Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here: The United States, Central America, and the Making of a Crisis

“La Matanza froze the country in time for the next four and a half decades. The government replaced the real story of what had happened with lavish propaganda about how the military had fended off bloodthirsty communist hordes. The National Library removed references to the events from its records. Newspaper accounts were destroyed. Government files from the time were hidden or burned.”

In this passage, Blitzer explains a defining moment in Salvadorian history when the government violently ended an uprising among the dispossessed peasantry. Known as “the massacre,” the military brutally murdered 2% of the population, including anyone who appeared “vaguely Indigenous,” and then claimed to have defended the country against dangerous communists. This history is important for understanding the civil war that began in 1979, as the military government became ever more violent and repressive in the name of fighting communism.

“Meissner stared straight at a policy paradox. How did you deal with this, she wondered, without immediately undercutting the principle that migrants had the right to seek protection, a right she had just fought to enshrine in law?”

Almost as soon as the Refugee Act was passed in 1980, its presumably “expansive” allowance for 5,000 asylum seekers per year was proved to be insufficient. Just weeks later, thousands of Cubans began arriving in South Florida. Here, Meissner, one of the architects of the Refugee Act, poses a question that has yet to be answered in US immigration policy: When faced with mass migration, how do policymakers simultaneously honor migrants’ right to seek protection while managing the logistics of processing and assessing so many people?

“The Guatemalan refugees he was treating also showed physiological signs of deep underlying trauma. Their symptoms were varied but unmissable: muscle spasms, joint pain, insomnia, depression, and high blood pressure. Through gritted teeth, the older men confessed to feeling an overwhelming urge to cry. Their children would act out, or struggle to focus on simple tasks. The worst part, in Juan’s view, was that emotions were taboo among these patients. None of them would talk about what they’d seen and suffered. If Juan asked, the response would be silence, and he’d watch his patient recede into a kind of catatonia.”

Much of Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here focuses on the lasting trauma of migration and the question of how to manage immigrant and refugee populations from a public health standpoint. After Juan flees El Salvador, he is left suffering from a number of physical and psychological conditions. When he begins working with Indigenous Guatemalan refugees, he sees many of his own symptoms reflected back at him. He starts to understand some of the particular medical needs of migrant populations, whom he dedicates much of his career to helping.

“When Reagan became president, his administration effectively ignored the 1980 Refugee Act. The result wasn’t just a legal and political jumble but also a kind of operational vacuum that the sanctuary workers tried to fill. Both admirers and detractors of the movement often portrayed it as an exercise in mass civil disobedience. Yet the activists were trying to act on the law and make practical sense of its untested principles.”

This passage describes the beginning of the sanctuary movement in the 1980s (See: Index of Terms). The Refugee Act had recently been passed, but the Reagan administration was ignoring the law and denying the applications of almost all Central American asylum seekers. Therefore, many sanctuary workers saw themselves as trying to enforce the law that the government was ignoring and granting protection to those who legally deserved it.

“A viable immigration bill was a kind of legislative Rubik’s Cube. Organized labor approved of employer sanctions but bristled at expanded legal immigration. Mexican American advocacy groups, which supported legalization of the undocumented, opposed employer sanctions for fear of discrimination against Hispanic workers. For every law-and-order type championing increased enforcement, there was another congressman whose most powerful constituents depended on cheap, undocumented labor.”

Here, Blitzer outlines some of the reasons that passing comprehensive immigration reform is so politically fraught. It is an issue that overlaps with many other concerns, from national security to labor to human rights. It is virtually impossible to please all parties involved.

“Life in the US was a daily collision of all the accumulated injuries that had brought them there. Medical appointments were pointless if the patients never showed, and it took concerted effort to convince Salvadorans who were frantic to find work that their debilitating migraines or insomnia were physical manifestations of deeper emotional pain. In El Salvador, they might have been hunted by death squads and federal troops, but in San Francisco they lived under the threat of arrest and deportation.”

Working with newly arrived Salvadorians in the United States, Juan saw how their trauma was continuing to affect them, especially as it was compounded by the stress and anxieties of living in the US without legal status. Instead of finding refuge, they lived with a constant fear of being caught by US authorities and returned to El Salvador, reflecting The Human Impact of Political Decisions.

“Frequently, after Reno rose to object during Rodríguez’s testimony, Judge Carroll would instruct the jury to forget what it had just heard. This was a metaphor not just for the whole trial, but for the blinkered approach the US took on asylum: the government suppressed any facts that chafed with its agenda.”

This passage describes the trial against sanctuary workers in 1985, in which the government asked the judge to exclude all the context that informed why the sanctuary workers had trafficked migrants. This made much of the testimony impossible. Blitzer argues that the trial became a metaphor for the way the US was ignoring the reality of Central American migrants’ experiences more broadly. The State Department frequently argued, for example, that Salvadorians were not eligible for asylum because they were fleeing “generalized violence,” ignoring the way the US-supported military government was persecuting anyone who might have possible rebel ties.

