Thanks to cspan for the interest theyve taken in this conversation today and for joining us here to capture the discussion. Im lynnnet, the director of Wallace House. Its the livingston awards for young journalists that brings us here today. Their livingston award is a prestigious prize referred to this thats pull letters for pulitzers prize for journalist under the age of 35. Our special guest visiting won the livingston award for National Reporting in 2017 for her story, unclaimed and it is that story that brings to us our talk today with the title beyond the wall the human toll of border crossingsment unclaimed tells the story of an anonymous, undocumented man, left in a vegetative state, after a tragic truck accident during a border crossing. Unknown and unclaimed, he languished in a hospital bed for now nearly two decades. The man came to be called 66 garage because there was no information on him no one knew his name. Perhaps that name was a reference to the truck route on which the accident occurred, but no one ever knew for sure. During the a time when immigration stories are in the news every day, sometimes on a repeating loop through the day, so much so that we can become desensitized to them, the stories of often tied to politicized policy debates and political factions. And its easy to just stop listening. Brook jarvis unclaimed captures an achingly human story that explored the hopes, the dreams, the tragedies, and the disappointments not just of the unknown unanimous at the center of the narrative but of the hundreds of families who thought his story might contain a missing longed for pierce their own family story. Ill read one paragraph from the story before we turn it over to the panel. And yet, as his story, or really the news of the lack of a story, spread, people began to contact the hospital to ask detailed questions about his moles, or his scars. Their own family histories also included a journey across the border, interrupted bay mystery. Each had a son or a brother or a husband or a cousin or a friend who had head northward and then disappeared, leaving no answers about what might have happened to him. Whether he was dead, or incarcerated, or suffering somewhere. Whether he abandoned them. In the anguish of their uncertainty, they look to the man in the bed and saw hope. They peered into his empty past and saw the possibility of themselves. Acknowledging these human stories is what brings us here today. We at Wallace House believe that excellent journalism presents an opportunity for communities. It prompts us not just to think and absorb stories in solitude but also to talk, to explore, to debate, and to try to understand the issues and the storiesing to. And so we have brought brook jarvis here to join us on campus here today for a conversation with two esteemed scholar width deep experience and interest in the issues that her work explores. Were pleased to have joining us today, jason deleon, associate prefer of anthropology here at the university and director of the undocumented migration project. His research on latin american migration explores among other topics, violence, deaths, and mourning. He is the author on the book the land of open graves. Living and dying on the migrant trail was award it a grants for his work that the Macarthur Foundation cite for, quote, challenge little audiences to confronted the come mixty of International Migration and american policy choices. And to moderate the discussion today, were pleased to have anne Lynn Associates professor of pock policy and teaches cores on Public Policy and implementation, Qualitative Research methods and a range of topics tied to immigration. Some im going to turn things over to ann to guide our conversation today, but before we do, i want to remind you that its our policy at Wallace House always to invite our audience to participate in our conversation. We have given question cards. When you came in. If you dont have a card, as the conversation is going on, raise your hand. Someone will pass you a card and if you have a question, please jot it down. Well have people in the aisles. Our Knight Wallace fellows are here and will be collecting question cards and make theyre they get to the front. For those of white house dont want to write a question down but would rather join the conversation on twitter from the room or live stream, you can smidt your questions to twitter using the wallacehouse. Ill come back up at the end. Well also have a brief reception after our conversation for your to meet our panelists and hopefully talk to one another, and so i welcome you to stay, and with that ill leave it the able hands of ann lin. Thank you so much. [applause] so, brook, were really honoring your story today and im wondering if you can just tell us about it. Starts with a man in a bed and nobody knows who he is. Tell us about how he got there and what then happened. Sure. So, as lynnnet began, for a long time the story of how he got into the bed was all that was known about him. His story was thick long. Her was in an accident. Near the border. The other people in the car war might migrants and it was assumed he was also but no one was very sure. Its common for people to be advised not to carry their identification with them because for a variety of reasons but something iers often encourage that. Is the microphone working . It just changed. So, there were very few clues about his past hitch had in his pocket a calling card that had been purchased in mexico, and some dollars and pesos and that was it. And so he became this mystery. Even the mystery of his name that no one i talked to was able to clarify how such a strange name came about. And the nurses who treated him would make up names for him because they needed something to call him, but his story was so. So just like a shadow of a story. But what was so interesting and what drew me to write about him was how that lack of a story affected other people as lynnet began to