Juan Llamas-Rodriguez’s New Book Explores Depictions of U.S.-Mexico Border Tunnels

Juan Llamas-Rodriguez is a global media scholar, an assistant professor, and the associate director of the Center for Advanced Research in Global Communication at Annenberg.

His latest book, Border Tunnels: A Media Theory of the US-Mexico Underground (University of Minnesota Press, 2023), examines how the media portray the underground tunnels connecting Mexico and the United States. These representations range from reality TV to evening news reports.

Llamas-Rodriguez analyzes how these often sensationalized and inaccurate representations shape public perception of migration, border restrictions, and other contentious issues.