09-02-2025
Researcher to cover migration and human smuggling in upcoming talk
As he was growing up, migration was a familiar concept for Jason De León, an anthropologist, researcher and author whose most recent book details up-close accounts of the lives of human smugglers and the migrants they guide.
The book, which was partially written in Santa Fe, will steer the topic of discussion at the School for Advanced Research's annual Mellon Lecture at 5:30 p.m. Thursday at SITE Santa Fe.
De León, who was one of the school's Weatherhead Resident Scholars in 2013 and 2014, returns to Santa Fe, his "favorite place to write and think," not to pen words this time but to talk about his book Soldiers and Kings: Survival and Hope in the World of Human Smuggling.
De León grew up surrounded by undocumented family members in Los Angeles and South Texas and was raised by parents who were immigrants from the Philippines and Mexico.
"I think immigration and borders were something that was always sort of there in my thinking and my background, but it wasn't something that I ever really considered in terms of a research subject," said De León, 47, a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Working on excavations as a college student studying archeology in Mexico, De León began hearing stories and experiences related to migration that stuck with him.
"I found that over time, I became more and more interested in the things that they were telling me as opposed to the things that were that were coming out of the ground," De León said.
That sparked a 17-year journey in which he launched the Undocumented Migration Project — a nonprofit research and education collective that facilitated years of field work between 2009 and 2012 studying border crossings — and wrote two award-winning books published.
Soldiers and Kings, his most recent, won a National Book Award for nonfiction in November and is inspired by seven years of field work between 2015 and 2022 documenting the lives of Honduran human smugglers, or self-described migrant guides, in Mexico.
Book examines messy realities of smuggling
De León's experiences were marked by both enlightenment and tragedy. Within the first year, one of the primary smugglers De León had been interacting and talking with, a young man named Juan Roberto Paredes, was murdered. Paredes, a primary character in the book, was the one who pressed De León to write about smugglers in the first place.
"It was sort of his death that made me both question everything that I was doing as a researcher and whether or not I had any business trying to understand this stuff, but also was someone who kind of inspired me to follow through and to see what I could say about this young person's life that was cut so short," De León recalled.
De León sought to explore the messy topic with honesty in order to better understand migration, which he said can't be understood without understanding human smuggling.
"Just because things are are brutal and unpopular and ugly does not mean that we shouldn't be spending our time and energy to understand them," De León said.
One of the biggest misconceptions he said people have about human smuggling is that it is the same as human trafficking, with many fusing the two concepts.
"Human trafficking happens against people's will," De León said. "People who are smuggled are paying someone to be smuggled."
In his talk, De León said he hopes to convey how migration is set up as a system of labor in which smugglers provide a service to migrants, assisting them in traveling from point A to point B. He will also cover how Americans benefit from the labor of smugglers while simultaneously viewing immigrants as "public enemy number one" and "scapegoats" for many issues.
De León's earlier work with the Undocumented Migration Project and his first book, The Land of Open Graves: Living and Dying on the Migrant Trail, attempted to shift public perception and create empathy for immigrants by sharing the stories of thousands who have died making the journey to the U.S.
But De León has since pivoted from empathy as the goal. Instead, he now tries to reach people who prefer conversations around the economy, policy, systems and other global issues. For example, he sometimes tells immigration opponents they should become climate change or foreign policy activists if they really want to stop undocumented immigration, noting the growing severity of natural disasters and instability are among the biggest drivers pushing more migrants to make the increasingly treacherous journey to the U.S.
Author thinks tougher policies won't help
Over the next few months, De León said immigration will likely stall in response to the Trump administration's policies but will pick up again in no time. Smugglers will even benefit from President Donald Trump's policies, he said, as they will be able to charge more. Migrants won't be deterred, he predicts, as even thousands of deaths do not stop more from making the journey.
"They know it's dangerous, and they are still coming because they tell themselves, 'Well, I could die in Honduras of starvation or be murdered on a street corner, or I can die in the Arizona desert, but at least in the Arizona desert, I'm taking my life into my own hands and I'm choosing my own destiny,' " De León said.
De León believes the issues surrounding migration can not be bettered with one solution, such as a border wall, but rather will require a multifaceted approach and an understanding of the bigger picture — as well as hope and empathy.
"I learned a lot about how people hang on to hope and how people try to make the best decision for themselves and for their families in the most dire circumstances," De León said. "We can demonize people as much as we want from the ivory tower or the United States but people are as complicated as Americans are, and are struggling to make ends meet."
De León says he hopes his lecture, which will be followed by a Q&A, helps people to see the bigger picture of migration, ask better questions and lay a foundation for more nuanced conversations about root-cause solutions.
"Soldiers and Kings is really a book about everyday struggles, and it's not about migrants, it's not about smugglers," De León said. "It's about people who happen to be migrating, people who happen to be involved in smuggling, but who are much more than that."