read, there are tens of thousands of people who have someone they love, that they dont note what happened to them. They set out 0 cross the border and then something happened and it could be a wide variety of things, but it means a lot of people left wondering. One of the people that i spoke to when i was researching the story, who works with a lot of families like these trying to make the connections between mysterious remains and mysterious unfinished stories she said the families she worked with turned to psychics, they believed in dreams, many of them were convinced their person was the one case where someone had amnesia. Which is an unlikely thing but people were eager for something to believe and the way she put it was that its a kind of torture that she wouldnt wish on anyone, a very special kind of torture of not knowing. So the point of the story was to learn more about all of these families and what their experience was like. When i first started working on it, i thought a lot about this novel that i love, which is called the heart is a lonely hunter. Anybody read that . And at the heart of the novel is a deaf mute man, who these other characters who live in the same town, whose lives all rotate around him. They all feel like he is the one person they can talk to and they can trust and who really understands them and they see themselves reflected back by his man, and he thinks theyre all kind of nuts as you read his perspective. I kept thinking of garage 66, the man in the bed, as kind of a similar person in these persons lives. He reflect back all their fears and hopes and something i wanted to explore. One of the people that you write a lot about is lilliana, from mexico originally, but currently lives in houston, and she has a legal visa to be in the United States. She is missing her brother. How does she come to know about the man in the bed and what does she do to find her brother and how does the come to know about the man in the bed . By the time that i met lilliana, the last she heard from her brother was 1999, i believe so it had been 16 years. And when he first went missing, her family looked for him. They went to the last place where they heard from him. He made phone call and the calling card ran out and his call cut off. His calling card rain out of juice. And they never heard from him again, and some time passed and went to last place they knew where he was and looked at the n the hotels and then hospitals and then they looked in morgues and detention centers, and the people in the county they showed them pictures of people who died in the desert. Is this him . And every time it wasnt him but a common enough story that there were these other people that were offered to them for identification. Then the didnt know what to do. How she heard of this man, who was in san diego by that time. Thats where the hospital was. There are large Online Networks for people in the family and other family situations that have sprung up very grassroots, people just believe, like in the age of the. If you put a photo out it and gets wide enough circulation, maybe the right person will see it and maybe somebody will get an answer to their question. So there are more than a dozen from what i found, possibly more, of facebook groups with followers ranging from ten thousand to 200,000 people, and its this whole world of people sharing stories and sharing pictures, either of someone they lost or someone who has been found although usually not the way that you would want to eventually find your Family Member. People will share sometimes very disturbing photos of bodies found in the desert or a backpack and just these little clues for people to follow up on. And lilliana came across one of those one of her cousins saw it and forwarded today her because they thought that the man looked like her brother. Jason, you have done a lot of thinking and writing and work with the clues that might migrants leave behind in the desert. Can you say a little bit about your own work and talk about groups like the one that lilliana used to try to find her brother. Yeah. I mean, first i want to say the story is amazing. I you havent readded, i highly recommend you read it. Theyre going to give out copies later. I think for me one of the amazing thing bet the story, its not a story about immigration and i dont necessarily think we need more stories about immigration at this point. Were flooded with them. We need people to see statistics and the word migrant associated with people, with faces, stories, names, will real trauma that people live with daily, and the work ive been doing since 2008 has been trying to piece together what actually happens along the border, what do border crossings look like from an archeologyam perspective, ethnographic perspective. Forensic perspective, trying to piece together stories that are often difficult to document because they happen in the middle of know. We pick up things the migrants leave behind, like backpacks. Spent time with might grands in shelters after theyve been deport or trying to attempt a desert crossing and then we focus on the forensic packet packet. What happens to people who die more people have guides crossing the borner since 2000 since 9 11 and Hurricane Katrina combined. We undercount the number of fatalityities that happen erly. So not only people die and we dont hear about them or see them, that trauma continues to carry on to now, and so these families of the miss who are looking for loved ones, its a really horrific thing to talk to Family Members about missing a loved one, and some of the work we have done focuses around a 15 year kid named jose who left can would door, in 2013, trying to reunite with his parents in new york and went missing in the desert. Has not been heard from since. And his family will tell you temperatures, he comes to them in dreams, a moistous phone calling in the middle of the night, maybe he has amnesia, been kidnapped, and these families