“In Eddie’s neighborhood, anyone worth emulating was Black or Chicano; there were no white people where he lived, and the Central Americans, who were now arriving by the thousands every month, were unassimilated newcomers at the bottom of an already vicious racial hierarchy. Black and Mexican street gangs brutalized many of them.”

This passage introduces the LA of Eddie Anzora’s childhood in the 1980s. Black and Chicano gangs ruled many of the neighborhoods where newly arrived Central Americans began to settle, and many young Salvadorian men had to band together for their own protection. This led to what would become some of the world’s most infamous street gangs, like MS-13.

“An irony of the dysfunctional asylum system was that it led to more applications. You didn’t apply for asylum expecting to get it. The odds were too long. But because the government was running so far behind, it was granting asylum seekers work authorization while their applications were pending.”

Here, Blitzer explains how the backlog of asylum cases led to more applicants. Although they often waited years for a decision on their cases, applying for asylum became an immediate solution for many migrants escaping a variety of precarious situations. While they waited, they had work permits and relative safety. This overuse of the asylum system was also a symptom of the US’s inadequate immigration policy more broadly: With virtually no other pathways for legal entry, the asylum system was most immigrants’ only choice.

“The main point of consensus, shared by Republicans and Democrats, was that the government needed to treat immigration enforcement as a matter of national security, and to accord it the resources and institutional heft typically reserved for military defense.”

9/11 caused immigration enforcement to become more militarized. All of the terrorists involved in the attack on the Twin Towers held temporary visas, and the government, as well as the public, began to see immigration enforcement as a matter of national security. The new agency Immigrations and Customs Enforcement was created, ushering in an era of treating deportable people like “fugitives,” arresting, detaining, and deporting as many as possible, regardless of the threat they posed to public safety.

“A sense of community pervaded his body. The dead were alive and with him. ‘So many scars in El Salvador, and we have the privilege to show ours,’ he thought. ‘Everyone who is gone is here.’”

In this passage, Juan describes showing his scars to a jury prosecuting his torturers, reflecting The Resilience and Agency of Migrants and Activists. He recognizes that the scars are not just evidence of his own suffering but of the suffering of all Salvadorians, especially those who did not survive the war.

“During the decade and a half Eddie had been building his life in California, the country had become one of the most dangerous places in the world. He’d witnessed the early moments of its transformation firsthand, which only made the situation stranger. In 1992, the LA transplants listening to hip-hop and flaunting cholo fashions enthralled everyone. They were exotic, comparatively rich, worldly.”

When Eddie visited El Salvador as a teenager in 1992, he was surprised to see familiar glimpses of LA culture brought back to San Salvador by recent US deportees, reflecting The Connection Between the United States and Central America. However, these deportees also brought their gang associations, and when Eddie is deported several years later, El Salvador has been transformed. Dressing like an American—once something cool and novel—has become a liability, making someone a target for gangs.

“Decades of Central American history were crashing down at the US border. Throughout the 1980s, ‘90s, and early aughts most immigrants stopped by the Border Patrol were Mexican men, traveling alone and crossing for work. In 2011, signs of an incipient shift began to appear. Agents were encountering more children arriving alone from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, in search of parents or family members already in the US. The US government developed a $ 175 million program to house and process them, but few officials in the upper reaches of the administration paid much attention.”

In this passage, Blitzer describes the stark demographic shift that took place at the US southern border in the 2010s. He attributes the change to “decades of Central American history,” much of which the US was directly involved in. Nevertheless, the US missed the signs of the impending immigration crisis and was unprepared to process so many families and unaccompanied minors at the border.

“Thomas Homan, a top official at ICE, first broached the prospect of separating parents and children at the border by charging the adults with a misdemeanor for entering the country illegally. While they were being held on criminal charges, the government would temporarily take custody of their children. It would be painful, he said, but not fatal—a deterrent.”

Here, Blitzer describes Obama-era discussions on how to proceed as the southern border was overwhelmed by Central American families and unaccompanied minors. This idea of separating families as a deterrence mechanism would later be implemented by the Trump administration, illustrating how both Democrats and Republicans have essentially the same options for managing migration without comprehensive immigration reform. The only difference is how much they worry about treating migrants “inhumanly.”

“The same year Juliana and her sisters fled El Salvador, some 40,000 unaccompanied children arrived at the border, along with 40,000 families. In 2016, there were 60,000 children and 78,000 families. Deportations generated a separate wave of people, flowing in the opposite direction. In 2015 and 2016, the US deported roughly 42,000 Salvadorans, 42,000 Hondurans, and 67,000 Guatemalans. With this many people in a state of perpetual flux—pushed toward the border, then pushed back again—the dividing line between the US and Central America only grew blurrier.”

