define migrant education

Migrant Education Program

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Fidelity of Strategy Implementation

The Washington State Migrant Education Program Fidelity of Strategy Implementation 2022-23 is an annual reflection of local program’s efforts to implement strategies in support of the State Service Delivery Plan.

• Contact Information

Sylvia Reyna

Armando isais-garcia, carlos gonzalez, griselda guevara-cruz, ceair st.onge.

The Washington State Migrant Education Program (MEP) is federally funded to ensure high-quality education programs and supplemental support services for migratory children. Migratory families often have trouble receiving continuous, high-quality educational services because of their high rate of mobility, cultural and language barriers, social isolation, health-related problems, disruption of their children’s education, and the lack of resources in the areas in which they live and work.

MEP Requirements & Materials

Mep identification & recruitment.

Identifying and recruiting eligible migratory children quickly and efficiently is the foundation of a robust Migrant Education Program. Before migratory children can be served, however, they must be found and enrolled into the MEP without delay.

• MEP-funded school districts must have a recruiter as part of their sub-grant. The school district recruiter(s) conduct ID&R activities within their district boundaries. You can access a list of MEP-Funded school districts and MEP staff through the following directory .
• State recruiters are authorized to conduct ID&R in Non-MEP-Funded school districts via a contract agreement between WA-MEP and Sunnyside School District’s Migrant Student Data, Recruitment, and Support (MSDRS) office. You can access more information on MSDRS and a list of state recruiters through the MSDRS website .

MEP Eligibility

A child is a “migratory child” if the following conditions are met:

• The child is not older than 21 years of age; and
• the child is entitled to a free public education (through grade 12) under state law, or
• the child is not yet at a grade level at which the LEA provides free public education; and
• The child made a qualifying move in the preceding 36 months as a migratory agricultural worker or migratory fisher, or did so with, or to join a parent/guardian or spouse who is a migratory agricultural worker or a migratory fisher; and
• With regard to the qualifying move identified above, the child moved due to economic necessity from one residence to another residence, and
• From one school district to another; or
• In a state that is comprised of a single school district, has moved from one administrative area to another with such district; or
• Resides in a school district of more than 15,000 square miles and migrates a distance of 20 miles or more to a temporary residence.

Questions? Please contact Carlos Gonzalez

The Migrant Education Program is authorized under Part C of Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, as amended. Federal funds are allocated to OSPI based on per pupil expenditure for education and counts of eligible migratory children, age 3 through 21, residing within the state. OSPI authorizes the sub-grants to local education agencies (school districts), institutions of higher education, and other public and nonprofit agencies.

Services to migrant children and their families may include:

• Supplemental academic programs to assist in the achievement of state academic standards
• Instructional training
• Health programs
• Preschool programs (readiness, transitioning to elementary education)
• Family home visiting and academic counseling services
• Parental involvement
• Migrant student data and collection
• Student leadership opportunities
• Summer schools programs
• Secondary credit accrual and exchange
• Grants for supplemental secondary services, dropout prevention and retrieval, and alternative education programs; and
• Dissemination of information

The migrant program ensures appropriate consultation with migrant parents and local education agencies through the Washington State Migrant Education Parent Advisory Committee . The program must also ensure program objectives are being addressed through compliance reviews of its sub-grantees.

New MEP Applicants

For districts who are interested in applying for a migrant program grant for the first time, the following items should be considered:

• How many eligible migrant students are currently in the district?
• What type of services do they need?
• What support is the district currently providing?
• What adjustments has the district made to help meet the migrant students' needs?
• Despite adjustments and current support, do the students need additional support?
• What other resources has the district considered (i.e., Title I, Emergency Immigrant, State Transitional Bilingual Instruction Program, etc.)?

After this self-evaluation process, districts in need of additional support, should contact the nearest Educational Service District (ESD) Migrant Education Office to inform them of their interest in applying for migrant funds. The ESD will work with the district on migrant students' needs and program planning and notify OSPI of the district's request for migrant funds.

Returning MEP Applicants

Local school districts who received a sub-grant from the Washington State Migrant Education Program (MEP) in the past can access a grant application through OSPI's online application on iGrants .

At the end of the program period (6/30), districts are required to submit an end-of-year report that reflects the services provided and the staff time paid with program funds. Data and services reported to OSPI should be reflected in the individual student records housed at MSDR and should be within the approved size and scope of the grant application.

• Best Practices for Using Technology with Multilingual Families Toolkit
• Migrant Education Program Infographic-English | Spanish
• State Service Delivery Plan 2021-2024
• WA State Migrant Education Program 7 Areas of Opportunity
• Washington State Priority for Service Definition
• 2020-21 MEP Evaluation Report
• Title I, Part C, Migrant Education Non-Regulatory Guidance
• Extended Absences in Migrant/Multilingual Programs
• Federal Programs Director Job Activities
• Migrant Education Health Program

The Washington State Migrant Education Health Program helps eligible migrant students and their families gain access to supplemental health and social services free of charge. Supplemental health and social services may be provided by MEP to help meet the identified needs of migratory children for a limited period, until other federal, state, and local programs for which they are eligible become available.

Parent Advisory Council

The purpose of the Parent Advisory Council (PAC) is for Migrant Education Program staff in coordination with elected or selected parent committee members, and other interested parties to plan, implement and evaluate the local program to continue to provide quality services to migratory children. The voice of migratory parents is essential and required for all phases of the local program.

• Migrant Education Student Resources

The Washington state Migrant Education Program provides services to migrant children and their families. The following resources include programs, guidance, and scholarships for migrant education students.

Migrant Education Workshops & Webinars

The Migrant Education department conducts quarterly program updates throughout the school year. In addition, For example, New Migrant Education Director/English Learner Program Director/ Coordinator Training, EGMS Application Training, and Migrant Education Program Summer Grant Application Training.

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Migrant Students: What We Need to Know to Help Them Succeed

On this page, who are migrant children, barriers to achievement, promising programs, strategies for success, policy recommendations, recommended resources, video: the migrant education program.

It was just after college that I had my first encounter with migrant students and the world of migrant education. Following graduation, I got a job with The Close Up Foundation , a non-profit organization that promoted civic involvement and the study of democracy. The foundation provided a civics and social studies curriculum and materials for middle- and high school teachers to implement in their classes throughout the year. My particular program was targeted to English language learners (ELLs) who were immigrant and/or migrant students.

Through this job, I worked with ESL/ESOL teachers of migrant students and administrators of the Migrant Education Program (MEP) 1 all over the country. I found them to be tireless advocates and passionate in their efforts to teach and serve their students, and learned immensely about migrant families and the educators who work with them. I hope some of those lessons shared in this article will provide a helpful context for educators who work with this unique population of students. These experiences opened my eyes to a reality I was unaware of, and inspired my subsequent work in education throughout all these years.

The historical background, issues, context, and data about migrant students are all too numerous and complex to explore in depth in this article. What follows is a snapshot of demographics (updated where possible), academic achievement data, a discussion of some of the other challenges these students confront as well as promising programs, and some recommendations for educators with migrant students in their classrooms to help them succeed. Additionally, at the end of the article, there is a listing of recommended resources for further information.

Migrant children 2 served by the MEP are children and youth ages 0-21 3 whose families work in the agricultural and/or fisheries industries and who will often move across districts and state lines several times within a 12-36 month period of time, following the various crops by season. It is not unusual for children to also work in the fields, alongside their families, when they're not in school and even during the school year.

The most recent data from the U.S. Department of Education (for the 2021-22 school year) shows that the MEP served a total of 213,569 students nationwide. Of these students, nearly half are ELLs.

Where are they?

Every state, including the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, has migrant students. California, Texas, Florida, Washington, and Oregon serve the most migrant students. (See Table 5A for a related map .)

What is their background?

While the majority of farmworkers are Latino, the population is diversifying. For example, the Shenandoah Migrant Valley Education Program reports that they are serving a growing number of families from North Africa and the Middle East. It is also important to note that many families hailing from Latin America may be Indigenous families who speak Indigenous languages and speak Spanish as a second or third language.

Challenges for migrant families

In 1994, the National Commission on Migrant Education (NCME) released its breakthrough report on the condition of education for school-age migrant children and youth. While there have been improvements, many of the Commission's startling findings still ring true today. At the time the NCME released its report, its findings included the following risk factors (Martinez et al, 1994):

Migrant farmworkers have one of the most labor-intensive, physically-demanding, often hazardous yet grossly undercompensated occupations in the country

Migrant families tend to live in isolation from the communities where they work

It is not uncommon for parents and children to be separated if parents want the children to finish the school year in the same school while they move on to the next work site

Migrant children experience more acute poverty, health problems, health hazards, social alienation, educational disadvantages, mobility and lack of educational opportunities than any other major school population segment

Migrant parents have the lowest levels of educational attainment of any occupational group

Large numbers of migrant students lack English language proficiency (even though most are U.S. citizens) and/or require remedial instruction

Migrant children have one of the highest dropout rates in the nation

Federally-funded programs for migrant children are not sufficiently funded to meet the children's needs

Many migrant farmworkers in Florida will only earn $2.50 per large bucket of peanuts, and they can expect to fill some 10 buckets per person after a long 10-12 hour day.

Poverty, low wages, deplorable and unsafe living/working conditions, interrupted schooling, lack of social mobility and lack of educational opportunities still plague migrant families. Migrant farmworkers still toil long hours in the fields and most live well below the poverty level (Education Week, 2009; LaCroix, 2007; Franquiz et al, 2004).