with live with this trauma forever arm. Christian kole psychologist wrote about this, about the bodies that werent recovered at 9 11. People living with ambiguous loss, can never be resolved but a youll never have come firm make someone is alive or dead. The families honever to go to facebook to coordinate, to look for people. Because theres minimal support for this kind of stuff. The federal government could care less about the bodies. Some nonprofits around who are struggling to raise money and awareness, but theres not a lot of infrastructure for these things. So we if your relative goes mess misting, who do you call in the mexican cons Senate Someone in tucson . People just dont know. You call tucson, they may send you to 12 different places, information gets passed around, kind of willynilly and there are just only a handful of organizations that are working to collate all of this data, but at the moment there are Something Like 800 or 900 unidentified bodies in arizona alone and many more of the bodies are out nearsides certain decomposing or have completely did appeared and theres nobody working at least at the federal level to help alleviate what consider to be this horrific humanitarian catastrophe that they u. S. Has had its hand in for a long time. Maybe you can tell us about how you got to know about this story. How did you begin to where to wt it and the work you did to research and write about it. Um, i lets see. I think i was first considering there was a story that made National Headlines a few years ago. My gracious routes my gracious routes shifted and happened to pass through this county in texas that was not directly a border county, and there was a Border Patrol checkpoints that people had to go around to not get caught. And in doing so , they many of them tied of expires ranchs find them. Some would leave out water and supplies but still, many people were dying and the county with no medical examiner, didnt know that would do and buried a lot of the bodies in a mass grave. Which made a lot of headlines and i was considering writing about that. I thought about theres an anthropologist who has a project to try to identify the people they exhumed them and are following what clues they can to find out what their stories are. But didnt feel like the right way. For a number of runs. One it was early. Had only identified one person, and it felt, as you said, many times stories about immigration can feel lie an extractions and we hear numbers and statistics and i wanted to find some people stories and that wasnt yet available. I was a little leery, like, the as a magazine writer, the story of, like, the white detective is who going to solve this, its a trope, and but thats what made me aware of the scale of this problem. Talked to that anthropologist who you probably know and she put it in the same terms. A katrina and a 9 11 that is going unaddressed. How can that be . So i had as something i wanted to write about but had not found out how. Then i was reading somewhat randomly because i have written about physician assisted suicide and right to die movements, death and dying issues, and i was ready story about the number of people kept alive at government expense in california, and there was a mention of this man who was 66 garage and it mentioned that families had come forward hoping he was their missing person, and when id been thinking about these massive numbers of missing people, i hadnt been thinking about their family i. That what a whole part of the stories that had not occurred to me. When i read that, it just caught me. Its not hard to imagine that Emotional Experience of having to live in doubt and fear because you dont know what happened to someone you loved. So then i went in to find the families to talk, to which was rick because theres a lot of privacy considerations, especially when it comes to things that are health care involved. But eventually i found some. One of the heartbreaking parts of the story is at the very end where you talk bat woman, paula who sort of adopted this man and visit him and spoke to him and then helped to publicize him. And then at the end, when he is identified, she is no longer able to speak to him anymore. Yeah. That really breaks her heart it and is a heartbreaking part of the story. The timing just happened to work that way. If i had started reporting this i didnt know he would be identified. For 16 years had not been identified and was a photo mystery and that allowed people involved in his life to tell me things if i had started reporting after he was identified would have been considered private or at least at the discretion of the family. And then, surprise, which is a great outcome for that family, which is one of the rare so many people i talk to, they continued looking for years and decades, and in this case, he had a living sister who after many years of not hearing from him, had given him up for lost and was surprised to find he was alive. Yeah. President trump talked about open borders and how he felt that prior to his administration, the borders between america had his open border policy that allowed in all these drugs and crime. Jason, can you Say Something about whether whatted the e the border look like and how its not open. You know, the open border question is just one that is not based on any kind of truth or facts. And if you think about who the people pushing for the wall, the wall is going to solve this whole thing. Its not people high up in dhs. Its not agents on the ground. People recognize that the border is a very complex place and its not we dont have an open border. We dont have what is being said politically and publicly, is not a reflection of what is happening on the ground. So this whole notion of an open border, you know, numbers have been down, obama deported more people that george w. Bush. These things are much more complicate than the way theyre being portrayed now. And the policy we have in place that the way our