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

by Jonathan Blitzer

Killings were up across the city. By the end of 2015, there had been at least sixty-six hundred homicides in a population of around six million people, bringing the murder rate higher than it had been during much of the civil war. A few months later, the Supreme Court issued a decision categorizing the gangs as terrorist groups, which gave the police and the military license to be even more aggressive. In Washington, ICE had recently decided to mount a series of so-called Christmas raids to send a message, because the number of asylum seekers at the border was rising once again. The Salvadoran government responded by tweeting out legal advice to Salvadorans living in the US, reminding them of their Fourth Amendment protection against illegal search and seizure. The move was billed as a show of solidarity with the Salvadoran diaspora, but it masked a sense of desperation. Those who were arrested would, in effect, be sent back to a war zone.