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

The subject of Jason De León’s book is “the violence and death that border crossers face on a daily basis as they attempt to enter the United States without authorization by walking across the vast Sonoran Desert of Arizona” (3). Those who successfully cross the border do the backbreaking essential jobs that United States citizens are themselves reluctant to do, such as meat processing and fruit-picking. Many of those crossing the desert have made several attempts to do so, as their lives fall into a pattern of illegal border crossing and deportation. In 2013 alone, nearly 2 million illegal migrants were removed from the country. A large proportion of deportees are now “running scared across Arizona’s Mars-like landscape” as they seek ways to return to their families and homes (3).

De León’s argument is that the death, disfigurement, and sexual abuse that migrating people experience en route “are neither random nor senseless, but part of a strategic federal plan,” a “killing machine that simultaneously uses and hides behind the viciousness of the Sonora Desert” (3-4). As a result, Border Patrol seeks to redirect blame onto the natural landscape and “render invisible” the innumerable consequences that migration and deportation have for the migrants involved (4).