Security Work nows started in the clinton administration. So, yeah, this idea were being overrun by ms13 and drugs and terrorists, these are falsehoods. Theyre not true. And what we have done over the years is conflated the war on terrorism with southern Border Security which is a very savvy sleight of hand and its a way to generate lots of fear, way to generate spending for things like wall we know will not work and will destroy the environment but will put money in certain peoples pockets. But we throw these things out there and unfortunately they pick up steam. And but from my experience and from many hours of conversations on the ground, these things were being told public publicly are not true. One thing i think people often dont real how many border enforce. Contributes to the enforcement contributes to the difficulty of getting across the border and also to the existence of a large undocumentedded population in the u. S. , because once people come across they dont want to risk going home because they fear they cant cross again. Crossing is not i as easy as walking across a dotted line. As a lot of your work talks bit, it can be a weeks long, months long process, and i wonder if you can just say a little bit about that. Its not this idea that the wall is going to stop this whole thing. I love the quote that it use from Janet Napolitano says show me a 50foot wall. Ry show you a dude on the side renting a 50foot ladder. People are constantly responding to change inside enforcement but not necessarily in ways that are super obvious. So putting occupy up a wall is an an, a architectural imopossiblity. What we stated with obama the way the immigration has changed in 2014 we were afraid of the poor brown children from Central America who were floodings our detention centers, and people got really concerned about this humanitarian crisis they recognize for about a new york minute and then it went away. And obama comes out and says we tougherrenned up border enforce; more boots on the ground we have outsourced immigration enforce into the mexico. Put political pressure on them to stop Central Americans in country. So they deport equal numbers of Central Americans that we do. As part of this plan that was initially called they dont have ha name for it and deny it exists we train agents in mexico and honduras to catch people leaving the country. Thats where this border enforce. Is happening. The stuff at the u. S. Mexico border, much of that is a smoke screen. One thing i think is onmissed in this discussion is is that its not very easy to come to the u. S. Legally. People talk about waiting in line and how its important for people to do the right thing and wait in line. But the fact is that American Immigration policy is really about who you know because it is centered around sponsorship. So either you have an immediate Family Member who can sponsor you, a parents, child, an adult child, a spouse, a brother and sister, who can sponsor you, or you have to have an employer sponsor you. And sponsor you by name. That is, not just say, i need workers of this particular type. But i need this person here now, and im willing to make that application. So, if you go back to the issue of waiting in line for a lot of people there is no line for them to wait. In theres never a line that they can join that will get them to the United States. So people develop all of these other ways of getting to the United States. One of the things you were talking about earlier is ms13 and how its become powerful in part because it smuggles people over the border and i wonder if you could Say Something about that, jason. I knew i was dish didnt watch the state of the union last night. I was joking just got my update from the onion how that went. What the trope of the ms13 is going to destroy america, we made ms13 in america. Its a homegrown problem. We then sent people back to Central America with skills to become more organized around criminal activities but ms13 is like the new the kind offing intoe man. Thats ing intoe man, they scary think we can throat out there and now need a wall. Ms13 starts in l. A. We start deport people who are fleeing Central America because of u. S. Intervention policies that were making the countries unliveable so the come to the u. S. , they get marginalized in the u. S. , start gangs and then we send them back to Central America, get more organized there, make life even more miserable for aberdeen else in Central America. Its a back and forth but ms13 is an american problem we had a hand in creating and we want had this historical am niece should how they amnesia who have come to be. Work for guy waivers ms13 who love donald trump. Every time the says im going to build a bilawal, they say thats just more money i can make. I know this wall isnt going to do anything but my people that smuggle dont know that. They think that this wall is going to require more things from me so now i can jack up my prices. Ms13 now largely control his movement of Central Americans across mexico. So they control the train tracks and the routes cartels control particular geographic aread. You cant cross mexico without paying ms13 to smuggle you across and anywheremaking money now. Things were slow after the election because people were afraid to come, prices have gone up. But ms13 now, they look every time trump says something about them, for. The its like, yeah, more money in our back pocket. So i have interesting conversations with those folks about the perception of what these things were said in the u. S. , those impacts theyre having on people in Central America and mexico. I want to remind everybody that we are looking forward to your questions later on and so please write your questions on your question cards. Under a president obama, and then the president trumps change in directive to isis, excuse me, to immigration and Customs Enforcement that allows and encourages i to pick up undocumented immigrants even if they do