Capítulo 1
The Borderlands of Hope and Despair: A Century of Migration
In August 2019, ten Honduran migrants gathered for prayer in a Mexican housing complex called Solidarity 2000. Far from both home and destination, they shared stories of trauma, memories, and mementos from American detention centers. Their journey represents a century-long struggle that continues today - despite countless policies and billions spent on enforcement, the United States has failed to prevent mass migration driven by war, persecution, climate change, and economic collapse.
The nature of migration has transformed dramatically since the 1980s. What was once primarily single Mexican men seeking work has evolved into families and children fleeing violence in Central America's Northern Triangle. By 2019, over one million migrants were arrested at the southern border, overwhelming an asylum system barely reformed since 1990 and facing a backlog of 1.3 million cases.
Each president since 2014 has confronted border humanitarian emergencies, yet these are merely chapters of the same story that began in 1980 when the US codified asylum law while simultaneously supporting Central American civil wars. The government's deterrence tactics, including family separation, have consistently failed because the conditions driving migration remain more terrifying than any punishment at the border. Through these policies, the US has irrevocably bound itself to El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras - creating a shared destiny that continues to unfold with each new wave of migration.
Capítulo 2
Voices from the Killing Fields: The Salvadoran Civil War
Juan Romagoza's journey from aspiring doctor in El Salvador to torture victim and refugee encapsulates the human toll of US foreign policy in Central America. Growing up in Usulutan, eastern El Salvador, Juan was raised in a deeply religious family but abandoned the seminary after encountering predatory priests. Instead, he pursued medicine, inspired by watching his grandfather die while waiting for medical care. His medical training coincided with growing political turbulence, as El Salvador's extreme inequality - where 25 families controlled 90% of the nation's wealth - fueled increasing unrest.
By February 1980, Juan was a medical resident when he witnessed soldiers execute a wounded student protest leader in his hospital. This event led him to Archbishop Oscar Romero, the "voice of the voiceless" who had become an outspoken critic of government violence. Romero enlisted Juan and other medical students as his "eyes and ears," gathering evidence about torture victims that he cited in his powerful radio-broadcast sermons. Their relationship restored Juan's faith, which had been shattered by his seminary experience.
The assassination of Archbishop Romero on March 24, 1980, while celebrating mass marked the end of any "moderate solution" to El Salvador's crisis. Violence escalated dramatically, with Juan treating victims bearing horrific torture injuries. Despite learning his name was on a death squad hit list, Juan continued providing medical care until he was captured and subjected to 24 days of brutal torture, including electric shocks, cigarette burns, and sexual assault. His torturers shot through his left forearm, telling him, "This is so that you will never practice medicine again."
Juan's personal tragedy unfolded against the backdrop of American foreign policy. The Reagan administration abandoned Carter's human rights approach in favor of hardline anti-communist ideology, pouring up to $300 million in aid to Central American governments. This included funding for the American-trained Atlacatl Battalion, which would later perpetrate the El Mozote massacre, killing at least 978 civilians including 477 children. When American journalists reported these atrocities, the administration launched fierce denials, with Assistant Secretary of State Elliott Abrams dismissing the reports as "guerrilla propaganda" despite overwhelming evidence.
Capítulo 3
Sanctuary: America's Moral Response to Refugee Crisis
As violence in Central America escalated in the late 1970s and early 1980s, a powerful grassroots movement emerged in the United States to protect those fleeing persecution. In Tucson, Arizona, Margo Cowan of the Manzo Area Council found herself on the frontlines when 27 Salvadorans attempted to cross the treacherous Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument in July 1980. The harsh desert conditions proved fatal - thirteen died of thirst and exposure before Border Patrol located the group. Their bodies, scattered across the desert floor, became a devastating symbol of the humanitarian crisis unfolding at the border. This tragedy galvanized local activists, particularly Cowan and Presbyterian pastor John Fife, who would become pivotal figures in the sanctuary movement.