There are generally no health insurance benefits, paid leave, pensions, workers' compensation benefits, overtime pay, life insurance or other benefits for migrant workers and their families (Branz-Spall et al, 2003).

For additional information about migrant farmworkers, including the increasing numbers of female workers and Indigenous workers, see these data summaries from the National Center for Farmworker Health and Farmworker Justice .

Lesson #1: Migrant parents want their children to have more, different and better opportunities than they ever had.

I recall that on my first trip to a district in southern California, the MEP administrator I was working with had planned a parent orientation meeting to talk about the program. When she scheduled the meeting for 8:00 p.m., I naïvely assumed that parents would be arriving after some "downtime" from work, having eaten dinner and leaving their children in the care of a babysitter. It occurred to me that the refreshments the administrator had laid out seemed more like dinner and that the food would go to waste since people would rather have coffee, tea, and cookies. I envisioned talking about the program's civics coursework, giving out brochures about the featured trip to Washington, DC, and getting parents to sign consent forms. I estimated that it wouldn't take longer than an hour.

Nothing really prepared me for what I would experience that evening. Parents arrived with their children — infants to teenagers — and it was clear they had come directly here from their arduous work in the fields. Some had driven over an hour to get there, and so the meeting started after everyone had eaten dinner and fed their babies, while the older children watched their younger siblings in an adjoining room.

I didn't get too far into my presentation when parents began telling me how much they wanted their children to do better in school, and about all the different problems their children experienced every day. Parents expressed concern about how much time commitment our program required after school since some children were out working in the fields with their parents afterhours. They were also hesitant to sign consent forms, afraid that their children could be reported to immigration officials — even when most of them there were born in the U.S.

After much reassurance, mostly from the administrator in charge of planning the meeting, the majority of parents agreed to let their children participate. Afterwards, as they left, they came up to both of us and thanked us profusely for the opportunity. They told us that they hoped this program would help their kids in the long run so they wouldn't have to work in the fields like they did. This was a very explicit and repeated sentiment at this meeting and at the many others that followed in different parts of the country. It was clear that even though parents felt pride and dignity in their work, they wanted more and better opportunities for their children.

Given these challenges, it is not surprising that most migrant students face multiple barriers to academic achievement, high school completion, and post-secondary attainment. Researchers, experts and advocates (NCBE, 2001; Kindler, 2002; Branz-Spall et al, 2003; Fránquiz & Salinas, 2004; LaCroix, 2007; USDE, 2006; NCES, 2010) have identified some of the following factors as key challenges jeopardizing migrant students' chances to excel academically and later in life:

These include a lack of:

• Access to fully-qualified or adequately prepared teachers and staff
• Enrollment in rigorous, college preparatory coursework
• Participation in challenging grade-level content coursework if students are ELLs
• Resources for unmet instructional needs
• Knowledge about and access to information on higher education or post-secondary vocational options

Other challenges include:

• Disproportionate attendance at high-needs schools with high concentrations of children who are poor and/or who are ELLs
• Large gaps in missed instructional and assessment time
• Missed time and lack of continuity while adjusting to different academic standards, curriculum, expectations, instructional programs, and school environments every time they move
• Being overage in many cases , yet not being able to perform at grade level due to interrupted schooling, late-entry into the country, lack of exposure to high-quality early childhood education prior to Kindergarten
• Difficulty keeping track of high school credits earned for graduation if students attend multiple schools in different states

Graduation rates

One of the most pernicious results of all these impediments is the unacceptably large number of students who drop out. Most of these students will not continue their education, which means they will remain in poverty and marginalized from the communities in which they live. While it is challenging to determine an exact nationwide dropout rate due to inconsistent record-keeping and tracking, different state formulas for calculating dropouts, and other data gathering challenges in trying to follow cohorts of students, all nationwide estimates for the migrant high school dropout rate are exceptionally high. Current estimates for the high school graduation rate of migrant students nationwide are equally difficult to establish. However, participation in migrant programs such as those detailed below can increase a student's chances of staying in school and graduating.

Age and grade gaps

It is not uncommon for migrant students to be at least one year older than their peers, and be at least half a year behind — this is especially true for those migrant students who are also ELLs. It is common knowledge that as students fall behind more and more, they give up the struggle to catch up and end up leaving school before they even reach the 11th or 12th grades. According to a 2018 Education Week report, "Just under 30 percent of migrant education students in the United States scored at or above proficient on their states’ reading/language arts assessments in grades 3-8, according to the 2016 program-performance report from the Migrant State Agency Program, part of the federal Education Department."

Upheaval and disruption

In addition to the barriers to educational achievement outlined above, many migrant children are subjected to the harmful disruptions of:

• Moving in the middle of a school year
• Navigating a new school system and environment multiple times in a school year
• Not having an adequate living space to focus on their studies
• Being physically far away from the resources of the school and the community afterhours and on weekends
• Being separated from family members, teachers, and friends they have gotten to know and trust when they have to move
• Being exposed to numerous hazards when they are working in the fields (lack of safety equipment and gear, pesticides, insecticides, heavy equipment and machinery, toxic fumes, insects, inclement weather, etc.)

Lesson #2: The mainstream community needs to know more about the work and efforts of migrant educators and students.

My work with the MEP program also gave me a new appreciation for the administrators, teachers and other educators of ELL and migrant students. All too often, they were eager to meet with me to talk about their project activities early in the mornings before school started or well after the afterschool activities.

Knowing that I was new to this field and the student population involved, they did everything they could to give me exposure to their work and invited me to observe their classrooms, attend planning meetings, school fairs, and other community events. Their extreme dedication to their students was evident in classrooms that were wallpapered with student work, where objects and furniture were often identified with labels in English and Spanish, and where children were usually enthusiastic, cheerful, and eager to participate and always encouraged to ask questions during lessons.

I also found that many of these teachers and administrators worked in separate sections of the school or had offices that were hard-to-find, hidden cubicles on windowless office floors in school district office buildings or in an annex. It was not unusual for other teachers and staff in schools and district office buildings to not even know that their school or district had a program that funded services for migrant students. In many conversations with administrators, teachers and students, they mentioned how they wished they were more visible to the rest of the school community.

Despite the myriad difficulties that besiege migrant children and their families, scores of them have been successful and have overcome the odds thanks to the joint and coordinated efforts of targeted programs. Their resiliency also comes as a result of their own efforts, as well as the support and encouragement from family, schools, teachers, administrators, community organizers, advocates, foundations, etc. who have instilled in these students the belief that they can rise above their circumstances.

In addition to the Migrant Education Program, these other federally funded programs set up around the country to address the needs of migrant students have the widest reach:

• The High School Equivalency Program (HEP) was established in 1967. HEP works with students who have dropped out of school to get them to acquire their general education diploma or GED. It reaches more than 7,000 students every year.
• The College Assistance Migrant Program (CAMP) was established in 1972. CAMP works with students in their first year of college and helps them with academics, personal issues, and offers financial assistance. Approximately 2,400 migrant students participate annually. Close to 75 percent of all CAMP students graduate with a bachelor's degree.
• Seasonal and Migrant Head Start serves children of migrant and seasonal farm workers who meet income and other eligibility guidelines. Services are for children from six-months to five-years of age. Because of the nature of the work done by the families, the hours of services are longer and the length of program is shorter (fewer months) than traditional Head Start services. It serves close to 35,000 children in 38 states.

There are also smaller, innovative programs that have been developed with Title I Part C funding that focus at the state and district level on dropout prevention, parent involvement, and after school programs. One such program that is well-know is the state consortia-led effort Project SMART (Summer Migrants Access Resources through Technology), which offers distance learning, enriched, engaging coursework, tutoring, televised instructional shows, and videotaped instruction. It was originally piloted in Montana and Texas, but currently operates in 16 states.

Some states like Florida and Montana also have laptop loan programs for migrant students so that they can keep up with their schoolwork, have access to online coursework and/or instructional information on core academic content, and stay connected to the teachers and program staff they have had contact with in the schools where they have been enrolled.

Lesson #3: When given the tools they need to succeed, migrant students rise to the challenge.

The foundation I worked for engaged teachers and students nationwide in its various secondary school programs by providing curriculum and resources for teachers to implement in their civics/history/social studies classes for a whole year. The program culminated in a one-week trip to Washington DC where students and their teachers participated in instructor-led seminars, workshops, and meetings with members of Congress, scholars, government officials, and other policy experts.

The civics curriculum I was helping teachers implement included service learning projects for the duration of the course. These were projects that went beyond routine community service project such as a one-time food or clothes collection for the needy. Teachers and students together would pick a theme or themes they wanted to explore and tied the project/s to corresponding lesson plans. One of the most popular themes for these projects was civic engagement to enact change. Teachers would instruct students about the history, traditions and institutions of democracy, and then students would select a particular topic that the school, community, town or city should address.

One class chose the topic of traffic safety — they wanted the town to put in more stop signs at busy intersections, inform families about the importance of wearing seat belts, and find the funding for a driver's education program at the school. They embarked on a letter writing campaign to the mayor and other locally elected officials, as well as to officials and representatives in their state capitol, followed by appearances at town hall and school board meetings to voice support for their initiatives, made presentations to the community, and partnered with the local radio station to launch a public awareness campaign about these issues.