In 2015 and 2016, over 200,000 Central American migrants arrived at the US border, and the United States deported a comparable number. This created a consistent exchange between Central America and the United States, tying the two regions closer together and reflecting The Connection Between the United States and Central America.

“Immigration tapped into a rich vein of American outrage, and Trump had an instinct for a galvanizing message. He had found a unified theory that could account for declining factory jobs, the anger and insecurity stoked by far-right media, an opioid epidemic, and the indignity of the country’s first Black president. Immigrants could be blamed for everything.”

Here, Blitzer describes the start of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, which brought anti-immigrant rhetoric to new extremes. He galvanized his far-right base by blaming immigration for all of white voters’ woes, setting the stage for the harsh enforcement measures his administration would take.

“The strategy for combating MS-13 rested on one of the core premises of American immigration enforcement: undocumented immigrants had far fewer rights than citizens did. Dismantling a criminal organization was a complex and painstaking legal task. It was much easier to deport someone than it was to convict him of a crime.”

In this passage, Blitzer describes law enforcement’s efforts to reduce gang activity in Central American enclaves of Long Island. Instead of charging and convicting suspected gang members, they simply deported them. This meant that many innocent immigrants were also caught up in the sweep because their guilt never had to be proved.

“Members of the Trump administration needed to portray Honduras as a success story. Doing so freed up the anti-immigration stalwarts to end temporary protected status for the sixty thousand Hondurans living legally in the US for more than a decade, whom they now wanted to send home once and for all.”

This passage illustrates the kind of selective intervention the US government engages in in Central America. As the Honduran president stole an election, the United States looked the other way so they could avoid acknowledging the deteriorating situation in the country and continue with plans to deport Hondurans with temporary protected status. This refusal to acknowledge the on-the-ground conditions in countries like Honduras also leaves the US unprepared for subsequent waves of migrations.

“At the border, American officials often spoke in seasonal generalities: more immigrants arrived in the spring when the weather was mild, fewer attempted the journey in the summer heat. But in the spring and summer months of 2018, the deterrent effects of zero tolerance were moot where people were starving.”

Here, Blitzer discusses the ineffectiveness of deterrence policies to stem migration. Over and over, the United States has attempted to discourage migrants from traveling north. However, these policies are repeatedly ineffective because migrants are fleeing “more immediate dangers” at home, including famine, extortion, and death threats.

“The first of many problems with the plan was that none of the three countries of the Northern Triangle could be described as ‘safe.’ El Salvador didn’t have an asylum system. Guatemala did, but it was minuscule. Then there was the bigger issue of how many people were already fleeing these three countries in the first place, a stark indication of the reality on the ground.”

One of the Trump administration’s plans to curb immigration was to deny asylum to any migrant who crossed through another country to reach the United States. However, this policy yet again represented a complete disregard for the reality of migrants’ journeys and motivations for leaving their homes. Blitzer points out that the other Central American countries that Honduran migrants passed through, for example, were experiencing an exodus of their own and might not even have an asylum system. The policy was another attempt to hide the immigration crisis and avoid taking responsibility rather than a true solution.

“The irony was not lost on Central Americans. In the 1990s and early 2000s, during earlier waves of mass deportations, US and Latin American law enforcement personnel resorted to metaphor to describe what was happening: the gangs were replicating and expanding through the region like a virus. In 2020, the deportations were spreading an actual virus.”

This passage describes the US’s refusal to stop deportations during the COVID-19 pandemic, causing the virus to spread throughout Central American countries with already fragile healthcare systems. This is another example of both The Connection Between the United States and Central America and The Human Impact of Political Decisions.

“Trump sought to hide the asylum crisis south of the border. Biden started paying an immediate price for bringing it back into view. The Central American exodus had never really ceased. MPP and the use of Title 42 covered over the reality in Northern Mexico. The pandemic brought new spells of desperation, as did two hurricanes that struck the region in the fall of 2020, displacing tens of thousands of people.”

This passage describes how the Trump administration’s immigration policies worked to hide the crisis at the border, not solve it. When Biden was elected, he was accused of worsening the crisis when he attempted to undo some of Trump’s policies. This, combined with new waves of migration from COVID and natural disasters, made a change of course on immigration policy difficult.

“To anyone determined to keep immigration out of the news, however, Title 42 could seem like a useful tool for clearing the border. Its seductiveness as a policy was a trap. Instead of setting goals for expanding asylum access, or bringing some order to ports of entry, the government resorted to an ad hoc approach of expelling as many migrants as it could.”

Due to immigration’s political volatility, the Biden administration kept many Trump-era policies in place, like Title 42, in an attempt to maintain a semblance of control at the border. Once precedents like mass deportation and detention have been set, they are difficult to reverse.