Jason De León

Jason De León is a professor of anthropology and Chicana/o and Central American studies. He is an expert on the study of migration and the human consequences of immigration policy, with a focus on undocumented migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border. He also serves as director of UCLA’s Cotsen Institute of Archaeology. 

He was a 2017 Macarthur Genius fellow and is the author of “The Land of Open Graves: Living and Dying on the Sonoran Desert Migrant Trail.” His latest publication “Soldiers and Kings: Survival and Hope in the World of Human Smuggling” is the first ever in-depth, character-driven look at human smuggling. 

De León is executive director of the Undocumented Migration Project, a long-term anthropological study of clandestine migration between Latin America and the United States that uses a combination of ethnographic, visual, archaeological and forensic approaches to understanding this violent social process. 

To reach De León, email him at [email protected].