Using research methods from all four subfields of anthropology, De León sheds light on the lives (and deaths) of the thousands of migrants who cross the US border with Mexico daily in the Sonoran Desert of Arizona.

He also expands upon the ideas of the hybrid collectif and “Prevention Through Deterrence” by arguing that the United States deliberately funnels migrants through the Sonoran Desert so that various human and nonhuman actants do the “brutal work” for Border Patrol.

The accounts of Memo and Lucho are crucial to the entirety of the book because De León exerts the usage of actual voices of those who have experienced the monster known as the "desert hybrid collective.

He espouses his opposition to the Department of Homeland Security's former practices of "catch and release", which would lead to an immediate deportation of the migrants, to the one implemented since 2005 and usually referred to as Operation Streamline.

They readily share their stories even though migrants settled in the US usually choose to forget their crossing experience due to the traumatic circumstances they may have faced in the desert and their illegal status.

[1]: 170  De León uses the method Archaeology of the Contemporary to uncover and document the truth about conditions faced and the origins of those who have braved the Sonoran Desert.

A way to, “distinguish between sites where people camp for long periods, briefly rest, get picked up, practice religion, get arrested, and die.”[1]: 175  This information brings clarity to the timing and location of events.

De León and his colleagues discover the dead body of a female migrant that appears to have experienced necroviolence, which he states is the embodiment of what the Department of Homeland Security's "Prevention Through Deterrence" looks like.

He discusses the more harrowing aspects of being anthropologists, and expresses the realities of practicing Anthropology, "directing a research project focused on human suffering and death in the desert means we can't ignore certain parts of the social process just because it sickens us or breaks our hearts.

De León concludes his book expressing his objective, which was to unveil the curtain that the US Government hides behind, known as "Prevention Through Deterrence", and its lasting after-effects.

Using Callon and Latour's approach of the Actor-Network theory, De León affirms that the American government's policy of Prevention Through Deterrence uses an assemblage of actants he nicknames the "hybrid collectif."

Although these practices of corporeal perversions have always been used to send a message to the living, he notices that the United States uses them as a utensil to deter people from attempting a perilous border-crossing.

He took strong issue with De León's “shocking decision to buy and execute five pigs to understand what happens to human corpses when they are exposed to the elements of the desert.”[5] Nevins also criticized De León's final statements regarding the broad apparatus of exclusion, in which the author stated that there is “no easy solution”[1] to the issue, while saying his intent of the book was “never about solving our problem of illegal immigration.” Nevins’ critiqued De Leon's practice of “unauthorized mobility delimiting the range of solutions, which one defines as a predicament informing analysis and thus possible responses.”[5] Writing for the University of Oxford, Andrew Roesch-Knapp critiqued the book's strong language and poor reproduction of photographs, but ultimately praised De León's thesis of desert geography being used for immigration enforcement and concluded that "the book provides a scathing, holistic critique of American immigration policy.

Working as collaborators, they compiled materials for his ethnography with the intention to publicize migrant narratives and present new data on the detrimental effects of Prevention Through Deterrence.