not have criminal background and record. The fear of deportation for families has gone up tremendously and im wondering if you can tell us about what some of those families are doing to deal with it. You mentioned earlier clarified the Adult Children are able to sponsor their parents citizenship. Children children are not. If you are the americanborn child of someone at risk of deportation, you really dont have the right to have that person in your life in america. Its a very interesting situation. The best interest of the child is the Legal Standard that is used in International Law enshrined in the convention under the rights of the child which we did not ratify but we did sign, the only country not to ratify, and its also used if there is a decision this is the main criteria judges are considering, that there is not a mechanism for looking at that when it comes to Immigration Law and deportation as parents. So, there are lots of people who are deported and are leaving behind American Children which opens a question of whats best for these children. The choice is generally you can leave with your parents even if its countries you dont know or speak the language, people are planning better for this now but for a while in mexico they didnt have any paperwork they are so how did they enrolled in schools and we hear a lot of immigrants overrunning american schools to mexican schools are having a hard time right now because they are overrun with American Kids who dont speak spanish and so families are very afraid from what ive seen in my reporting. Many of them are planning for the eventuality of what happens if you have a small child and one day your parents doesnt come home from work or pick them up from school because theyve been detained and theres nonprofits to work with families to make a play and who are they going to call, who has the bank account information, who has the documents. A story that i recently worked on the bus specifically about a woman in miami, something many people d do is sign a power of attorney letter to allow someone to step in in a legal sense and take care of the children or see them through this transition, they are a person who can find the School Paperwork or the doctors paperwork. Its all this legal stuff you wouldnt necessarily imagine a big problem. Theres a woman in miami where parents have signed the paperworpaperworkfor more than d children for her and its gone up a lot since the election she is reported she sees people being much more afraid and of the effect that has on the whole family. There is a psychologist who refers to these children a as hinted invisible citizens whose rights are not being remembered or respected as he described it and having interviewed analyzed them he found clinical levels of separation anxiety selfesteem and so many of these kids live in fear they will be the one to mess up like they have their parents in their hands i hands t if they do something wrong and its their fault their family. Fullstop part, so it is a terrifying prospect for kids. They would report dreams where they are hiding from i. C. E. In the middle of the night this is a dream that one girl reported. She said they had on black sweatshirts and she had on a pink hoodie and couldnt hide. I met children who either have e turns deported or are afraid of having their parents departed and the effect is pretty heartbreaking. How do you get people to trust you in situations like that . As you said, these families are terrified that something they say or do will bring them to the attention of i. C. E. And lead to a deportation. So in circumstances like this, why do people trust you enough to speak to you . Good question. Im definitely very cautious about things like that. I think that my first responsibility is like writing about public figures but these are ordinary people who would not be in the spotlight if i didnt put them there and that creates the responsibility to not mess up their lives. It helps to be introduced by somebody they already know and trust. Its not that youre just going to knock on doors in immigrant neighborhoods and be like wants to talk about your legal status. Its important to th be slow and cautious and explain to people with the goal of your reporting is our. And when the circumstances require it, too anonymize their details. You work with a lot of people to. You would think they have much reason to trust you whether these are young men coming across the border, and for that matter youve done a lot of work with Border Patrol agents who probably dont see professor from the university of michigan and somebody thats good to be very sympathetic to my beliefs. So how do you create trusted sources . I was working on a project once, a sociology survey is part of we knocked on doors asking peoples status and it totally fell flat. [laughter] it was a good learning moment for the buck this isnt really working. [laughter] but for meits a couple of things. The communities and people i work with have the luxury of spending years with them so it takes a long time to develop trust. And in that length of time they become committed, so part of it is just when you tell someone im interested in your story im going to be back tomorrow and you come back and they are likee you werlikeyoure not kidding au say i will be back next week and the next. They realize youre not going to go away until things are figured out so part of it is a methodological thing. Thats part of it also is people want to talk to you. Do you get off the vibe of im interested in these issues and here to do the best job i can and to be fair to the people trusting me. Ive had great working relationships with Law Enforcement, Border Patrol, and i can do all of this within the openness of i want to tell these stories and i cant do it if im here with this kind of agenda other than to tell a story. And people are not always open to this in the beginning. Its taken some time to develop trust and we disagree about