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

by Jonathan Blitzer

In December 2017, Sandoval went to an immigration court in New York City to attend a hearing about Jorge’s case. Ever since his arrest, she’d been inconsolable. School may have been safer than before, but Sandoval found it hollowed out and eerie. There was no one to talk to, and she no longer had the energy to try to make new friends. Her relationship with her parents had been strained, and she sensed that they still blamed her for getting involved with Carlos. But her mother had her own reasons for feeling stressed. The Trump administration had announced plans to cancel temporary protected status for Salvadorans living in the US, including those who had bought homes, paid taxes, started families, and joined the legal workforce. The president was also canceling TPS for 60,000 Haitians who’d lived in the US since a 2010 earthquake, and for 2,500 Nicaraguans who’d arrived in 1999 following Hurricane Mitch. The Salvadoran population was the largest by far, some 200,000 people, most of whom had been living in the US for twenty years. Among them were parents of roughly 190,000 children who, like Sandoval, were American citizens.