Initially, Fife attempted to work within legal parameters, housing asylum applicants at Southside Presbyterian Church while they awaited their hearings. The church provided shelter, food, and basic necessities to dozens of families. However, this arrangement proved untenable when immigration authorities systematically rejected all asylum applications and began an aggressive policy of detaining applicants rather than allowing their release. The shift in policy left many refugees facing immediate deportation back to life-threatening situations.
Quaker activist Jim Corbett, a former philosophy professor turned rancher, proposed a radical solution: operating as "pro bono coyotes," secretly moving Salvadorans across the border and creating a network of safe houses in churches and private homes. Corbett, drawing on powerful historical parallels, convinced a hesitant Fife by comparing their mission to the abolitionist underground railroad and pointing to the tragic consequences of the church's failure to protect Jews during the Holocaust. This moral framework would become central to the movement's identity.
The sanctuary movement gained momentum as activists uncovered evidence that INS was using identical boilerplate denials for virtually all Salvadoran asylum cases, regardless of individual circumstances. Rather than exhausting resources on individual legal battles, they adopted a strategic approach to overwhelm the system, creating delays in deportation proceedings and establishing a network to move people away from the border region. By summer 1981, their efforts had secured release for 150 asylum seekers, requiring over $16,000 in direct bond payments and raising $175,000 in property collateral from supporters.
The movement operated in legally ambiguous territory, forcing activists to develop systematic ways to distinguish between those fleeing economic hardship and those facing genuine persecution. Peggy Hutchison, drawing on her experience working with refugees, developed a three-tier classification system: "high-risk" cases included individuals with documented evidence from human rights organizations or visible torture marks; "medium-risk" encompassed religious workers, former political prisoners, and union activists; and "low-risk" designated those fleeing general violence without specific targeting.
Meanwhile, in Mexico, Juan Romagoza's personal journey illustrated the complex web of survival and solidarity. After escaping El Salvador with assistance from family friend Margarita Ortiz, he received crucial medical treatment in Mexico City for severe torture injuries. Despite his own trauma, he found purpose working at a clinic serving Indigenous Guatemalan refugees. These individuals faced compound displacement - first driven from Guatemala's western highlands during the government's genocidal campaign, then forced to flee southern Mexico when Guatemalan military forces conducted cross-border raids targeting refugee camps. Though the position was unpaid, this work became integral to Romagoza's personal healing and demonstrated the interconnected nature of Central American refugee experiences.
Capítulo 4
The Asylum Paradox: Politics vs. Protection
Throughout the twentieth century, America lacked a formal refugee policy, admitting refugees on an ad hoc basis primarily from communist countries while ignoring dissidents from strategic allies. The 1980 Refugee Act finally established a blueprint for refugee admissions, defining refugees as those unable to return to their homeland due to persecution based on "race, religion, nationality, or membership in a particular social group or political opinion."
When drafting the Act, officials included asylum provisions, estimating they would need to accommodate about 5,000 asylum seekers annually - a number that seemed inconceivable to fill in a single year. Just weeks after signing the Act, the Mariel boatlift crisis erupted with 125,000 Cubans arriving, creating a political nightmare that permanently shaped American views of immigration.
The Reagan administration's treatment of Haitian refugees revealed stark contradictions in US asylum policy. While Cubans received immediate admission and a path to residency, Haitians were detained and subjected to expedited deportation proceedings with minimal due process - twenty-minute interviews without lawyers or interpreters. A federal judge eventually ruled that the INS had violated the Constitution, finding that Haitians "seeking freedom and justice did not find it" but instead faced an agency "determined to deport them."
By 1984, while 25 percent of asylum seekers overall received approval, Salvadorans and Guatemalans faced rejection rates of 98-99 percent. Doris Meissner, who had risen to become one of the agency's top officials, observed government officials creating legal pathways for Southeast Asians while ignoring straightforward cases from Latin Americans fleeing American allies. When she compiled a probing report on these issues, the INS general counsel Maurice Inman told her to "deep six it," leading to her resignation in 1986.
