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

by Jonathan Blitzer

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. Everyone was focused on comprehensive immigration reform, which remained stuck in the House.