It was all student-driven, and made the school and community pay attention to these students as active, engaged participants of the school, town and community. By the time students traveled to Washington, DC with their teacher, they were more prepared to share their experiences about civic involvement and its role in a democracy. More importantly, they had the knowledge and confidence to know that their views matter, that they have an important role to play in society.

What can educators do in the classroom to meet the needs of their migrant students, especially those who are ELLs? Some helpful ideas include:

Welcoming students and families

• Creating a positive and welcoming classroom environment by modeling respect for differences, and sharing experiences and values
• Reaching out to the families of migrant students and help them become familiarized and comfortable with the school their children currently attend
• Creating a list of helpful social service resources and advocacy organizations that families can call on
• Encouraging families to sustain their language and maintain strong cultural ties
• Empowering families, students, and educators alike to recognize and harness migrant students' strengths and rich knowledge base, including as part of the curriculum

Encouraging academic success

• Implementing research-based methods on effective instruction for linguistically and culturally diverse student populations into classroom practice
• Exposing students to the more academically rigorous coursework and content that mainstream students have access to
• Holding students to high expectations
• Using cooperative learning strategies

Increasing collaboration and professional development

• Reaching out to mainstream colleagues to get their assistance in teaching core content to students
• Reaching out to colleagues at the school or via social networking sites to share best practices, resources, tools, information, etc. and not feel isolated

Encouraging future educational participation

• Making sure that families of migrant students know what to do to navigate the system better once they are ready to move on
• Urging students to continue their schooling, keeping in mind the particularly challenging situations of each student, and making appropriate referrals to other staff and/or community-based organizations whenever possible
• Encouraging students to establish electronic mail "pen-pal" relationships with migrant students when they leave the school so that a sense of continuity and the security of familiarity can be established

When teachers, parents, administrators, the community, and other advocates work in concert to share best practices, communicate to each other and the community at large how important and necessary it is to pay particular attention to the needs of this population, and work closely with the children toward specific outcomes, migrant students greatly benefit.

Lesson #4: When you help your colleagues see migrant students' potential, the pieces will begin to fall into place.

In my experience with teachers, parents, and administrators in the MEP schools and districts, one thing was clear — they did not want their students to inspire pity or ephemeral charitable acts on behalf of the children. They wanted the cooperation of colleagues, the adequate resources, the will of community leaders and government officials to do right by these kids, and they wanted action, not words on behalf of politicians.

I recall one teacher who organized a day-long Saturday workshop for MEP teachers as well as for mainstream teachers at the school to focus on the achievement of migrant students as everyone's responsibility. She explicitly beckoned everyone to quit thinking of these students as " los pobrecitos " (those poor students we pity). Of course she wanted everyone to exercise empathy and compassion, but not at the expense of high academic expectations and the belief that students could improve and do more.

At the end of that training, everyone left with a different perspective and they were willing to set aside time each week to all come together and discuss particular strategies that worked, what didn't, what else would be needed, etc. — very much the way that doctors come together to share a diagnosis and a plan of action for a patient depending on the specialty needed. Many of them did not know, for example, that such few numbers of students graduated from high school (this was a middle school) and that knowledge made a big difference in their sense of shared accountability. They wanted to shift from working with these children based on a deficit perspective to instead focusing on their great potential.

As important as the previously mentioned recommendations, strategies and lessons are for our schools to try and implement, teachers, paraprofessionals, counselors, school principals and other school staff can not do it alone. To better meet the needs of our migrant students, it is critical that we call attention to their plight and urge our nation's leaders to act in the following areas:

Call for the widespread implementation and strengthening of dropout prevention programs, as well as programs that reach out to "out of school" youth-students with interrupted formal schooling or no prior formal schooling who may have never been enrolled in U.S. schools

Call for better outreach to school dropouts to return to school or enroll in high school equivalency or GED programs

Call for the provision of more 'wraparound' social services for migrant families such as health screenings, nutrition counseling, child care referrals, pre-natal care, mental health services referrals

Call for more targeted, concerted efforts between states, community-based organizations, districts, and schools to better coordinate efforts to meet the needs of migrant students without duplicating efforts

Enact legislation or enforce laws prohibiting children from working in the fields such as the CARE Act 4

Commission and fund evaluations of intervention programs that specifically target migrant students to then disseminate best practices

Advocate for stronger, more widely available professional development programs for teachers and school staff on effective instruction for migrant students who are English language learners

Continue to help resource-poor schools improve and promote school improvement strategies that work

Provide adequate funding for better, more accurate tracking systems

Fund and implement more early childhood care and education programs for migrant infants, toddlers and preschoolers

Promote adult education and parent involvement programs

We must recognize and respect the important and numerous contributions of migrant families to the country's economy, culture, and diversity. An informed, active citizenry and an educated workforce are the pillars of our democracy and our economy, and so we must engage in a concerted effort to address the many and significant challenges keeping too many of our migrant students from reaching their potential. We must look forward to telling a different story twenty years from now.

The following resources may be helpful in providing further information about migrant students.

• U.S. Department of Education: Office of Migrant Education
• U. S. Department of Education: Migrant Student Records Exchange Initiative
• U.S. Department of Education: Migrant Education Program
• Web Site on College Assistance Migrant Program (CAMP: Run by CAMP Alumni)
• The National Migrant and Seasonal Head Start Association (NMSHSA)
• The National Association of State Directors of Migrant Education (NASDME)
• Interstate Migrant Education Council (IMEC)
• Eastern Stream Center on Resources and Training (ESCORT)
• Migrant Legal Action Program (MLAP)
• Migrant and Seasonal Head Start Quality Improvement Centers
• Association of Farmworker Opportunity Programs (AFOP)

Giselle Lundy-Ponce is an education policy and research analyst with the American Federation of Teachers .

Special thanks to Roger Rosenthal, Executive Director of the Migrant Legal Action Program , for his review of this article.

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Migrant children in Virginia: Where are they and are they getting an education?

By: nathaniel cline - july 8, 2024 5:37 am.

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Data visualizations by JW Caterine .

Bryan Viera, who arrived in America unaccompanied, and Millie Okoro, who arrived with family, migrated from different countries to the U.S. as teenagers, both to make a better life for themselves and to make their mothers proud. 

They enrolled in and graduated from public high schools in Virginia, leaning heavily on the support of a few counselors, teachers and groups that work with migrant youth to attain their educational goals. Now young adults, Viera and Okoro’s journeys reflect that of thousands of youth the American government has released from federal custody to sponsors in Virginia over the past decade. 

Migrant children are supported by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’  Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) , which is responsible for providing asylum seekers, including unaccompanied children, with equitable, high-quality services and resources.

As part of the agency’s duties, the office is responsible for supporting unaccompanied children until it can release them into safe settings with sponsors, who are commonly family members, until their immigration proceedings. From October 2014 to April of this year, the agency reports 33,812 unaccompanied children have been released to a sponsor’s care in Virginia.   Virginia  ranked eighth with the most children released in other states. 

A federal law requires the commonwealth to provide all children, including migrants, “equal access” to a public education, regardless of their or their parents’ actual or perceived national origin, citizenship, or immigration status. This means migrant children may be navigating the same challenges Virginia-born children are facing, as the state grapples with declining assessment scores, striking policy issues and troubling student absences. 

Leaders and media reports have also questioned the disappearances of migrant children in the U.S. and Virginia, youth who are from predominantly Spanish-speaking countries including Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. As of June 28, a total of 41 migrant youth have been reported missing from the Town of Culpeper, with Hispanic people representing the second largest portion of the residents.

What happens when migrant kids arrive in America, alone?

The ORR assists in finding a sponsor or family member to take care of children who arrive in America without their parents. 

According to ORR, the office was created as part of the Refugee Act of 1980 to support refugees, unaccompanied refugee minors, and Cuban and Haitian entrants. 

Since its establishment, Congress has expanded the office’s services to meet demands for asylum seekers, refugees, survivors of torture, unaccompanied minors, and victims of trafficking. The search for a sponsor can sometimes span the U.S. 

Children who arrive to the U.S. without parents entered a sponsor’s care in 14 Virginia localities from Oct. 2023 to April 2024, including Loudoun, Arlington, Prince William and Fairfax Counties in Northern Virginia, the city of Roanoke in the Southwest region of the state, Norfolk in Hampton Roads, and central Virginia’s Chesterfield and Henrico Counties, as well as the capital city of Richmond. 

Nationally, unaccompanied children were in the ORR’s care for an average of 27 days in 2023, which is the lowest annual average length of care per child since 2015.

A New York Times’ review of 2023 ORR data found 42% of unaccompanied children nationwide were released to a parent or guardian; in Virginia, 46% were. 

Sponsorship candidates undergo a screening process to determine if they’re able to provide for a migrant child’s physical and mental well-being. ORR is also responsible for determining whether the candidates have engaged in any activity that would be a potential risk to the child. 

Regarding legal requirements, sponsors sign the Sponsor Care Agreement to ensure the child is present at all future immigration proceedings and that, if an immigration judge issues a removal or voluntary departure order, they report to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, for removal from the United States.

The duties of the sponsor also include enrolling the child in school and ensuring their attendance, following the requirements of the state in which they live and otherwise supporting their academic success, the agreement reads.

ORR has organized with partners in Virginia to assist with resources including churches and social service groups. Virginia also provides services through the Department of Social Services.