The sanctuary movement eventually faced legal consequences when activists were indicted in Arizona. During the eight-month trial, the defendants were severely constrained by Judge Carroll's rulings, which left them unable to explain their motivations. The government prosecutor relied on testimony from the very Central Americans named as "illegal alien unindicted co-conspirators," including Alejandro Rodriguez, a middle-class professional who had fled persecution after being jailed and tortured. When Rodriguez tried explaining that his lawyer told him Salvadoran asylum applications were being rejected at exceptionally high rates, the prosecutor objected and the judge stopped his testimony.
Capítulo 5
From Refugee to Activist: Building Community in Exile
After crossing the border with other migrants and escaping from smugglers who had held him captive, Juan found himself in Los Angeles' MacArthur Park - a microcosm of El Salvador. The park was divided into unofficial zones corresponding to different Salvadoran regions as the population in Los Angeles grew tenfold during the civil war to 300,000 people.
Juan's magnetic personality and shared trauma made him approachable. When a haggard man confessed that nightmares of watching his brother-in-law's execution were haunting him, Juan simply replied, "Something similar happened to me, too." Soon, other Salvadorans began seeking him out. During one afternoon gathering, when the conversation turned to mutual acquaintances who had been killed or disappeared, someone asked Juan about his imprisonment. As he calmly recounted his torture in El Salvador, the men, rather than retreating into silence, bombarded him with questions. They began referring to him reverentially as "doctor."
After three months in Los Angeles, Juan traveled to San Francisco, which had a more established Salvadoran community and had been a sanctuary movement vanguard since the early 1970s. In Dolores Park - whose name appropriately meant "pain" in Spanish - Juan organized therapy groups for homeless Salvadorans. His reputation spread, and representatives from Casa El Salvador approached him to lead an independent group serving Salvadorans and Guatemalans needing medical attention, food, and shelter.
Juan formed CRECE (the Central American Refugee Committee), setting up weekly at Most Holy Redeemer church near Castro Street. His work was constant improvisation - arranging food from rotating church kitchens, clothing drives, legal consultations, and healthcare referrals for uninsured, undocumented immigrants. With help from Spanish-speaking psychology students from UC Berkeley, Juan learned about the emerging diagnosis of PTSD, which had recently been formalized in psychiatric literature.
Known simply as "Doctor" in the Mission District, Juan became a community elder despite his young age. He led immigrant caravans to nearby cities, spoke at church gatherings, and appeared in newspaper articles under the name Juan Perez, often photographed wearing a white cowboy hat and an Oscar Romero t-shirt with his fist raised. When asked if he feared deportation given his public activism, he replied, "Part of the therapy is shedding our fear."
Capítulo 6
Legal Battles: The Fight for Refugee Rights
In early 1985, as the Arizona sanctuary activists prepared for trial, a group of immigration lawyers in San Francisco and New York were developing legal strategies to protect Central American asylum seekers. Marc Van Der Hout, Carolyn Patty Blum, Ellen Yaroshefsky, and Lucas Guttentag formed the core of this legal resistance, working to fashion collective protections through strategic litigation.
Their early efforts included the "young male case," arguing that young Salvadoran men constituted a "particular social group" under the 1980 Refugee Act because they faced persecution simply for being of military age. Though initially unsuccessful, this approach built momentum. In another case, Orantes-Hernandez v. Smith, lawyers successfully challenged the INS practice of coercing immigrants to sign voluntary departure forms. A separate case, Mendez v. Reno, exposed that asylum officials couldn't even name the legal grounds for asylum when deposed.
In May 1985, responding to the sanctuary indictments, eighty religious, refugee, and legal organizations filed American Baptist Churches in the USA v. Meese. The lawsuit made two arguments: that the First Amendment protected their right to give sanctuary, and that the government discriminated against Salvadoran and Guatemalan asylum seekers. Government data supported this claim - while the US granted asylum to 23% of applicants overall, Nicaraguans received 14%, Poles 34%, and Iranians 60%, compared to less than 3% for Salvadorans and under 1% for Guatemalans.
