Sheds light on one of the most pressing political issues of our time-the human consequences of US immigration policy. This book reveals the suffering and deaths that occur daily in the Sonoran Desert of Arizona as thousands of undocumented migrants attempt to cross the border from Mexico into the United States.

Introduction PART ONE. THIS HARD LAND 1. Prevention Through Deterrence 2. Dangerous Ground 3. Necroviolence PART TWO. EL CAMINO 4. Memo and Lucho 5. Deported 6. Technological Warfare 7. The Crossing PART THREE. PERILOUS TERRAIN 8. Exposure 9. You Can't Leave Them Behind 10. Maricela 11. We Will Wait until You Get Here 12. Epilogue Acknowledgments Appendix A. Border Patrol Apprehensions, Southern Border Sectors, 2000-2014 Appendix B. Border Patrol Apprehensions, Tucson Sector, by Distance from the Border, Fiscal Years 2010 and 2011 Notes References Index

"De León confronts us with a vivid indictment of the killing fields on the US-Mexico border and reveals the brutality of global inequality in all its goriness and intimate suffering. A self-described refugee from archaeology, De León is revitalizing the field of anthropology by blowing apart the traditional subdisciplinary boundaries. With no holds barred, he offers new paths for theory, methods, and public anthropology."—Philippe Bourgois, author of Righteous Dopefiend and In Search of Respect: Selling Crack in El Barrio

"Jason De León has written a remarkable book. I know of no other ethnography of life and death on the borderlands that is more moving, theoretically ambitious, or powerful than this eagerly awaited work."—María Elena García, author of Making Indigenous Citizens: Identities, Education, and Multicultural Development in Peru

"This book sears itself into your memory. You literally can’t put it down."—Stanley Brandes, Robert H. Lowie Professor of Anthropology, UC Berkeley

"An impressive piece of scholarship, The Land of Open Graves is a brilliant and important book that humanizes the realities of life and death on the migrant trail in southern Arizona."—Randall H. McGuire, author of Archaeology as Political Action

"Jason De León has written that rare and precious book—a masterful deployment of tools from across the broad spectrum of anthropology."—Danny Hoffman, author of The War Machines: Young Men and Violence in Sierra Leone and Liberia

"The Land of Open Graves is a politically, theoretically, and morally important book that mobilizes the four fields of anthropology to demonstrate beyond a doubt how current US border defense policy results in deliberate death. Beautifully written and engaging, it is a must-read for the general public and students across the social sciences."—Lynn Stephen, author of Transborder Lives: Indigenous Oaxacans in Mexico, California, and Oregon and We Are the Face of Oaxaca: Testimony and Social Movements