Jason De Leon:
He told me at one point, he says, I have become this brutal, violent person, but what else did you think I was going to become with all the things that have happened to me? And those guys would say, well, I can utilize this skill set now in this new context.
And for a lot of them, they sort of see the smuggling work as a kind of form of redemption in some way. Like, I did bad stuff on the street before. Now maybe I can use these kind of skills to help people, although, at the same time, they’re still exploiting folks in all kinds of ways.