According to ORR, the agency has no legal authority to compel children released or their sponsors to respond to inquiries or participate in such services that involve assistance with school enrollment or attendance and connecting the child or their sponsor to community-based resources suitable to their needs.

Virginia’s congressional lawmakers, including U.S. Rep. Morgan Griffith, R-Salem, have sought to improve operations around releasing unaccompanied minors. 

In April, Griffith filed legislation requiring HHS to provide advanced notification to school districts and child welfare agencies when a minor is placed in their respective jurisdiction.

“Unaccompanied minors are crossing our southern border in record droves,” said Griffith, in an April statement. “ORR currently fails to notify any school district or child welfare agency if an unaccompanied minor is placed in a home, leading to issues of illegal child labor and abuse. The Unaccompanied Minor Placement Notification Act changes this HHS policy and it will give some protection to minors from exploitation.”

State policy seeks to address absenteeism, language barriers to learning

Virginia lawmakers and school divisions have attempted to both support children who speak English as a second language — some of whom migrated to the country on their own — and tackle chronic absenteeism.

Like other states, the commonwealth has been dealing with a troubling trend of chronic absenteeism, or students missing at least 18 days of instruction for any reason, including excused and unexcused absences.

Okoro, who attended high school virtually for almost two years, said she wished she could’ve gone in-person sooner, but her family was concerned regarding her immigration status. But in 2023, her last high school year, she decided to go in-person.

“Everything was happening so fast at the same time, and I wanted to get a lot of stuff [done], but I wasn’t really aware of my situation,” Okoro said.

She said she was oblivious to preparing for college until she arrived and met with her college counselor, the Dream Project — a group that empowers immigrant students who face barriers to their education through mentoring and offering scholarships — and even a member of custodial staff, who spoke her second language, Spanish.

Viera added that the language barrier made it extremely difficult for him and other Spanish speaking students to follow classes. Later in his high school career, Viera said he started to recognize some of the gaps schools had in helping and encouraging migrant youth, including training staff.

He said he believes the lack of support for students who don’t speak English could be one of the reasons students are deterred from staying in school.

“They just didn’t know what to do with me, they didn’t know how to help me and I could see some of them felt really bad about not being able to, but it’s part of the lack of training that the [schools] give to the staff at the schools,” Viera said. 

One of the keys to their success to finishing high school in Virginia and enrolling in college was their attendance at Virginia’s public schools.

“I just knew that if I needed help, I feel like education would have been … the first place to look for and so I tried as much as I could to limit the amount of absences I had, and if I had any absences, it was for a good reason,” said Okoro.

Viera said he’s uncertain where he would be if he didn’t show up to class, stayed after school or accepted volunteer opportunities. He recently graduated from college and is working in the technology industry.

“I feel like if I didn’t attend school as often, if I missed class, I feel like I wouldn’t have achieved or accomplished the grades that I had … [or earned] the scholarships that I [received],” Viera said.

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According to a survey by the Virginia Association of School Superintendents, Virginia’s chronic absenteeism rate was more than four times higher during the 2022-2023 school year than pre-pandemic. Approximately a quarter of the 85 school divisions surveyed had a chronic absenteeism rate of over 25%.

In response, Virginia education leaders launched a task force to address students’ disappearance from the classroom and incorporated Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s “ ALL IN VA ” plan to combat the learning loss during the pandemic through “high-intensity tutoring” and promoting school attendance.

Superintendent of Public Instruction Lisa Coons said transportation, food and housing challenges can be factors for children missing school. Children may also be deterred from school because they are behind their class in learning, and may need mental health support, problems Coons said the state is working to correct as they try to educate caretakers on the resources available to students and the importance of being in school.

“We want to make sure that our students are in school because we know that’s the best place for them,” Coons said. “We know they access their learning and their experiences and their relationships with their peers and the adults in the school community, but it also provides support for some of those barriers that are hurting or causing students to not be able to be engaged as successfully and well in their education.” 

In the last session, the General Assembly agreed to appropriate $72.1 million over the next two years to expand and provide targeted support for English learner students.

“English Learner students are one of the fastest growing segments of the student population, and their needs also vary greatly depending on their prior education experiences and English acquisition,” said House Education Chairman Sam Rasoul, D-Roanoke, during a February House Appropriations Committee hearing. 

Sen. Ghazala Hashmi, D-Richmond, and Del. Michelle Malando, D-Prince William, carried successful legislation revising the state code to require that state funding support ratios of instructional positions for English language learner students based on each student’s proficiency level.

The budget includes language that directs the Department of Education to enter into statewide contracts for mental health providers for public school students and attendance recovery services for “disengaged, chronically absent or struggling students.”

Language was also added to the budget requiring schools that receive state funding for the “After-the-Bell” breakfast program to report their chronic absenteeism rates.

In Northern Virginia, Edu-Futuro, an nonprofit organization focused on empowering immigrant and underserved youth and families through education and workforce development, has helped to address chronic absenteeism among Latino youth and English Learner students by forming an outreach team tasked with contacting hard-to-reach students and their families, and working to return chronically absent youth to the classroom.

During the team’s first year in the 2022-2023 school year, Edu-Futuro returned 62% of the 273 children referred to them to the classroom in Fairfax County.

“Through working directly with hundreds of families, our outreach team has found that students often don’t want to abandon their studies,” said the organization in a 2022-2023 annual report. “They need encouragement and concrete help to address the underlying challenges that led to their absenteeism, such as financial struggles, mental health issues, or family crises that require the support of government or nonprofit partners.” 

Del. Alfonso Lopez, D-Arlington, proposed the state appropriate $400,000 over the next two years to help Edu-Futuro expand its services to help reduce chronic absenteeism at public schools in Northern Virginia. The provision was not included in the state budget. 

Legislation carried by Sen. Todd Pillion , R-Washington, to address chronic absenteeism was continued to next year. The companion bill carried by Del. Israel O’Quinn , R-Washington, which was left in the House, would have added the definition of “educational neglect” into state law and required school staff to report to authorities if a parent’s child is not attending school regularly.

Karen Vallejos Corrales, executive director of the Dream Project, said she hopes lawmakers will continue to support and invest in counselors and parent liaisons to help migrant youth when they arrive. 

Increase resources and support to all students regardless of immigration status, so that all students who go through our public school system are able to benefit equally and contribute back to the communities they grew up in.

– Karen Vallejos Corrales, executive director of the Dream Project

She also hopes lawmakers will continue to support career and technical education programs for students, in-state tuition for students who are undocumented, and supporting state aid for students who go to public universities in Virginia. 

“Increase resources and support to all students regardless of immigration status, so that all students who go through our public school system are able to benefit equally and contribute back to the communities they grew up in,” Corrales said. 

Continuing challenges: Many migrant children disappear and others work dangerous jobs

About 85,000 migrant children have been reported missing, some of whom have later been found working dangerous jobs including in some hazardous environments. These same problems can be a cause for concern after children are released from ORR’s purview.

Culpeper Police Department Sgt. Norma McGuckin, who has leading efforts to find dozens of missing migrant children, said the area is known among the Hispanic community as a good place to find steady landscaping work. 

McGuckin said one of the most surprising takeaways from her investigations is that out of the 41 children who have disappeared from Culpeper, only a handful of children are enrolled in school. Culpeper Police Department keeps an online record of missing children.

Sponsors McGuckin has worked with in prior investigations are frustrated when children disappear, yet afraid of reporting the children out of fear they will be returned to their home country. She added some of the older children also have a sense of responsibility to support their families back home financially, so they’re more focused on finding work than studying schoolbooks.

“They do want to do the right thing and they do want to help these children to succeed in this country the best way that they can provide them help with, but unfortunately … the child already has this plan in mind when they come in across the border that they came here for work,” McGuckin said. 

Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares has called the situation “a serious emergency that is being ignored by the federal government.”

“Vulnerable unaccompanied minors are being dropped off in our cities and counties, and local social services and law enforcement agencies have no idea,” Miyares said in a February statement after writing a letter to the White House about the problem. “How can they protect and check in on children they don’t know are there? We must advance federal, state, and local collaboration in the face of this unprecedented, horrifying crisis. No child should experience the uncertainty and vulnerability that these children are facing.” 

Also in February, the Office of the Inspector General published a report that found gaps in ORR’s screening and follow-up process with sponsors. The office reviewed the ORR’s processes, including its post-release services, following a surge in referrals of unaccompanied children in 2021. Once the office examined data from March to April of that year, the Inspector General recommended changes to how ORR screens candidates for sponsorship and monitors them.

“It is important for ORR to protect children from unsafe placements by taking appropriate steps to screen sponsors while also releasing children from care in a timely manner and without unnecessary delay,” the letter states.

The office found that in 16% of children’s case files, one or more required sponsor safety checks lacked any documentation indicating that the checks were conducted. The office also found that the case files of 19% of children released to sponsors with pending FBI fingerprint or state child abuse and neglect registry checks were never updated with the results.

Jeff Hild, acting assistant secretary of the Administration for Children and Families in the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the program ORR, said that the period reviewed was one of the most “challenging periods in ORR’s history” amid a historic number of unaccompanied children placed in ORR care, the largest and fastest expansion of emergency capacity, and at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

“As ORR worked quickly to respond to this unprecedented emergency, and with limited resources, it prioritized the safety and well-being of children at every step,” Hild wrote in December before the report was published.

Hild said in a nine-page response that the office is working to meet the recommendations. 