certain things that they recognize that the end of the day if im going to write about them i want to write about a complete person might come to know. Maybe we disagree on certain things. But there are some people who do horrible stuff and i want to understand how does someone come to that position and what is life like for them to. So you have this and people pick up on it like you see like an okay person. I dont know what youre doing, but i cant trust you to do a job that i think will reflect the relationship we are having. People will have a pretty good detector if youre not being forthcoming with. Im wondering if you can Say Something about the kind of journalism that you tried to do. You read magazines but my sense is you write for different magazines and you freelance and pitch stories to a lot of different places. What do you look for in a good story . The story needs to be the kind of story that will stick with you and you would tell your friends in a bar, something that id rather what everybody always says that journalism you pitch a story about a topic and when it comes to Something Like this like immigration, i dont have any kind of policy agenda or thoughts. I want to tell the stories of the people involved so we understand them better so they are not abstractions. When you can do that in a way that cuts through what people expect and what they think they already know, that is the most effective. The largest barrier to all of us learning something is feeling even if we dont or something is familiar and that can be frustrating when youre just telling stories because they always think theyve heard that story before and you have to find a new way in. But ive never been very good about talking about what i do. The goal is to tell a good story about, and im always drawn to topics that are messy and mushy and morally unclear and i want to know peoples motivations and what they are thinking and why they did what they did and anything that is going to make me see the world i thought i knew in a different way and shall be maybe showthe maybe i h as i thought into that a it wase experience. I have a somewhat relation to the related question for you. How do you select from that material . Many more quotes and artifacts and more are in your research that never get published so how do you make a selection . I think about the work i do as when i tell a compelling story and the data that i have but at the end of the day, i would consider myself to be an anthropologist in the field but not necessarily anthropologist or social scientist when i said words to paper. Im more interested in being a writer and state journalist or some other thing that values the storytelling. My colleague told me once ive been accused of being a journalist and she said thats okay thats not a bad thing, that means youre putting interesting things on paper and people want to follow along. With the social science stuff, you have all this information and have to figure out what to include and what to leave out in terms of what can the reader handle and how do you do that in a concise way so over the years i had to figure out had to be more often to be honest about the process and if i lose you with the narrative it doesnt matter how much i put in there it is indecipherable. So for medo not be wedded to certain data sets or things written. If it is going to be distracting. But its hard. You are always editing something whether it is a journal article or piece of paper or a book. I just have a lot to work with, but im thinking about it in a much more journalistic or novelistic way. I think it is time to invite everybody else to the conversation so i see people collecting cards. I know the cards are coming down here and will be asking the questions. This is a question from our audience what the walls that ran the length of the border [inaudible] no. Its not the law. The wall. Fullstop movement. This giant walls in san diego and the redirect people towards the desert just have to walk five or six days to get across. Its about the Natural Environment walking through bucks county or the southern deserts of arizona, that is the wall, that is the physical barrier to movement. The actual ball that we put up isnt going to stop the flow of people because they can go under it, jump over it, go around it in water. At the end of the day it doesnt get at the core reason for why people are coming, why they are leaving the worl world is pullim here. Itit slowed things down that hasnt slowed it down in 2008 it was the economy being in the toilet, thats what slowed things down. Thats how its always been. The push and pull factor is the fact we have people in the u. S. That are undocumented because we like cheap labor or there are things happening around the globe forcing them to leave as Global Climate change, political stability, the drug war in mexico. A big thing. I keep thinking way. Fullstop having this conversation because i dont have many times. That is end our area of expertise. Something that brings to mind is spain has two outposts considered spanish territory and those are the only ones between africa and the European Union and they are very much to protect basically. It is heavily guarded and not only do people get over those walls they are also injured and killed in the process frequently on a weekly basis so that is like a microcosm of what we are trying to accomplish and it has not been successful. The only thing i would add, when you make it difficult to get into the u. S. , you create a market for people who tell you to cover those difficulties so there are undocumented immigrants from asia who come in through smuggling and if they make it harder for people to cross but ther theres still an economic incentive for them to be in the United States, still reasons for them to come to the u. S. But there is no legal way to do it, then what we will see is people paying smugglers in being in debt to them for years in order to get across and get through