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

Scott Mechkowski joined the INS in 1996 and was mostly stuck behind a desk, completing paperwork. Mechkowski was restless, and when the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 passed, he was glad to get into the field and start deporting immigrants. However, it soon became apparent that the law’s stipulations were exceedingly harsh. Many deportees had lived in the United States for decades; they had jobs and children who were US citizens.

Eddie, meanwhile, was motivated by the knowledge that his time in the United States was limited. He got so “serious” about getting his life together that his friends started calling him “Fast Eddie.” He was promoted to veterinary technician at the animal hospital and began studying for a veterinary degree at a local community college. He devised a code with his coworkers in case INS came looking for him, and one day, he heard the warning over the intercom. He ran, escaping the agents, and spent the night with a friend. She woke him up the next morning pounding on his door; terrorists had flown two planes into the Twin Towers.

The 9/11 hijackers were all living in the US on temporary visas, two of which had been mistakenly extended by INS. By 2002, plans were made to overhaul the INS. Republicans and Democrats agreed that immigration was “a matter of national security” and should receive “the resources and institutional heft typically reserved for military defense” (228). The new Department of Homeland Security replaced INS with a government agency that housed Customs and Border Protection, Citizenship and Immigration Services, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. ICE had a section focused on arresting and deporting undocumented immigrants called Detention and Removal Operations, which Mechkowski was assigned to in 2003.

Mechkowski wasn’t bothered by the “new vigilance,” but he felt “like politics was making yet another incursion into the field” (228) when he was sent to arrest deportable immigrants called “fugitives” who were clearly not a threat to national security. The head of ICE promised Washington that each “fugitive operations team” would arrest 1,000 immigrants per year. This was “an impossible number,” and Mechkowski and his coworkers were soon making mostly “collateral arrests” and jailing very few “dangerous criminals.” Mechkowski tried to stay focused on the work, but it “pulled on the heartstrings” (230).

For six years, Eddie lived under the threat of deportation. He bought a car and a house, built his credit score, and opened a recording studio in his neighborhood, eventually becoming “a Latino heavyweight in hip-hop circles” (231). Finally, in 2007, Eddie was detained when ICE organized a sweep to catch a local Mexican gangster.

Myrna Mack Chang and her sister Helen were the daughters of Chinese immigrants living in a middle-class neighborhood in Guatemala City. Helen worked in business administration, and Myrna studied leftist causes across Central America. Her teenage daughter, Lucrecia, wasn’t allowed to talk about her mother’s research and knew little about it.

By 1985, Guatemala had been under military rule for decades. A civilian president was finally elected, but his administration was largely a “front to legitimize the military’s operations” (237). The outside world, including the United States, celebrated Guatemala’s “democratization,” but within the country, repression continued.

Over the course of the 1980s, a million Indigenous Guatemalans were displaced. They fled to Mexico or were resettled in “model villages” controlled by the Guatemalan army, resembling a “reeducation camp or low-security prison” (238). Myrna visited these remote, virtually invisible communities with groups of American anthropologists to expose the abuse these Indigenous communities were subject to. Myrna’s work put her in danger from undercover government agents, and she was murdered on September 11th, 1990. The police blamed Myrna’s death on a traffic accident, but the multiple stab wounds on her body suggested otherwise.

In the wake of her murder, both Lucrecia and Helen underwent a kind of “political conversion.” Helen began investigating her sister’s death, coming to terms with the violent reality of the Guatemalan government for the first time. Lucrecia, meanwhile, was in her mother’s library, learning all she could about Myrna’s research.

Helen spent years trying to achieve justice for her sister, going after some of the most powerful figures in the Guatemalan government. In 2000, the government admitted to “institutional responsibility” for Myrna’s murder but still would not allow a criminal case against the perpetrators. Although a civilian government was theoretically in control, “the military had lost none of its influence” (246). Many of the officers were involved in organized crime, and an estimated 75% of drugs coming to the United States moved through Guatemala.

Myrna Mack’s murder trial finally began in 2002 “against a backdrop of regular intimidation” (248) that forced Helen to leave the country for her own safety. Two officers were acquitted, and a third, who gave the assassination order, was sentenced to a maximum of 30 years in prison. He was released during an appeal, and when the court ordered him back to prison, he had already fled the country.

In 2002, José Guillermo García, the Salvadorian minister of defense from 1979 to 1983, and Carlos Eugenio Vides Casanova, García’s successor and the former head of the National Guard, were on civil trial in Florida for crimes committed during the Salvadoran civil war. Vides Casanova was one of Juan Romagoza’s torturers, and he was set to testify against him.

Juan spent hours with his lawyer preparing his testimony. A team of psychologists was also on hand to help Juan and the other plaintiff, Neris González, as they relived their trauma. The trial lasted a month, and Juan testified calmly in front of the generals, who remained “ridiculously poker faced” throughout the ordeal.

Toward the end of the trial, a member of the jury had requested to see Juan and Neris’s scars from their torture. They agreed, and Juan felt a communal responsibility as he showed the jury the gunshot wound on his arm. He understood what a “privilege” it was to show the scar, and felt as if he was representing everyone who hadn’t survived the civil war.

Eddie’s plane touched down in El Salvador on September 14th, 2007. Much had changed since he visited as a child, and the country was now “one of the most dangerous places in the world” (261). In an attempt to illustrate “its toughness on crime,” the Clinton administration deported many “hardened criminals” without informing the Salvadorian government (261). These criminals were let loose in a country still recovering from civil war, where weapons were easy to come by, and many former soldiers and guerrillas were turning to street crime. The Salvadorian government asked the US for help screening the flood of deportees for dangers, but they “weren’t interested.”

LA gangs were now spread across El Salvador and had become “an international criminal network” (261). Deportees stood out with their accented Spanish and American style, and they were often targeted by gangs who wanted to know who their allegiance was to back in the United States. It was also difficult for deportees to find work because many employers assumed they were criminals.

Eddie found a job at Sykes, one of El Salvador’s biggest call centers that had been set up by US companies to take advantage of “the influx of English-speaking job seekers” (265). Often, more than half the employees in these call centers were deportees, and Sykes was known as “homieland.” Many of the employees became friends, socializing in groups based on where they had lived in the United States.

When a Sykes employee was “caught up” in something and killed, management put his photo on a bulletin board as a memorial. Soon, however, the board was so crowded with photos that there wasn’t room for more as gangs continued picking off the American deportees.

Barack Obama ran for president in 2008. Cecilia Muñoz, who had become “something of a veteran organizer” (271), advised Obama during his presidential campaign. When elected, he offered her a position in the White House.

In 2008, Juan Romagoza was diagnosed with colon cancer, and he decided to fulfill his life-long dream of returning to El Salvador. Back home, he lived with his family, received treatment for his cancer, and began volunteering in a local clinic. In 2009, El Salvador held presidential elections, and the leftist FMLN candidate was elected. The new administration aimed to construct a network of clinics that would offer “immediate primary care” for free. Juan was put in charge of 34 clinics in the department of Usulután.