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

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of graphic violence and rape.

A series of seemingly separate humanitarian emergencies at the US southern border are really “different chapters of the same story” (5) that started in the 1980s, when the United States codified refugee asylum law and became involved in two major civil wars in Central America. Over the years, US foreign policy has changed the demographic of immigrants arriving at the southern border, from single adults crossing for work to families and unaccompanied minors fleeing violence, corruption, and starvation in Central America. The US immigration system was ill-equipped to deal with this demographic shift. The government responded with a number of policies meant to deter migrants from traveling north, but they failed to grasp the level of desperation driving people from their homes.

This new wave of migrants was “irrevocably binding” the United States and Central America. Although they rarely communicate, migrants and the US government are “deeply intertwined.” Blitzer hopes his book will be “a kind of go-between” (4), bringing each side together to learn the other’s story.