The Land of Open Graves: Living and Dying on the Migrant Trail

At a deportation center in Nogales, De León writes that “as immigration control has ratcheted up […] so too has the use of deportation as a routinised disciplinary method” (108). Although deportation is an essential element of the social process of undocumented migration into the United States, there has been little ethnographic work focusing on what it looks like, how it’s experienced, and its relationship to other aspects of border crossing. De León provides firsthand accounts of the state-sanctioned suffering and death that Prevention by Deterrence and its use of the desert as a scapegoat enable.

Whereas in the decades leading up to the immigration reforms of the mid-2000s, undocumented immigrants were typically returned over the border with minimal processing in a procedure known as voluntary departure, now there is a stricter policy called “enforcement with consequences” (109). This often results in a game of “catch and release” between Border Patrol and migrants who try to cross the border as many times as their courage permits them. However, since 2005, the Department of Homeland Security has been experimenting with new types of deportation procedures, such as court-hearings and prison sentences. For example, a repeat offender can find themselves charged with felony reentry, which “generally carries a two-year maximum penalty or up to twenty years in prison if the defendant has a criminal record” (110). A procedure known as Operation Streamline, which aims to catch migrants out, takes place five days a week in California, Arizona, and Texas. However, given that the federal courthouses can often only process a maximum of 70 cases a day, it is a matter of chance as to whether detainees will appear before a judge. Most who are tried will receive a sentence of up to 180 days, though the average time detained is 30 days.

To discourage deportees from returning and making a second attempt to cross the border, Border Patrol drops them off at a port of entry distant from where they made their crossing attempt. De León contends that this practice is less about disrupting human traffickers or protecting people than it is about “disorienting deportees and literally placing them in harm’s way” (115). Whereas finding a coyote (a person whose job it is to smuggle people) from one’s own town is the safest option for a second attempt at crossing the border:

[B]y sending people to a foreign border town and disconnecting them from a smuggler with whom they may have had some social tie, the Border Patrol simultaneously places people in a geographically hostile environment and encourages them to contract an unfamiliar smuggler who is more likely to rob them than help them cross over (115).

The narrow strip of land along the border wall with the Grupo Beta Office and where deportees usually end up is called la linea by migrants. De León considers it a scene of infinite human variety. It is full of recently deported migrants who are eager to retry their luck. Then there is the common story of families being split up on either side of the border. De León notes that in the Obama era of mass deportations, the phrase “I have to see my kids” (125) was a common refrain for deportees.

Given the hardships on la linea, friendships both genuine and of convenience emerge. There are also angels “of mercy” such as Chuco, who walks up and down la linea, handing out water, toothbrushes, and razors to migrants. Life is especially difficult for women, who are vulnerable to physical and sexual assault, false promises of finding relatives in exchange for sexual favors, and an inability to work and gather sufficient funds for their crossing due to childcare responsibilities.

De León concludes that la linea is a place characterized by cyclical movement, of people attempting to make a crossing, being apprehended, and trying again. He concludes that “the complexities of the post-deportation world can rival what people experience in the desert or can be far worse” (143).

De León’s friends, Memo and Lucho, tell him they are going to cross the border and do a preparatory shopping trip at the grocery store, in anticipation of their harsh journey through the desert. The cost of the supplies comes to $26, which does not seem like much in US money, but owing to the high cost of living in Mexico, where a pizza costs as much as a day’s wages, they worked for weeks to raise sufficient funds for the crossing. As they pack, Memo and Lucho continue to crack jokes, brandishing a tiny toy gun for scaring away desert animals. Still, De León is concerned that owing to the number of calories they will burn in the desert, they will only have sufficient food for four days. It is an emotional goodbye for De León when his two friends head to the desert.