Efforts by the Center for Public Integrity and Scripps News helped lead to a policy change with ORR after investigators were denied information to find missing children.

In February 2023, ORR entered into an agreement with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children to provide all available data that might help locate the child.

Then in August, ORR updated its policies to clarify that, in cases of missing children, it will share information with investigative agencies without having to go through the full case file request process.

Some kids who come to Virginia from other countries find themselves working hazardous jobs that put their lives and health at risk.  

Virginia recorded 302 child care labor violation cases from 2020 to 2023, according to a child labor report compiled by the Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy, released in March of this year. 

“Because most labor violations go unreported, the actual number of child labor violations are likely to be significantly higher than those reported,” the center noted.

More than half of the cases occurred in 2022.

Citing research that found teens who work more than 20 hours tend to have lower grades, more absences and higher dropouts, the center’s report underlined the importance of child labor laws. The report also said young workers have higher rates of job-related injuries and injuries that require emergency department attention.

The Department of Labor began a federal investigation into illegal child labor performed by migrant children following a damning report last year by the New York Times. 

Last September, the agency confirmed that it was investigating Fayette Janitorial Service, LLC, a company that had provided contract cleaning and sanitation services to slaughterhouses and meatpacking companies nationwide, including Perdue Farms, where the agency alleged migrant children were being used to clean slaughterhouses at Perdue’s plant on the commonwealth’s Eastern Shore.

“High-profile cases occurring in Virginia that are being investigated at the federal level have detailed children cleaning equipment with acid and pressure hoses,” the Interfaith Center’s report stated. 

The Times found that Marcos Cux, who migrated to Virginia from Guatemala, was hired at age 13 to work an overnight shift at an Accomack County Perdue plant, one of 15 migrant youths working there. None were older than 17. Cux’s forearm was torn “open to the bone” by a conveyor belt in the poultry deboning section of the plant he’d been sanitizing, the Times reported. He was in eighth grade at the time.

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Our stories may be republished online or in print under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. We ask that you edit only for style or to shorten, provide proper attribution and link to our website. AP and Getty images may not be republished. Please see our republishing guidelines for use of any other photos and graphics.

Nathaniel Cline

Nathaniel is an award-winning journalist who's been covering news across the country since 2007, including politics at The Loudoun Times-Mirror and The Northern Neck News in Virginia as well as sports for The Plain Dealer in Cleveland, Ohio. He has also hosted podcasts, worked as a television analyst for Spectrum Sports, and appeared as a panelist for conferences and educational programs. A graduate of Bowie State University, Nathaniel grew up in Hawaii and the United Kingdom as a military brat. Five things he must have before leaving home: his cellphone, Black Panther water bottle, hand sanitizer, wedding ring and Philadelphia Eagles keychain.

Virginia Mercury is part of States Newsroom , the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.

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Definition of migrant

• emigré
• incomer [ chiefly British ]
• out-migrant

Examples of migrant in a Sentence

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'migrant.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Word History

Latin migrant-, migrans , present participle of migrare

1760, in the meaning defined above

Phrases Containing migrant

• in - migrant
• out - migrant

Articles Related to migrant

On 'Caravan' and Words for People in...

On 'Caravan' and Words for People in Movement

A cavalcade of ways to describe a group in transit

Dictionary Entries Near migrant

migrant shrike

Cite this Entry

“Migrant.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary , Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/migrant. Accessed 13 Jul. 2024.

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Kids definition of migrant, more from merriam-webster on migrant.

Nglish: Translation of migrant for Spanish Speakers

Britannica English: Translation of migrant for Arabic Speakers

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LACOE's Migrant Education Program Scholarship Awards Ceremony Celebrates 14 High School Graduates

Fri Jul 12 10:49:00 PDT 2024

The Los Angeles County Office of Education (LACOE) honored 14 high school graduates from its Migrant Education Program with scholarships during a ceremony celebrating their achievements.

The Los Angeles County Office of Education (LACOE) celebrated the accomplishments of 14 high school graduates from its Migrant Education Program (MEP) - Region 10 with scholarships during an awards ceremony on Wednesday, July 10, 2024. Held at the LACOE Conference Center from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., the event honored students from ten school districts within L.A. County.

Dr. Mirna Miranda-Welsh, MEP Project Director III, commenced the ceremony, which featured addresses from Mr. Ruben Valles, Chief Academic Officer, and Dr. Debra Duardo, Los Angeles County Superintendent of Schools. Pedro Hernandez, Senior Regional Recruiter for LACOE's MEP, delivered an impactful motivational speech, drawing from his 12-year journey with LACOE, including roles as Education Specialist and CAMP Intern, after joining the program at 19.

"Pedro's story deeply resonates with our students," Dr. Miranda-Welsh remarked. "His achievements within MEP and LACOE exemplify the possibilities when perseverance prevails, despite challenges."

The keynote address was delivered by Dr. Ramon Resa, whose life story as a former farmworker turned pediatrician is documented in "Told They Can't," a film presented by filmmakers Diane Wagner and Jesse Gift. Dr. Resa shared his experiences of overcoming adversity, inspiring the audience with his personal journey.

Among the scholarship recipients were students from districts such as:

ABC Unified School District

Antelope Valley Union High School District

Azusa Unified School District

El Monte Union High School District

Hacienda La Puente Unified School District

Lancaster School District

Long Beach Unified School District

Los Angeles Unified School District

Lynwood Unified School District

Norwalk-La Mirada Unified School District

The ceremony included a presentation by the Regional Parent Advisory Council roundtable members and public comments, concluding with a community potluck.

About LACOE’s Migrant Education Program (MEP) - Region 10

The LACOE Migrant Education Program is a federally funded initiative that supports high-quality and comprehensive educational programs and services addressing the unique needs of migratory children. LACOE administers the Region 10 California Migrant Education Program, supporting 22 districts that serve more than 5,300 students.

To learn more, visit LACOE’s Migrant Education Program: https://www.lacoe.edu/services/accountability/migrant-education  

Los Angeles County Office of Education

9300 Imperial Hwy., Downey CA 90242, United States (562) 922-6111

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An anthropologist lived amongst migrant smugglers. What did he learn?

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<iframe width="100%" height="124" scrolling="no" frameborder="no" src="https://player.wbur.org/onpoint/2024/07/10/migrant-smugglers-jason-de-leon-mexico-border-immigration"></iframe>

• Jonathan Chang
• Meghna Chakrabarti

Jason De León spent nearly seven years embedded with a group of smugglers moving migrants across Mexico.

Today, On Point: How that experience changed his perspective on the smugglers’ world.

Jason De León, professor of anthropology and Chicana/o Studies at UCLA. Executive director of the Undocumented Migration Project. Author of "Soldiers and Kings: Survival and Hope in the World of Human Smuggling."

MEGHNA CHAKRABARTI: We're joined today by Jason De León. He's a professor of anthropology and Chicana/Chicano studies at UCLA. He's also executive director of the Undocumented Migration Project. And he's author of the book Soldiers and Kings: Survival and Hope in the World of Human Smuggling.

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 U.S. border. Professor De León, welcome to On Point.

JASON DE LEÓN: Thank you so much for having me.

CHAKRABARTI: 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?

DE LEÓN: 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 had been 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, run by a bunch of nuns. And the nun said to me, whatever you, don't go outside, don't go to the train tracks.

That's where you're going to run into the riffraff, the delinquentes. You're going to get in a lot of trouble out there. And so of course, the first thing I did was go outside and walk around on the train tracks and see who I could meet. And Roberto was one of the first people that I ran into. And he asked me what I was doing and I tried to explain to him what an anthropologist was.

I had just written a book about the U.S.-Mexico border, about migrants dying in the desert. And he said something very simple to me, he said, Everybody talks to migrants about their stories, but no one ever talks to smugglers like me and my friends here. And he says, people always think of us as the bad guys, but they never ask us about our lives and about why we're here.

And that was a very profound statement to me. And really sent me down this rabbit hole. So I got to know him very well. He was tragically murdered. Soon after I began the project and it was his death that ended up being the catalyst for me taking a very deep dive into the world of human smuggling.

CHAKRABARTI: How and why did he die?

DE LEÓN: He was murdered by another smuggler and I think people have to understand that the world of human smuggling over the last 10, 15 years has really evolved from a mom and pop kind of industry to now being completely controlled by transnational drug cartels, by transnational gangs like MS-13. And so all of the people who are moving migrants now across at least Latin America have criminal ties to these organizations. And so it's just gotten very violent. And, for a lot of smugglers to do the work now, you have to be gang affiliated, cartel affiliated.

And once you get locked into that world, it's really difficult to get away. And so Roberto was someone who wasn't even 20 yet and saw that things were not gonna end well for him if he didn't get out of that world. And as soon as you try to leave, it becomes very difficult, and you lose whatever little protection you might have had by being gang affiliated. And his attempts to step away from the violent world of human smuggling is what led to his death.

CHAKRABARTI: The thing about him, though, that really stands out to me, you write so clearly in the first pages of the book. Is that, just to underscore, he was in Mexico illegally himself. Because can you tell us more of the story of what he was trying to do or how he was trying to live before he became one of these smugglers?

DE LEÓN: Yeah, I think what people don't realize is that, nobody actively, I think, chooses to become a smuggler. All of the people that I worked with were failed migrants. They were people who were fleeing poverty, violence corruption, climate change. They had all tried to get to the United States at some point and had failed or had been deported.

