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This is on point. I'm Magna Chakrabardi.

We're joined today by Jason De Leon.

He's a professor of anthropology and Chicana Chicano studies at UCLA.

He's also executive director of the Unddocumented Migration Project.

And he's author of the book Soldiers and Kings, Survival and Hope in the World of Human Sm. The book chronicles the nearly seven years

he spent embedded with a group of smugglers moving migrants across Central

America and Mexico and eventually across the US border.

Professor Daylon, welcome to Onpoint.

Thank you so much for having me.

So I'm hoping to hear a lot of stories from you

about a world that basically almost none of us know or

understand very well. So can you start by telling us about someone you talk about

in the book Roberto when did you first meet him?

You know Roberto was a young kid,

a 19 year old kid from Honduras who I met

the very beginning of this project and it was actually a funny I mean I had been

kind of wrapping up a project on migration and was ready to move on to a

totally different subject and was in southern Mexico working in a migrant shelter

with a run by a bunch of nuns and the nun said to me

whatever you do don't go outside don't go to the train tracks that's where you're

...