the checkpoints that are between them and the u. S. The federal government fought in the early 90s if they used the desert as a natural barrier they said people thought i because it will be too hard to get across, but the thinking was enough people die they will stop coming. You can look this up on the internet, the dhs online you can see these policy documents people say they will die in the desert but that wont stop them once people learn that they are dangerous and stop doing it they will stop coming. Hundreds of deaths a year dont stop you from coming i dont know what this wall is going to do. The most extreme people to be a good thing we can do is kill people at the border. I wanted to say before the next question a cards are being collected and read by the amazing Wallace House fellows and i hope that he will introduce yourself before you ask the next question and others will as well. Thank you. I am robert from washington, d. C. , one of the Knight Wallace fellows. This question is also from the audience. This country of origi origin aft specific routes taken through mexico where do they take the same and then in the related question those crossing the border do you know the breakdown between those of mexico and Central America . They are segregated by the country of origin. So youve got people from african countries coming up to that route the sort of unexpected. The hondurans come through the two routes. Try to get to Houston Texas or new orleans they tend to come through other sorts of routes to new york city but you will see these routes in mexico like people will eventually come so there are segregated routes have come. At the border to breakdown right now is 98 or something for people from mexico or Central America and then they tend to split pretty evenly between mexico and Central American countries you have people coming from all over the place, mexico and much farther away like unexpected china for example. This is also from our inhouse audience can limit you talk about this movement our church is the only place to provide sanctuary. What does that mean, do you know about the church and he tried posting a case test for this movement . I will start by saying there is no legal prohibition against any other officer going into a house of worship or anywhere else, so the Sanctuary Movement is built on a particular belief that if Law Enforcement agents have to force their way into a church to pick up a particular family that will create a Public Relations for them at that agency cannot tolerate. Theres nothing that keeps Law Enforcement from going into church, synagogues, mosques and any other house of worship. Having said that, there are two issues to go on. The Sanctuary Movement is a really important way for congregations to, for americans to think about whether they approve of the policies our government which is in their name saying we cannot survive as a country if these people who did not come through Legal Immigration means stay here. Its a way for americans to look at themselves to see what they are willing to accept. And in that sense it has been tremendously useful in teaching people about the issues, immigration in general. Its been a great way of teaching people about the millions of people in the United States that are protected against deportation that has been detoured but they have no legal status or way of getting legal status which means any kind of protection can be listed in is the situation of people under temporary protective status, that is the situation of people who have received the deeper action for childhood arrival as well as people who are undocumented and do not have any program or court decree protecting them. So i think its important and great that people are concerned and care about it. But as an actual policy to prevent deportation, its not very helpful. This question is from our inhouse audience. Migration across the border like many other issues has aspects of intersection out o audi and ides of race and gender. Can you speak to how issues at the border are also feminist issues particularly in the spines of the need to movement . Me too movement . I guess i have a wide definition of what a feminist issue is. These are peoples families and lives. One of the trend is trends is y of people deported our men so that leaves a lot of families with just a mother and thats a major impact on a lot of peoples families. I think that is important. Our image of an undocumented migrant is surely a young man coming to the u. S. And maybe hes going to stand in the home depot parking lot at work or commit a crime. It really closes our eyes to the fact families come over in steps where one person comes first and they are able to send money back to bring other people over or families come together. And i think another way of thinking about what goes on at the border as a sensitive issue is two things. First, whether formerly through smuggling o or informally, one f the fears women facing the men faced last is the fear of Sexual Violence and that is certainly a feature of the experience particularly when women are trusting smugglers to get them across the border. And then the other thing i would say thats also important is the u. S. Created a set of Legal Protections of a way to get legal status for women who were battered with abused and where one of the elements is that the husband controlled the immigration visa and if they were divorced in no longer have the ability to stay in the u. S. Or she is the principal applicant for a visa. They wouldnt have the ability to play on her own. Is it the case. And today the face families han fragmented. There was no paperwork of him in the obituary. She couldnt leave the country because it is illegal without all kinds of paperwork. It differentiates those that are migrating. It comes up constantly. Those that dont know about ten years ive been trying to use this as one method to understand this process b we treated it lie an assemblage. We