And many of them did not have kind of social networks in the USA that could support them. So they found themselves in this kind of perpetual motion. And Roberto was someone who, after failing numerous times to define the American Dream, whatever that is these days, realized that this perpetual motion that he was in had equipped him with the necessary skill sets to help other people.

And he realized he's never going to be a successful migrant, but what he can do is provide a service for those who are trying to get to the United States.

CHAKRABARTI: Is that how he saw it, as he was helping other people? Definitely everybody that I worked with, despite a lot of the smugglers I worked with had been involved in various gang activities.

Some of them had been dealing drugs, they were assassins at different moments in their lives. And almost, probably all of them really saw or see the work of smuggling as this kind of form of redemption. So they can make up for these other violent acts by providing a service to people and really trying to help them. And so many of them really saw themselves as these kind of Heroic figures who are also trying to make a dollar during the process.

But yeah, I think that it's often portrayed as it's simply about money. And money is a huge part of the smuggling industry. But many of these folks try to characterize themselves as people who are providing a good service to others.

CHAKRABARTI: Smuggling as redemption, I want to just put a little pin in that. Cause I definitely want to come back to that in a couple of minutes Professor De León, but the bigger story you tell is all that you witnessed and learned when you embedded yourself with a group of smugglers who did exactly what you described, who helped move migrants from Central America up through Mexico. First of all, how does one go about doing that?

How did you get embedded in this group and what group was it?

DE LEÓN: So I ended up working with several different people. All of, everybody that I worked with us was from Honduras. I would say half of them were under 25 and then the other folks were in their kind of early to mid 30s, which if you're a smuggler in your mid 30s, you've had a lot of luck, you're probably pretty smart and you're what would be considered a veteran.

I ended up working with groups of both kind of mestizo white, light complected Hondurans, as well as Garifuna or Afro Honduran smugglers, each of whom were moving people who looked just like them. And, to get in with those guys, it was pretty, actually, interesting.

I think it took about an hour, is what it felt like. And that was really just me being there and saying, I'm here, I want to learn I'm going to try very hard to not be judgmental. And I just want to listen to people's stories, and I want to try to tell those stories.

And these were folks who I think no one in their entire life had said to them, your stories are important, your lives are important. And we want to understand that. And so I think that me just being very honest about my intentions and being completely comfortable being with these folks for many years opened up a lot of doors for me. And people were more than willing to pull me along and to show me as much as they possibly could.

CHAKRABARTI: So then tell me more, because again, this is a world that few, beyond you, Professor De León, don't have any kind of first-hand experience with.

So once they let you in, essentially, what were your first few months like out of what would eventually become seven years?

DE LEÓN: I think, smuggling is interesting because it's both, it's crazy. You're in this hyper violent context.

It's a hyper masculine context. You're picking people up. You're dropping them off. You're moving them to the jungles. You're getting on the tops of freight trains. You're paying off the police. You're running from rival gangs. But then you're also spending hours and days in safe houses on the train tracks.

So it goes from these moments of like hyper intense, hyper masculine, hyper violent kind of moments to just a significant amount of downtime. And most of the time I was with these folks, in the downtime. I wasn't someone who was going to get on the top of a freight train.

I didn't think that me being in those situations was going to be all that helpful. But I find that when people go in that direction, it tends to be more about the person who's reporting that stuff in that context, as opposed to what those people's experiences are on a day-to-day basis.

And so for me, so much of the work was sitting on the train tracks in the jungles in Mexico, being locked in a safe house for days in Mexico City and really talking to these folks about how they had gotten to this point, what work was like, how much money they made, what their dreams and aspirations were if they could ever get away from these things.

A lot of it was me not being really prepared for this at all, but I think a lot of these guys saw me as a therapist. Because they could finally unload all these stories about their violent and troubled lives to someone who was really, wanted to be there and wanted to listen.

But it was funny. I'd never expected. There were many intense and violent moments on the train tracks and other things, but there was also just a lot of sitting around, listening to music. I like the joke that with this project, I have a PhD in drinking beer and shooting the breeze, because so much of it was just, like, boredom.

And I think for me too, or for those guys, I was a form of entertainment. I was someone who, I was an active listener who was there to entertain these guys, who just maybe found me to be a bit ridiculous. Here's this professor who just wants to be sleeping on the ground and being in the jungles with these guys when that's the last place that they want it to be.

CHAKRABARTI: We got to take a break here in just a minute, but you did, just to be clear, you did draw the line in terms of how deeply your embeddedness went, like you said. Does that mean that you never actually went with any smugglers and migrants, that they were smuggling?

You never actually physically crossed the U.S. border with them?

DE LEÓN: No, the bulk of this work took place in Mexico. I never crossed the U.S.-Mexico border with migrants or smugglers. And really, I was mostly with smugglers when they were not moving. And so someone would call me and say, Hey, I'm going to be in this little village in Southern Chiapas, Mexico for a few days.

I would go there. I would spend three or four days with them and then they would move and then I would see them in another three days in Mexico City or someplace else.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay. I wanted to make that clear. Because of course, there's all sorts of ethical questions in terms of the kinds of research that you were doing.

But stopping short of actually physically crossing the border with migrants is a good ethical line to draw, amongst others, that you did in the research, professor. So we have a lot more to learn from you when we come back. This is On Point.

CHAKRABARTI: You're back with On Point, I'm Meghna Chakrabarti, and today Jason De León joins us. He's a professor of anthropology and Chicana/Chicano Studies at UCLA, also executive director of the Undocumented Migration Project. And he's author of the book, Soldiers and Kings: Survival and Hope in the World of Human Smuggling.

And the book chronicles all that he learned in the seven years he spent embedded with smugglers, taking migrants from Central America through Mexico and ultimately into the U.S. But of course, Professor De León, clarified in the previous segment, he didn't actually cross the border with any of these smugglers or ride on top of trains, amongst other things that he did not participate in. But professor, in the book, you write that at the street level or at the train tracks, right? You'll meet no crime kingpins. It's all, we'll talk about those kingpins later, but it's all those soldiers of this giant churn of migration.

And I still want to hear more about who they were, how they lived, what they did. For example, in the second chapter of the book, you describe the people that you met in a place called Pakalna. Can you tell us more about that place and what it was like and who you met there?

DE LEÓN: Pakalna is a tiny little village in Southern Mexico in the state of Chiapas.

For those that are familiar with Chiapas, it's very close to the archaeological site of Palenque, which is a very famous tourist destination. Pakalna, literally the other side of the train tracks. And it's a major stopping point for migrants coming up from Central America and further south.

And it's a town overrun with smugglers, with migrants, with people who are trying very hard to make money off of smugglers, off of migrants. In various ways, kidnapping, extortion, robbery, and so the folks that I worked with were largely just, yeah, the foot soldiers.

And I think people, when they think about smuggling, they think about a billion-dollar industry where people are making lots of money on it. And the folks that I work with who represent the majority of people involved in this process, these are minimum wage or less workers who are these kind of disposable labor force.

They're often more destitute than the people that they're actually smuggling. And many of these folks are young men from Central America who, you know, get involved in gangs. To be a smuggler these days requires being comfortable with a particular level of violence.

And so all of these folks come from these violent backgrounds and find that those skills serve them well on the train tracks, as they're trying to protect their clients, as they're negotiating with other criminal organizations, greasing wheels and those sorts of things. But the folks who are doing the kind of grunt work of moving migrants across, through the jungles or into the desert, these folks often live very short lives. Because it is such a such a violent world where you can be killed by the police.

You can be killed by rival gangs. You can be killed by drug cartels, or you can fall off of a moving train or die of dehydration in one of these extreme environments.

CHAKRABARTI: Tell me more about Chino, Santos. ... Tell me about them. I ended up meeting these guys Chino and Santos. And they were a couple of young kids under 20 who had failed to migrate to the United States, had left home very young.

Everybody that I worked with had left home by the time they were 12 or 13, left Honduras. And they ended up growing up on the train tracks and learning the skills necessary to avoid the police, to negotiate with other criminal organizations. And they were, they're the folks who if I'm a migrant and I leave Honduras, oftentimes, people are leaving in the middle of the night, they're running from gang violence, they're running from corruption or climate change, they get to southern Mexico with no help, and they need a guide to get them to the jungle.

And so they would meet someone like Chino or Santos who says, okay, pay me $200 and I'll get you 150 kilometers. And so they'll scrape together what little money they have. Pay it to those guys and then trudge through the jungles to get to the next point.

And at every point, you have to meet a Chino or a Santos or someone, some young, oftentimes male smuggler, who then can get you to the next destination and can help you kind of negotiate with all the perils and the obstacles that will arise during that process. But these are just young people who are already semi homeless, nomadic and realize that they can make a little bit of money by putting someone on the top of a train and getting them a little bit farther north.

CHAKRABARTI: There's so many just arresting details in the book, Professor. For example, for Chino, you observe that he has a collection of machete scars on his right arm.

DE LEÓN: Yeah. He is someone who just grew up in very rough parts of Honduras, had been involved in gang life very early on, had almost been killed several times.

His arm is just ravaged by machete scars after an attack that had happened to him near San Pedro Sula. And, he basically had to leave because of gang problems there, as many do from Honduras. And that's the kicker for I think a lot of these migrants, is they're leaving a place like Honduras because of MS-13. They get to Mexico and realize that they need a smuggler to get them through this gauntlet of dangers in Mexico. And oftentimes the people they end up having to pay are someone like Chino, who was in MS-13, or gang affiliated, who now takes on this kind of new role.

