goes to help with a lot of our our public outreach projects that we have going on. Um, you know, we are. We are now, I mean, we've done a lot of outreach in, in immigrant community, migrant communities, sending communities in Latin America around like missing persons reports, DNA and that sort of stuff. But, um, I'm increasingly interested too, in like, how can we work with these communities in ways it's not so difficult or doom and gloom? Like, are there, are there things that we could be doing there to help uplift these communities in different ways that, um, and so we've been doing a lot of outreach with. with kids who live in these communities where there's a high likelihood that they're going to have to migrate. And so we've been trying to do storytelling workshops with them, teaching them things like, you know, photography, we've got a new, um, music based storytelling project that we're hoping to, to develop. Um, and so people can, you know, can, can get involved and support that stuff in, in different ways. But, but I think also in general, just, just getting informed and understanding, you know, um, Why people are crossing why they're dying in the desert, all those kinds of things. I mean, this is a such an important year for understanding these things. And I think people, we have to be able to. We have, we, we need knowledge so that we can ask better questions and not just, I mean, I mean, I'm obviously, I'm very supportive of Kamala Harris and, and this, this campaign that's coming up, but this is the same person who, you know, four years ago stood in front of a room full of reporters in Guatemala and told Latin America to stop coming. Exactly. And I'm like, you know, the, the tone deaf kind of response. Um is troubling and so I think we need to we need to have the knowledge about what's actually happening so we can ask Those tough questions like like, you know, if we just say Don't come here. We're all out of room I mean as if that's going to stop global warming as if that's going to stop right, you know Corruption and and poverty and all these kind of things. I mean we need we need better Um a better take on this stuff and I think we can't do that unless we're we're we're knowledgeable about what's happening, right? Right. It's it's a telling people to stop coming is not helpful. It's not helpful at all. It doesn't, uh, it doesn't deter people. It does. I mean, they, they, they are here because they really, really need to. You know, I mean, it's how hard it is to leave everything you have and to travel and how, and, and pay these human smugglers and, and risk their lives and lose loved ones. I mean, it is an awful, awful process that is created by the governments. Um, And, and you mentioned also, you know, we, I feel like we need to change the narrative. And there's a lot of, a lot of journalists trying to do this in terms of the vocabulary, like you said, talking about human trafficking and equating it to human smuggling and the, the discussion, the narrative. Needs to change. Um, and it's really all when you watch TV, it's all bad. It's just all these terrorists and criminals coming through it, you know, and, and it, it's unbelievable when I watch, I can't even watch it anymore. And I wish that, you know, more people were educated on these issues to not, to not fall into that propaganda. Um, but I feel like the news has gotten worse over time. Well, and I think part of it is. It's very difficult to tell a new migration story because people think we already know, you know, I already know I mean and someone I'm like, I like live and breathe this stuff. I opened up the New York Times and I just skipped through these. I'm like, I'm not going to read the story. I already know what the story is about. It's the same narrative over and over again. And and if I'm like, bored of that, I think, like, don't want to even engage with it. The average person definitely doesn't want to engage with that stuff, because they're, they're, they're sick of it too, sick of hearing these same, these, these same narratives. And so for me, my job is to try to tell a new kind of story that will get people to engage with it in a different way. I mean, one of the goals of the, of the smuggling book was to say, okay, I'm gonna write a book about smugglers. And people. Probably want to pick it up because you think it's just going to be a salacious story of, you know, a violence and, and, and they already kind of, you know, know what they're going to, what they're getting into and obviously those things are there, but then, but then, oh, wait, but this is actually also a story about climate change. This is a story about empathy. This is a story about, about hope and making difficult decisions. Um, for me, that's always the, you know, the, the kind of goal. I mean, the same thing with, with my first book project. I don't think of it. I don't think of these as like migration stories. I think of stories about people who live interesting, fascinating lives that we can all kind of relate to on, on some level. It just so happens to be that they're also migrants. Right. And I think that's, that's part of this, of the shift that needs to happen is we need to be able to, to tell these human stories that people can relate to and not just equate to like, Oh, that's a migration story. That's a migrant thing. And, and migrants are somehow less human than, than, than I am. I mean, I think that's part of this whole, of this whole problem is that, um, it's like this us, them kind of, you know, that's perpetuated oftentimes by the way in which the stories themselves are told. That's true. That is so true. So if people want to find your books, where, where should they go? I just go to Amazon. Um, actually I can, I can always tell when it's cause my first book gets taught a lot in intro to anthropology courses, even though it's not, it's not a textbook. I mean, it really is. It's, it's a, it's a story about, about all these folks who go through these difficult things in the Arizona desert. But right now, I mean, that book is on sale, you know, 40 percent off on, on Amazon. Um, but, um, and Soldiers and Kings, I mean, there are all major, major book outlets. I think, um, um, carry, carry both of those, both of those projects right now. And if you have Spotify, I mean, um, the, um, um, I, I do the audio for the, for the new, for the new book for Soldiers and Kings. And so that, that's on all of those platforms as well. The, um, audio versions. Great, great. That's awesome. Yeah. Thank you so much, Professor de Leon. This was a pleasure having you hearing something different about a different side of the migration story and, um, I hope, I hope everybody, everybody needs to read your books and, and I hope your, your, uh, students are learning a bunch in your classrooms as well. And I, I, I'm sure they are. Um, let me know anytime if, if you ever need anything from me, I'm happy to help in both the nonprofit and in, you know, telling your stories. So thank you so much. Jason, and uh, I hope you can come back. Thank you so much for having me, it's been a pleasure. This podcast is intended for general education and informational purposes only, and should not be regarded as either legal advice or a legal opinion. You should not act upon or use this publication or any of its contents for any specific situation. Recipients are cautioned to obtain legal advice from their legal counsel with respect to any decision or course of action contemplated in a specific situation. Clark Hill PLC and its attorneys provide legal advice only after establishing an attorney client relationship through a written attorney client engagement agreement. This recording does not establish an attorney client relationship with any recipient.