Whereas Memo and Lucho spent only $26 preparing for their crossing, their rivals, the Border Patrol agents, are equipped with billions of dollars’ worth of boundary enforcements. On a tour of the Border Patrol headquarters, De León was especially impressed by an assault rifle, which “can fire 750 rounds a minute and has a muzzle velocity of 950 meters per second” (154). Nevertheless, despite the disparity between the crossers’ meager technology for crossing the desert and the Border Patrol’s high-tech provisions, the crossers “routinely find new and inventive ways” to get through (156).

At the time that De León was writing his book, 351 miles of the 1,954-mile border that existed between the United States and Mexico were walled. De León considers that:

[D]espite the evidence that the border wall is no match for catapults, car jacks and other forms of human ingenuity, the United States can’t seem to shake the fixation that building more of it will somehow solve many of our country’s economic and social problems (156).

The wall is a fixation of conservative politicians; for example, on his 2011 election campaign, Republican candidate Herman Cain:

[R]eceived thunderous applause while making the following statement to a crowd in Cookeville, Tennessee, regarding his plans for immigration security: ‘we’ll have a real fence. Twenty feet high with barbed wire. Electrified with a sign on the other side that says, ‘It can kill you’ (156).

De León wonders which laborers Cain would use to build his wall and makes the ironic suggestion of using “the California-based construction firm that was fined in 2006 for hiring undocumented laborers to help build the border wall between Tijuana and San Ysidro” (156).

De León considers that the Border Patrol agents know that walls do not prevent migration and that “the best and most lethal weapon the Border Patrol has is nature” (158). Along some parts of the border, there are no walls, just “a three-strand barbed-wire fence or nothing at all,” and in Walker Canyon, “there is even an unlocked gate you can open and close at will” (158). This is all part of Border Patrol’s plan, as “catching someone at the moment of entry and deporting them back to Mexico leaves the person relatively fresh and energized to try again right away” (158). They recognize that “it is better to let migrants to go a few rounds with heat stroke, bajadores, and whatever else they might encounter in the wilderness” (159). Only “after they have had some licks” do Border Patrol agents hunt people down and march them back to Mexico (159). One candid border agent admitted to anthropologist Rocío Magaña that migrant exhaustion facilitated his ability to deport people. Customs and Border Protection statistics support this trend, as between 2010 and 2011, only 21% of apprehension in the Tucson Sector happened within a mile of the border. The vast majority of those apprehended “spent a significant amount of time experiencing the Sonoran hybrid collectif’s choke hold” (160).

In Mexico, whole industries have sprung up to make crossing more successful. For one, there are specialized vendors who sell camouflaged backpacks and high salt content food for inflated prices. There is also the knowledge that migrants themselves gain after making several failed attempts: “the trauma induced by extreme dehydration and punishing terrain on a first failed crossing attempt makes for a steep learning curve if you survive” (163). Mexicans joke that for them, there are no borders.

When Memo and Lucho fail at their latest crossing attempt, after they get caught, they sink into a deep, exhausted depression, appearing “ghosts of themselves” (164). After an evening of drink and an impetus to violence, they repeat how they must cross the border like a mantra.

De León gets a phone call from Memo and Lucho, who have safely made it into Arizona, though their trailer seems perilously close to the border. When he asks them to recount their journey, it is with the awareness that “the act of remembering can conjure pain, fear, and despair. Among American families with undocumented members, it is not uncommon for the topic of their crossing to be a forbidden subject” (168).

De León outlines Memo and Lucho’s final crossing using a combination of interview excerpts and the photographs they took en route. He feels privileged to include their narrative in his work, but considers that it is important to acknowledge these undocumented migrants’ stories, because, “like other immigrant groups before them, these Latino families may have to wait one or more generations before reaching a status in US society that allows them to vocalize their migration experiences without trepidation or shame” (168).

Given that these stories may become sanitized over time, De León draws attention to the importance of using an archeological approach in order to examine the abandoned objects that border crossers have left behind. Doing so “can foster engagements with the recent past and its material remains in novel and meaningful ways and produce new information that may be lost in narrative translations of history, collective memories, or accounts of individual experiences” (172). This “breadcrumb trail of ripped clothes and bone-dry water bottles” is “American immigration history in the making” (170). Anti-immigration activists refer to these discarded objects as “migrant ‘trash,’” as though they are symptomatic of what migrants will do once they enter the country (170).