But all these young people who get involved in smuggling come from these very difficult backgrounds. And I think, for me, one of the most shocking things that I discovered early on was that everyone that I worked with had witnessed someone they care about be murdered. Which really, I think speaks to the types of dangers that these folks are fleeing.

And then also I think the experiences that these smugglers bring with them to these hyper violent contexts.

CHAKRABARTI: Did the complexity of the fact that you say that you met all these young people who, they were many times themselves, they were failed migrants as you said.

They were gang affiliated, whether out by choice, or out of necessity or by force, right? So there's that nuance there to understand. But then there's also the things that they had to do while being these sorts of street level, small time, point to point smugglers that were paid, as you say, very little for what they did. It's not all just holding migrants by the hand and taking them through the jungle to the next point.

Did you, when they unburdened themselves to you, Professor De León, did any of them talk about having done things to migrants that they regretted? There are moments in the book where some people, you know, and this is the thing, for me with being an anthropologist and having as much time as I did to follow these stories, it allowed me to ask the same questions over and over again. And to learn more each time that same question was asked.

And there would be some, most of the smugglers that I worked with, nobody wanted to cop to the brutality of the things that they may have been involved with against migrants. And no one wanted to admit that Hey, this is this relationship of what political economists would term negative reciprocity.

And this, I have a client, they've paid for a service and I've promised to get them to where they want to go. But all along the way, I'm going to nickel and dime them and try to get more and more money out of them as much as possible. And by the end, the hope is that they'll get to where they need to go. But it could be that they get double crossed at the end, and that happens a lot, and people don't want to admit to that oftentimes when you ask him about it, but you can definitely see it.

But most of the violence that smugglers talked about when I would ask those kinds of questions, they didn't necessarily want to admit that they were doing stuff to migrants. Even if I knew they were, they wanted to often portray themselves as like the best of that group and to say some smugglers do really terrible things, but not me.

I'm a good person in this whole kind of process. But that definitely, is part of the game, I think. And everybody understands that. Migrants understand that they've contracted someone to get them to where they're going but we don't trust them and that it can go bad at any point.

And the smugglers perspective is, okay, I've promised this person the service, but that doesn't mean that I can't keep adding these hidden fees along the way, and try my best to get as much money as I possibly can out of this economic interaction.

CHAKRABARTI: It's interesting to me because, as you pointed out, and I want to explore with you further. These soldiers, as you call them on the ground, are one part of a much larger system, right? A much larger system of ineffective and failed laws in the United States, and these transnational gangs and cartels and criminal syndicates who are actually making a lot of money off the cruel exploitation of the hopes and dreams and needs of migrants. We'll talk about them in a second, but in order for every piece of this to work, in a sense, everyone has to convince themselves individually that they're doing the right thing. And so much close contact with the smugglers on the ground.

Was it interesting to you that on the one hand they, as you said, they came to you almost cause no one knows their stories. No one hears their stories. They needed kind of a therapist. They wanted to be seen and heard, but at the same time they had to, a sense, I don't know, I might be reading too much into this, but like seeking absolution for their sins.

They wouldn't even acknowledge that bad stuff had also happened too.

DE LEÓN: Oh yeah. People, and that's why I think for me, as an anthropologist and ethnographer, it was so important to just keep going back. And to be there as much as I possibly could, because you start to see these things unfold. And whether people want to admit it or not, you can just your presence there, you get more and more kind of an understanding of all of the intricacies that are happening.

But people, they all wanted to think about themselves as the work, as a form of work. And a work that had some nobility to it. And so there are people in the book, like a guy that I call Flacco who was in his mid thirties. He'd been doing this for a long time and I had seen him rob migrants.

I had seen him rip people off, but I'd also had conversations with him where he would say things to me like, I'm a good smuggler. I want my children to know that I'm providing a service, that I'm not out robbing people. Even though, he clearly was.

And so there's, I think, sometimes a bit of this cognitive dissonance of everything I'm doing is, at the end of the day, is a good thing, even if there are questionable things that kind of happen along the way. And no matter what, people are going to get to where they want to go.

And I think, and in general, that's how this world of smuggling works. It's often portrayed in the media, especially, or more I think, by like the U.S. Border Patrol as every terrible thing that happens to migrants is a smugglers fault and that it's this thing that's completely dominated by violence and by treachery.

But if that was the case, this system wouldn't function. There are enough, quote-unquote, good smugglers in the world that keep the system going, that people still can put trust in them, knowing that they're going to hopefully or likely get to where they want to go.

And so it's not, it is this very gray kind of thing that I had found, one of my desires to do this project was I just felt like it had been painted in such a black and white way of from one perspective, it's smugglers are all bad. But when you ask migrants, the smuggler oftentimes plays this kind of heroic role. Because they are the people that are getting them to where they want to go at the end of the day, even if it costs more money than they had agreed upon, or even if bad things happen along the way, they still got to where they needed to be.

CHAKRABARTI: Yeah. So that sort of serving a need, right? This idea of service, that you've actually said that word many times. In terms of how the smugglers themselves see the work that they're doing. I completely understand that. And correct me if I'm wrong professor, because as I was reading through the book, the analogy that kept popping up in my mind was the transnational drug trade, right?

Because the dealers on the corner could very, maybe, I don't know, if I want to use the word rightly, but understandably see themselves as serving a need, right? Like people who need their latest dose of fentanyl or heroin or what have you, they actually have a genuine physical need for it and the dealer's just serving that need.

But on the other hand, while they may be considering themselves heroic, or even the users say, thank goodness you're dealing here. Otherwise, I'd have to go to someone else who was way more violent. That too is also how a system is just perpetuated for the tragic end of the users, ultimately.

So is that a fair analogy, you think?

DE LEÓN: I think it's one that gets us closer to understanding the complexities of this system. Because what happens when, If you start to frame smuggling as a service, because just that language of someone who smuggles is providing a service to a paying kind of client, then suddenly you're like, Oh that doesn't sound, that's not like the boogeyman that it's made out to be, and then you go, okay if it's a service, who is it a service for?

It's serving a client, but also what, who on the other end of that is benefiting from this service. And so I think, the smuggler is both connected to the migrant, but also to the other end of the system that's pulling all these people, all the people who want to employ undocumented laborers in the United States.

Smuggling is providing a service that helps that system and I, and for me, that shift in language is important for, I hope, for us to be able to see the much bigger thing going on and so that we're not kind of compartmentalizing these things.

Or are being so narrowly focused as to think that oh, it's just about the brutality of smuggling. It's really about way bigger kinds of things and I think the same thing with the drug trade, and you know the person on the street corner isn't doing that in a vacuum, right?

It's connected to these much bigger industries and individuals and communities. And I think it's the same thing with smuggling. And so I really wanted to complicate that phrase. And I hope that it forces people to look at it from a much bigger picture. Because right now, we look at these things and we, I think, as Americans, we tend to look at migration in a political and economic vacuum and think about it as, Oh, it's just a U.S.-Mexico border problem.

It's just a Honduras problem. Smuggling is just a problem for migrants, but I really want people to know that we as Americans, we benefit every day from the labor of smuggling. The smugglers provide a service for these people who come to the United States and then provide an enormous amount of services for American citizens.

And so the whole project is to really force that type of perspective. I think. To get us away from being so narrow about it.

CHAKRABARTI: So to be, to put a finer point on it, do you see U.S. employers, specifically, as clients, indirect clients of the smugglers that you spent seven years with?

DE LEÓN: Absolutely. 100%. They benefit from it daily. They need it.

CHAKRABARTI: Early-ish in the book, you have this whole section called The Road. It was really eye opening to me, and I was wondering if we could just take a few minutes to walk through what you described there, kind of step by step.

And it begins with someone you call Zero, a gangster and a mid level smuggler. Who is Zero, and what role does he play?

DE LEÓN: Zero is one of these people who is involved in smuggling, but doesn't really do the footwork. So he answers the phone. He arranges money transfers through a company, Western Union.

And then he's just got a small army of underlings that he can text and say, Hey, I got a group of five people in Tapachula, Chiapas, or in some place in Southern Mexico or in Honduras and says, I need you to get them from there to wherever I am or to this next kind of location.

I'll send you half the money right now. Someone like Chino and Santos, these low-level guys would go pick that money up at a convenience store and then would pick those folks up, move them through the jungle. Meet, maybe meet with Zero, maybe not. But basically, he's a low-level middleman who's probably graduated from walking through the jungles now to being a little bit more stationary and controlling at least some of those economic transactions.

CHAKRABARTI: And Zero of course is, it's a generic name for this type of person, right? Just to be clear.

DE LEÓN: Right.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay. So then in the example that you unfold, as you say, the guides don't ask questions, right? That's actually probably a dangerous thing to do, I imagine. And then they get paid a little bit of money to cover the expenses that they might incur in moving the migrants across the area that they'll be moving them?

DE LEÓN: Yeah, so you could imagine maybe they get #200 wired to them to move people 150 to 200 kilometers. That could take a week or longer. And they've got to pay for food for everybody. They've got to pay for cell phone credits. They've got to probably pay for either some taxis or bribes to bus drivers.

They may have to pay some money to local police who might catch them. The money goes pretty quickly. And it's usually not enough to even cover that, those 200 kilometers. And the expectation is that those low-level guys are going to find other ways to nickel and dime their clients along the way.

