The Neverending Cycles of Central American Refugees
By: Maya Averbuch
Tags: Great Escape, Escape, Asylum, Central America, Violence

In 2007, Juan was told he was banned for life from entering the United States, with the promise of prison time if he risked return. He would become one of the 2 million people George W. Bush deported, paving the way for another 2.5 million under Barack Obama. Donald Trump is actually on track to deport fewer people than Obama, in part because advocates have fought him tooth and nail. But he has stepped up arrests in comparison to the end of the Obama years and, reversing Obama’s priorities, has targeted even immigrants who have no criminal record.

Back in El Salvador after his deportations, Juan was told that he talked like a pocho, a pejorative term used to describe Mexican-Americans who stumble over Spanish. Juan is a short man with slicked-back hair and a gentle voice, and he tried to remain inconspicuous. As he adjusted to life in a country he hadn’t seen for decades, he started doing welding projects on the side, aiming to stay out of trouble in a place with a homicide rate nearly triple that of nearby Mexico.

“My parents sent me money at the beginning, but I had to adapt,” Juan says. “For those 10 years in El Salvador, I felt that I was alone.”

He met his future wife, Marta, who came from a ranching family of eight siblings. She liked how gentle Juan seemed, how the way he spoke made him seem less machista than other men. Yet just as they started to find their footing in El Salvador — saving money for a truck, putting down payments on a mortgage, building a base of customers who contracted them to design roofs and gates — their very financial success started to make them a target.

In 2017, Barrio 18 gang members came to the workshop and asked Juan for $30 a month as part of an informal business tax. Then they asked for a bonus: $1,000, paid in cash. When Juan paid, they asked for another $1,000. When he said he couldn’t pay that, they gave him an ultimatum: “We know where you work, and if you don’t give us the money, your daughter is going to pay,’” Juan recalls.

With his own noose tightening, Juan felt he had no choice but to risk an escape to the United States.

The family fled first to another residence in the rural area where Marta had been raised, but when they spotted gang members in the street, they headed to Guatemala. The best man from their wedding had already been killed, then the daughter of the man who owned the local internet shop, then the daughter of a taxi driver who frequented their neighborhood. With his own noose tightening, Juan felt he had no choice but to risk an escape to the United States.

A man is killed in the main market in San Salvador after the owner of the stall, who has been selling bananas there for many years, did not pay the extortion money he was asked for. Extortion and fear of being killed are among the main reasons families are forced to flee Central America.

“I’m going to bring them [to the United States] so that they can grow up with their grandparents, their aunts. My family said, ‘If they’ve threatened you, we’ll have your back — or not yours, but those of your kids, because we know you can’t enter,’” Juan says. “So I’m going to bring them to the bridge, where they can ask for political asylum.”

His children watch cartoons in Tapachula while Juan considers the consequences of returning to the United States. Back in America, he washed cars with his dad, finished drywall with his uncle, and became a specialist in the details at a Courtesy Chevrolet dealer. It all seemed like a long time ago, and in the midst of an unforgiving administration, Juan knows he’d be unable to help them if he’s behind bars.

For now, Juan buys his kids small gifts to pass the time — a mini-sized Barbie in a pink box, a red slushie that dribbles down their chins. Mexico doesn’t seem much safer than El Salvador. Their landlady had been threatened by a stranger who said that another rentee had stolen a backpack with cocaine, and Juan is anxious to get out of the city as fast as possible.

But on the U.S. border, he’ll make a final call. With the felony on his record, Juan could technically face up to 20 years for “throwing himself under the bridge,” as he calls it, though the average deportee who crosses the border serves far less time. His other option is to raise his children in America from afar, at a distance of four hours by car. What he can’t do is turn around.