Deportation wasn’t the only danger Salvadorans faced inside El Centro. There were forms that, if signed, waived the legal right to apply for asylum. Unless they’d been forewarned, the Salvadorans who turned up in El Centro didn’t know to insist on applying for asylum, often in the face of intimidating resistance. INS officers rarely asked the new arrivals if they feared deportation and wanted to apply for relief in the US. Much more frequently, they told asylum seekers explicitly that no such right existed, threatening those who objected with indefinite detention or solitary confinement.
