'Deported to Death' A book presentation by Jeremy Slack - author and UTEP faculty

On September 19, 2019 Dr. Jeremy Slack, assistant professor of Geography in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at UTEP and affiliated faculty at CIBS, gave a talk regarding his newly published book, Deported to Death: How Drug Violence is Changing Migration on the U.S.-Mexico Border. Dr. Slack discussed the precarious situations faced by migrants after deportation from the United States, as they are returned to what some perceive as a foreign Mexico and become vulnerable to extreme forms of violence, such as kidnapping, extortion and death. Throughout his talk, Dr. Slack shared ethnographic data concerning migrants’ experience with organized crime and drug organizations in the often-unfamiliar border cities they are returned to by Border Patrol. His findings indicate the complex decisions recently deported migrants must make regarding returning to a dangerous life in Mexico, or attempting another cross-border journey at the risk of suffering increasingly harsh punishments at the hands of the United States.