hope those things can be used to show the connection to get people thinking about what its like to be an immigrant and how to its shockingly not allow but it took a long time to realize that. I worry about this stuff because theres always this focus its really interesting its just a way to think about the people that left them behind. They both speak to the Human Experience that happened in the middle of nowhere where there were not a lot of people around to see this stuff, but there is a lot of interesting objects we have found and i can talk ad nauseam about food and ripped up shoes and things. There was this important things i would rather talk about whose body they found in 2012. This body had been sitting in cold storage for six weeks. What would h. , informed policy need to look like in order to support immigrants in the United States. The u. S. Has a refugee policy. They created a program that would screen refugees abroad. Having said that that was important about our previous refugee policy. The u. S. Waged a war in vietnam. Fiercely on our side during the wars. We dont have the same policy with cuba. I could go on about this. We are a large part of the region so one thing i would say about the policy that recognizes migration. There would be no particular circumstances where. We knowingly do this. Maybe the least we could do is to spend some time and energy to send it back to him. I think that for me the form of sensitive policy would be at least two minimally invest the samples. The work that needs to be done is a minimal amount that we could do that would at least theres the murder that happens and then we cannot let this continue because as this story shows. And its the people in conflict to try to solve some of these but they dont solve a lot of cases. The fingerprints are finally wey identified and have existed. It had never been thoroughly checked out a. Of then they ran them in an old database to develop your own relationship. Its very easy to talk about them and they will tell you stuff that is really haunting. I talked with a number of peop people. In the era of alternative facts is there a role for journalism and academia for the policies . Yes. Of different ways they draw the line for what it is advocacy. There are just certain things i dont see as a bias. I think it is a handy thing to have but i dont think that should be considered what disqualifies me from reporting on environmental issues. Im very happy to claim the bias that i think the people involved are real people whose humanities should be respected and understood and if i cant write stories that help keep that in mind. At least in the discipline of anthropology people start looking around and say what do i do and how do i contribute to the dialogue about these Different Things to. I dont get tenure if im an intellectual. That is what gets me tenure and then theres all this other stuff so what happened i see a lot of my colleagues its just digestible, readable, understandable. That is what so and so does its theoretical and why do i keep doing what im doing and not think about the Dumpster Fire of the little happening right now. There is a real commitment to the world and to share information about the work we do in an accessible way so now more than ever to be working to be understandable and comfort to these facts. [applause] we have time for one last question how does the immigrant wave compared to other historical periods and is there any connection with the economy and unemployment rates over time . As you say we have an antiimmigrant wave and the sentiment in the United States is not a no and it existed in the early 18 hundreds and was directed against catholics and existed in the late 18 hundreds into the mid18 hundreds against chinese and existed in the late 18 hundreds and was directed against southern europeans, so nativism is a part of our country. Its an important part of our story because whenever you confront nativism, that response isnt to say gosh these people are racist i dont want to talk to them, the is you care about what this country is and stands for and i do, too. We have a conversation about what your values and my values are, understanding we are both part of the country that we want to protect and respect. To bring this conversation back a bit to the alternative facts, and in many ways the facts about immigration are not particularly complicated. Whats complicated about immigration is that we have a bunch of different values that also run against each other and so we have to have that conversation about the values and if we dont and we just yell at each other, then we end up with a policy that doesnt serve our country well and doesnt serve people that want to very well, so i think that its important to understand first and come to the other part of your question that nativism isnt really related to economic traditions or war around the world it can exist in good times and bad times. One of the things that indicate as many immigrants are coming in because of their jobs it. Its what we think this country stands for and how we think it is going next, live, your calls and comments on washington journal. With newwsmakers mexico representative ben ray lujan. After that, a Defense Department hearing about leadership misconduct. Q a,night on cspans doug mills talks about the photos he took while covering donald trump. Obviously, he likes having us around. Despite his constant comments about fake news and the media and so forth, i really feel he enjoys having us around, because it helps try his drive his theage, drive the news of day, what he does every day. Having us around really allows him to do that. Q a tonight at 8 00 eastern on cspan. This morning, stephen moore, senior economic adviser in vitro president ial campaign talks about the administrations economic policy. Then, Washington Post columnist Catherine Rampell talks about the countrys economic outlook. Later, roben farzad, host of npr one, full