While the sanctuary trial concluded quickly with convictions (though only probation sentences), the ABC lawsuit proceeded slowly. After surviving three government attempts to dismiss it, in September 1989 a federal judge certified a nationwide class of Salvadorans and Guatemalans denied asylum. By 1991, facing document disclosure and depositions, the government settled ABC v. Thornburgh, allowing some 300,000 Salvadorans and Guatemalans to remain in the US and reapply for asylum.
Meanwhile, Congress was negotiating comprehensive immigration reform. The bill included tougher border enforcement, employer penalties, and legalization for three million immigrants who had arrived before January 1, 1982. On November 6, 1986, President Reagan signed the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA), calling it "the most comprehensive reform of our immigration laws since 1952" and praising the "truly successful bipartisan effort" that would legalize some three million undocumented immigrants.
Capítulo 7
The Cycle of Violence: Deportation and Gang Formation
Eddie Anzora's story illustrates how US immigration policies inadvertently exported gang violence to Central America. Growing up in South Los Angeles in the late 1980s, ten-year-old Eddie navigated dangerous streets with remarkable adaptability. His neighborhood at Thirtieth and Kenwood was Bloods territory, while his school on Vermont Avenue fell under the influence of the Harpys, a Chicano gang. Eddie witnessed the emergence of Mara Salvatrucha (MS), a newer group formed by Salvadoran teenagers with long hair and heavy metal aesthetics.
After multiple arrests for tagging, petty theft, and truancy, Eddie and his brother Carlos were sent to El Salvador for a year with their uncles in Soyapango. Throughout El Salvador, Eddie encountered other deportees from Los Angeles neighborhoods, including MS members from his old block, creating an unexpected social network of English-speaking transplants from California streets.
When Eddie returned to Los Angeles in 1993, he found himself swept into the city's evolving gang landscape. His crew ATR (Above the Rest) had transformed from a graffiti-focused group into a more established street presence. The 1992 riots had transformed Los Angeles, bringing heightened racial tensions. Sixty-one percent of arrested looters were Latino, and destruction spread beyond Black neighborhoods into areas with Central American and Mexican immigrants.
Eddie's legal troubles continued, and after pleading guilty to drug charges, he discovered he faced deportation despite his legal status. For four years, he checked in with immigration authorities while his mother helped pay for a lawyer. Then in 2001, his attorney warned him not to attend his scheduled court appearance - he would be immediately detained and deported. Now a fugitive, Eddie embraced what friends called his "Fast Eddie" persona, determined to accomplish as much as possible before potential deportation.
Despite being a fugitive, Eddie built a surprisingly successful life in San Fernando. He purchased a house using credit cards, opened recording studios under other people's names, launched Above Ground Entertainment, organized concerts, created a fashion line, and published a culture magazine called The Stash. He became a Latino heavyweight in hip-hop circles, with connections to prominent rappers like the Game and 50 Cent.
In January 2007, Eddie's luck finally ran out when ICE agents caught him in a dragnet meant for someone else. He was deported to El Salvador in September 2007, one of nearly 22,000 Salvadorans sent back that year. Upon landing in San Salvador, he confronted his new reality, feeling stripped of everything he'd built in Los Angeles: "This is my life right now? This is what I got to work with?"
Capítulo 8
Confronting the Past: Justice and Accountability
In June 2002, Juan Romagoza took the witness stand at a federal courthouse in West Palm Beach, Florida. Across from him sat the two men he blamed for his worst suffering: Jose Guillermo Garcia, El Salvador's former minister of defense, and Carlos Eugenio Vides Casanova, Garcia's successor and former head of the National Guard who had interrogated Juan in December 1980. Both men had been living comfortably in the United States since the late 1980s.
Juan had learned in 1999 that the generals were living in the US when attorney Shawn Roberts from the Center for Justice and Accountability asked if he would join a landmark civil case seeking damages for torture victims. Despite his mother's initial objections and his daughter Maria's concerns about exposing family trauma, Juan decided to testify.