The Undocumented Migration Project has used an archeological approach to create a typology of migrant sites, an analysis of the wear patterns on recovered objects and relative dating techniques that illuminate how the social process of clandestine migration has evolved over time. Coupled with personal testimonies, De León considers that this is the closest we can get to understanding what happens on the migrant trail.

Archeologists on the migrant trail often find it useful to visit “layups,” a term used by Border Patrol to describe the places where migrants eat, rest, shade, and hide from law enforcement who may deport them. Archeologists have developed a typology to better analyze these layups, which include:

[C]ampsites where people congregate and rest for a period ranging from a few hours to an entire night; rest sites where people stop briefly and consume food and beverages; pickup sites where migrants dump all of their desert supplies and get picked up by smugglers in vehicles; and religious shrines where offerings are left to ensure a safe journey (176).

There are also border-staging areas, where immigrants wait for the right time to cross.

Many of the sites used by border crossers are also employed by drug mules. While the latter tend to leave a lighter archeological footprint, distinguishing between the two groups can be complicated by the fact that some border crossers work as burreros to pay for their crossing fees and so appear to be carrying the same equipment. Shoes are especially valuable to archeologists, who want to detect use-wear and the kind of suffering people experience crossing the desert. A pair of abandoned shoes in the desert often indicate someone who was left behind on the migrant trail.

Dating the evidence found on the migrant trail can present a challenge to archeologists. Some of it may be extremely recent, and ephemera such as bus tickets can give precise dates, whereas more relative clues, such as the development of rust on an object, can be more complicated to construct a timeline for. Further:

[U]nlike ancient sites buried under stratigraphic layers of dirt and gravel, these migrant archeological contexts are alive and dynamic. What is recorded today may drastically change tomorrow as a locale is destroyed through environmental conditions or modified by other people passing through (187).

The reason that so many objects are abandoned on the trail is not, as some racist anti-immigration activists say, because border crossers have insufficient regard for the environment, but rather because their exhausted bodies can no longer withstand the weight of nonessential possessions. Also, at the final stage of movement through the desert, the pickup site—that is, the area where coyotes arrange for vehicle transportation for border crossers—is the place where crossers are forced to clean up their appearance and discard any obvious traces of the desert. During this often-chaotic transformation, crossers can lose valuable personal effects, such as identification cards, photos, and other valuables.

Memo and Lucho consider that they were successful in their crossing because they only crossed in the most remote, most difficult areas, where there were giant rocks and mountains rather than roads and trails. After their crossing, the two men are traumatized, often suffering nightmares and “hitting the bottle hard” (196). Moreover, in 2015, when De León catches up with the two men, more than five years after their journey, he realizes that their “memories of the event and the months spent in Nogales have been affected by the passage of time” (197). Some of this self-editing is conscious, and done as a matter of coping; interestingly, while Memo’s retelling is funnier, Lucho’s is more reflective. For Memo, the fact that he made the crossing is a point of gratitude and even a feeling that he has been “reborn,” but he also has a vision of returning to Mexico when he has enough money to support himself (201).

De León considers that his archeological approach “may also help correct erroneous characterizations of the crossing process that are written by those in power or by those invested in demonizing Latino migrants and distinguishing them from previous generations of ‘noble’ immigrants” (197). The Latinx immigration story also may be lost because of the invisibility of undocumented immigrants, who continue to live in Agamben’s “state of exception” (199): “Immigrants are tolerated when they do the jobs that citizens won’t, but the American public has little interest in hearing their voices, preserving their history, or affording them any rights” (199). Given concerted federal and state efforts to clear the desert of migrant traces, there is a high possibility that the story of these crossings will be lost. Memo, however, keeps his camouflage backpack as a memento of his journey.