And Zero will say, you get my guys to Pakalna and then I'll give you another, the other half of your money. Or I'll give you a little bit, the other half and a little bit more to keep moving them farther north. But those guys, like a person like Chino and Santos, they might move those guys 150 kilometers, over the course of a week through brutal heat, walking through all these kind of dangers, trying to avoid attacks and other things.

And they may end up with, 60 or 70 bucks between, each. And it's not much money, but it's definitely more money than they would have made cutting sugarcane back in Honduras.

CHAKRABARTI: But then as you write, you say as soon as they're on the road the guides are smugglers and the migrants, guys like Chino and Santos tell the migrants that each person has to cover their own food, which is not what they get told by their initial contact, the Zero person.

DE LEÓN: Yeah. So people are lying to you all the time. The expectation is that you were going to be lied to. And so it's this kind of this uncomfortable relationship between client and smuggler where nobody fully trusts anybody. And migrants are really, especially at this level, because if you've contracted someone like Chino and Santos, the likelihood is you've just met them and that you don't really have a strong kind of social connection.

People, the preferred way to get smuggled is if you contract someone from your local village, you can pay them $3,000 up front. And they will broker the deal with people who there's some level of trust with. Because the idea is that if you go missing in the jungle you can go to the local smuggler in your home community who you might have a familiar relationship with, or at least a social connection to, and you can ask them about, there's some accountability, but most people these days don't have $200 to their name.

And so they have to contract these low-level folks that they're meeting on the road which just then leads to way more distrust and a higher likelihood of betrayal.

CHAKRABARTI: And then this 200 mile, 200 kilometers, I should say, which is largely undertaken by foot because, you're right, it's been harder to do that on the roofs of trains for example.

But there are places that the smugglers and the migrants stop homes occasionally where, I guess, you say the smugglers get to recharge their cell phones and get some free food. The migrants maybe not so much. But then also in the jungle there, there's a moment that you write about, where the migrants might get a drink of water from a kid who just emerges.

This kid is also part of the system.

DE LEÓN: Oh, everybody's making money off of this. One of the strangest things to me is like when you'll be in, on the train tracks in the jungle in southern Mexico and someone will come out of their house and they're preparing Honduran food for all of the Hondurans who are coming through.

There's a whole industry where all these folks, you don't have to be moving migrants necessarily to be capitalizing on the smuggling industry. And so yeah, food, drink you can go to a place like Pakalna and get a Honduran style haircut. Because they have Honduran barbers who are there who just cater to that population that's moving through.

That's how well developed that this whole thing has become now. And in many ways, Mexico is starting to look a lot like the United States in terms of both the rise in deportations and law enforcement who are targeting migrants, but also, there's a growing undocumented labor force in Mexico that's from Central America that can't get to the United States because of all of this border security.

And so now they're taking on these jobs in Mexico in a very similar way that we've seen in the United States.

CHAKRABARTI: So then there's the dangers, of course, are myriad for the migrants. No doubt about that. But also for the smugglers themselves, you write that it's not uncommon for people to put the smugglers at gunpoint.

DE LEÓN: Smugglers now, just expect to face incredibly high levels of violence, which is why you need a smuggler who can reciprocate that violence. It's surviving this process is really difficult. People either, that's why you don't see a lot of smugglers who are above the age of 25. Because they're either dead, in jail or if they're lucky, they've been able to escape this violence.  They're courting death on a daily basis.

And these are a lot of folks who come from these very difficult backgrounds where they've known death their entire lives, where if they're able to get out of their teenage years and survive gang life in Honduras they're living on borrowed time in the world of smuggling in Mexico.

Which is a really, it's a brutal industry. It's one that just grinds people up and it's the loss of life is just mind boggling.

CHAKRABARTI: And then, as you put it, to the benefit, that grind, that churn is to the benefit of the U.S. economy in terms of the hunger for undocumented workers, but also the kings in your book, right?

MS-13, these transnational narcotics groups and cartels. Do you think, can you talk about that a little bit? Because while we've been focusing on the soldiers, because that's who you were able to embed with these smugglers, there are groups and individuals who are profiting mightily off of this exploitation.

DE LEÓN: Yeah, I think what people don't really realize about Mexico in 2014, when we had this first big kind of rush of unaccompanied minors largely from Honduras, the United States at that point decided to put all this political pressure on Mexico to stop the flow of migrants before they could get to the U.S.-Mexico border. Frontera Sur, which was this binational, actually beyond Mexico into Central America, where we were using, we're providing training for law enforcement in Mexico and Central America, technology, and trying to stop migrants before they can get out of Mexico. In response to that, the cartels see that, Oh, now it's getting so much harder to cross, that they can now start to tax the movement of migrants and start to charge more and make more of a profit on it.

And it had to become, smuggling had to get more organized to overcome this rise in border enforcement. And then along the way, these transnational criminal organizations realize that now, as the system gets more organized, they can begin to tax it in a better and more systematic kind of way. And they're making more as we crack down on migration, these criminal organizations see that now as a way to, they can just make more money from it because it's way more sophisticated and has to be more organized.

Now, the same thing, I mean we saw the same thing happen with the drug trade. Once we stopped shipping drugs into like Miami and had to go overland into Mexico. The Mexican drug cartels had to get more organized in order to negotiate with the Colombians and with other folks.

And as the system gets more complex, there's a lot more money to be made.

CHAKRABARTI: Yeah. In the last few minutes that we have. Professor, I'd love to hear from you about what this experience has led you to think, in terms of what might be effective policies. Because we've done shows in the past, multiple shows about how part of this hemispheric problem that we have comes from the near failed state status of many of the countries, where the migrants are fleeing for both fear for their lives, fear crime, economic reasons, et cetera.

And that the U.S. has a role to play in helping to stabilize and rebuild those countries. So that we have, we had those discussions. But beyond that, I'm wondering now, given that you have this clearer view, even if it's not a perfect one of these vast networks, where would you suggest the U.S. put pressure to stem the flow of migrants? Because ultimately, in terms of U.S. policy, in American eyes, that is a desire. Where would you put that pressure?

DE LEÓN: I mean I think, I've been saying this for probably 20 years now, that we spend so much money, we waste money on border enforcement.

And we're putting this band aid on these gaping wounds that stretch across the Western hemisphere and beyond. And so for me, a lot of people don't want to leave their home countries. And smuggling is just as a symptom of these bigger problems. And we have these anti-smuggling task force, which I mean, we really should be having these, like how to deal with climate change task force, how to deal with political corruption and gang violence and the drug wars that are forcing people out of their homes.

I think we need a more serious investment in those issues. And also, I think part of it too, we have to get the American public to understand that these are big problems. Bigger problems that extend beyond our borders. And whether people get a little touchy about the political instability in places like Central America, even though, the original banana republic in Honduras is a product of U.S. interventionist policies. That aside, just even thinking about climate change, which is pushing all these people out of a place like Honduras, is being driven by countries like the United States.

And I always find that it's the irony that you have a country like Honduras, it's been destabilized by over a hundred years of U.S. interventionist policies. Now people were watching this laboratory for climate change push these people out consistently. And these migrants are fleeing climate change, that's being driven by the United States. Being now driven towards the United States. And so I think, we need to think about more nuanced policies that extend beyond our borders and that take seriously these bigger issues. And really shifting away from this, the problem, the quote-unquote problem of smuggling. That for me, that's not the problem.

It's a symptom of these things.

CHAKRABARTI: Yeah, I take your point, but also there's an issue of time scales here. Because as you just mentioned, first of all, politically, this is a century long problem in the making. Also, but regarding the future, like climate change isn't going to turn around anytime soon.

We agreed we should invest a lot in climate change policies and supports, not just for the smuggling reason, but for the future of the planet reason. But that is, again, a project of decades, if not, more centuries. There's also, so that can be done, but there's also this acute need right now.

I'm wondering if you would see that is it time for the U.S. government, whether it's politically unpopular or not, to get, to crack down on U.S. employers? Or is it time for some kind of task force to go after, if possible, more successfully, again, the kings, the heads of these cartels that are helping to drive the system that's satisfying the employment need in the United States.

Can we do both simultaneously?

DE LEÓN: Yeah. I think for me, the real kicker is. we hate migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border. The American public is totally fine with them dying in the Sonoran Desert of Arizona, but this understanding that if you can survive the Sonoran Desert of Arizona and get to the United States, we'll completely ignore you once you enter one of these labor industries that most American citizens wouldn't want to touch with a stick.

And so I think if we were to make these employers responsible for this, or really to look at them and to say what is going on and if we were, if we truly didn't want migrants ... in this country we could crack down on all these industries. It would crash our economy quickly.

But maybe that's what it's gonna take for people to, for the general public to understand just how important this labor force is. Because I mean, this kind of duality of, like, we ignore them once they're here, but we let them die in other places, or we brutalize them in these other contexts, for me that doesn't sit well, but that really speaks to this kind of refusal for the public to see the complexity of the actual issue.

And we're in an election year. And so right now it's very easy to demonize migrants. We're very good at doing that and migration, smuggling, these are all smoke screens for these much bigger and more complex problems.

This program aired on July 9, 2024.

Jonathan Chang Producer/Director, On Point Jonathan is a producer/director at On Point.

Meghna Chakrabarti Host, On Point Meghna Chakrabarti is the host of On Point.

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