During his two days of testimony, he described his life journey - from his childhood near the church to his medical training and witnessing killings at the hospital - before detailing the horrific torture he endured, including suspension by his fingers and sexual assault. Throughout his testimony, the generals maintained emotionless expressions that haunted the plaintiffs and their legal team.
The trial lasted a month, with Juan flying back to Washington on weekends to catch up at La Clinica del Pueblo and share updates with a supportive group of fifteen Salvadorans who gathered in his office. They would eat homemade pupusas and tamales while discussing every detail of the proceedings. During the trial, Juan and the other plaintiffs - Neris Gonzalez and Carlos Mauricio, who had also been tortured - supported each other, with Juan creating humorous lyrics to a Dominican merengue mocking the generals' repeated denials ("Yo no se, yo no se").
As the trial concluded, Juan Romagoza and Neris Gonzalez showed their scars to the jury - a powerful moment where Juan felt connected to all those who had died in El Salvador. Six days later, the jury delivered its verdict against the generals, ordering them to pay $54 million in damages, including $20 million to Juan. Though appeals were pending and the money was abstract, the plaintiffs had achieved justice beyond financial compensation.
Capítulo 9
Full Circle: The Continuing Story of Migration
By 2020, the landscape of migration had evolved dramatically, yet remained fundamentally unchanged. The Trump administration had fulfilled its campaign promise to curb immigration through executive action, relentless politics, and bureaucratic maneuvering. The administration expanded the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) program across the entire US-Mexico border, with 64,000 asylum seekers enrolled by March. Only 517 had received legal relief, while thousands abandoned their cases.
When COVID-19 emerged, Stephen Miller found his opportunity to close the border entirely to asylum seekers by invoking Title 42 of the 1944 Public Health Service Act, which allowed the CDC to block border travel during disease emergencies. The pandemic complicated border logistics while providing justification for expelling all asylum seekers, including unaccompanied children.
Meanwhile, deportation flights continued spreading COVID-19 throughout Central America. When Guatemala briefly suspended flights, Trump signed an order threatening sanctions against countries that refused deportees. The Guatemalan government quickly relented, and health minister Hugo Monroy later confirmed that 50-75% of deportees on certain flights were infected. By month's end, approximately 20% of Guatemala's COVID cases were deportees, leading Monroy to call the United States "the Wuhan of the Americas."
In April 2021, Keldy Mabel Gonzales Brebe de Zuniga, who had been separated from her children at the border during the Trump administration's family separation policy, received unexpected news that she would cross into El Paso on May 4. After years of separation from her children, she felt transformed: "I'm returned to life." Though nervous about potential complications, she crossed successfully as part of Biden's family reunification task force. After flying to Philadelphia, Keldy surprised her sons at a relative's home, creating an emotional reunion filled with tears and embraces.
In April 2022, the author finally met Juan in person in Usulutan, El Salvador, after two years of remote communication. Now seventy, Juan greeted friends as they walked through town, jokingly introducing the author as someone he "used to steal chickens with." Their meeting occurred during a state of exception declared by President Bukele after MS-13 killed eighty-seven people in seventy-two hours.
Juan was preparing to sell his family's historic home - a two-story white stucco house with arched windows and an interior garden that had been in his family since 1824. While showing the author family photographs, newspaper clippings of his activism, and pictures with Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, Juan reflected on his medical practice: "The one thing that's been a constant in all my years practicing medicine is that people want to talk. Their symptoms are only half of it." In the garden still stood the mango tree where Juan had hidden the night before fleeing El Salvador in 1981.
The stories of Juan, Eddie, Keldy, and countless others illustrate the complex, intertwined history of the United States and Central America - a relationship forged through intervention, migration, deportation, and return. Their journeys reveal how policies created in Washington reverberate through lives across borders, creating cycles of violence and displacement that continue to this day. Yet within these stories of trauma and separation, we also find remarkable resilience, as individuals rebuild their lives and communities despite seemingly insurmountable obstacles.
