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

Juan often traveled with Guatemalans headed to the United States, but he never felt tempted to cross himself. Mexico was closer to El Salvador, and Juan hoped to reconnect with his lost girlfriend and daughter. However, in November of 1982, Juan learned that Laura had been killed, and his daughter was living with Laura’s family in Puebla. He was saddened but also felt that “he was no longer in purgatory” (98) and could finally act. He decided to make the journey to the United States.

By the mid-1980s, 70,000 activists were supporting the sanctuary movement as the larger debate around immigration and the right to asylum continued across the country. One particularly “damning” 60 Minutes segment showed an official from the State Department arguing that Central Americans came to the United States for “better jobs,” which did not “entitle them to asylum” (103). The program contrasted the interview with an undocumented Salvadorian woman claiming she was “sure” she would be murdered if she returned to her country.

Fife and Corbett’s workload was becoming overwhelming, so they contacted an organization called the Chicago Religious Task Force on Central America for help. However, the two groups encountered ideological differences, with the Chicago sanctuary workers feeling the movement should have the goal of ending US military aid to Central America. They also wanted to interview refugees about their political beliefs to ensure they were “aligned with the movement” (104).

Although the sanctuary movement was “often portrayed […] as an exercise in mass civil disobedience,” it was more an attempt to fill “a kind of operational vacuum” as the Reagan administration “effectively ignored the 1980 Refugee Act” (104). Within the movement, activists sometimes disagreed about how selective they should be when helping migrants. Some made a distinction between “escap[ing] a country wracked by general violence” and “flee[ing] persecution” (105), and interviewed migrants before transporting them across the border to ensure they were candidates for asylum. Others, like Corbett, “felt they should be helping everyone” (105).

In the spring of 1981, there were between 3 and 6 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States, and close to half a million more were expected to cross the border that year. A recession made the public angry that immigrants were competing for scarce jobs, but employers that depended on cheap labor complained that immigration enforcement was costing them workers.

A group of officials developed a set of immigration recommendations for Reagan. First, the government needed to increase funding for border security and enforcement. Second, they needed to legalize some of the undocumented immigrants already in the United States. Finally, the government should increase penalties for employers who knowingly hired undocumented workers. Despite these clear tasks, a successful immigration bill was “a kind of legislative Rubik’s Cube” (109).

Meanwhile, Doris Meissner was promoted to acting commissioner of the INS, where she oversaw the continued fallout of the Cuban refugees and managed a new influx of Haitians arriving in the country. As Meissner climbed the ranks of the government, the contradictions of US asylum law became clearer. Migrants were treated unfairly, and protections were distributed unequally. It was obvious that Salvadorian and Guatemalan asylum seekers’ applications were “rejected at suspiciously high rates” (113).

The sanctuary movement was publicizing the issue, and Meissner traveled the country to debate activists like John Fife. Although she publicly supported the government’s stance, she started having private doubts. Central Americans were being denied protection despite offering “‘textbook’ examples of political persecution” (114). When Meissner tried to voice her concerns to other government officials, she was told to “deep six it,” so she resigned in 1986.

In the summer of 1983, the government opened an investigation on the “El Salvadorian Underground Railroad.” Two operatives began volunteering at Southside Presbyterian church, where they participated in a number of the sanctuary movement’s activities, with wires recording everything. However, the case broke open when a sanctuary activist was apprehended while transporting a group of Salvadorians. Border patrol searched the car and found a document containing details of the movement’s operations, including safe houses, phone numbers, and addresses.

In April of 1983, Juan entered the United States with a group of Mexican migrants and found his way to MacArthur Park in Los Angeles. Juan spent his mornings in ESL classes; then, he would go to the park to talk with the Salvadorian men there. They found Juan “magnetic and approachable” and began opening up to him about the trauma they had experienced and their lingering nightmares, guilt, and depression. Finally, one of the men asked Juan about his time as a prisoner. Usually, the men avoided these “dark subjects,” but Juan spoke in “a steady, unwavering voice” (122), and the men could not stop asking questions.

Eventually, Juan traveled to San Francisco. He spent his first weeks sleeping in Dolores Park, where he continued his impromptu “therapy groups” with the other Salvadorian men living there. One day, he was approached by a local organization, asking him to lead a group helping Salvadorians and Guatemalans in San Francisco. Juan agreed, and the new Central American Refugee Committee set up shop in the hallway of a Mission district church, where Juan performed “an endless improvisation” to help migrants access everything from healthcare to legal advice.

Meanwhile, the situation in El Salvador “was growing more muddled for the Americans” (130). American aid was prolonging a bloody stalemate, and the military death squads were becoming more violent. The US urged the Salvadorian government to pass a land reform measure meant to redistribute agricultural estates to reduce some of the country’s vast social inequalities. However, El Salvador’s president had virtually “no authority” over the military, and Reagan began publicly “adopt[ing] the line of the Salvadoran far right” (131) that guerrilla forces were responsible for the violence and blamed it on the rightwing government.

This stance motivated Juan to work harder for the sanctuary movement, making many public appearances as the movement urged cities to declare themselves sanctuaries, so that local law enforcement would not work with INS agents. Meanwhile, in Washington, Congress was attempting to pass legislation to halt deportations of Salvadorians during the civil war.

In January of 1985, 16 sanctuary activists from Arizona were indicted along with 55 migrants they had transported. The activists faced possible prison time, but the migrants were threatened with deportation and probable death back in their home countries.

The trial began on November 15th, 1985. However, the government had submitted a long list of things that the jury should not consider, including “all the context that explained the motivations of the sanctuary activists” (136). The trial only considered “the narrow question of whether the sanctuary workers had helped cross and harbor undocumented immigrants” (137). None of the witnesses the defense planned to call could testify, and none of the defendants could explain their motives for participating in the sanctuary movement.

In May of 1985, a group of immigration activists filed a lawsuit claiming that their right to give sanctuary was protected under the First Amendment and accusing the government of discriminating against Salvadorian and Guatemalan asylum seekers. The American Baptist Churches in the USA v. Meese lawsuit unfolded alongside the Tucson trial more slowly. In May of 1986, eight of the 11 Tucson defendants were found guilty and sentenced to probation. However, the American Baptist Churches lawsuit went on for years, and in 1991, a judge finally ruled that the government had discriminated against Salvadorian and Guatemalan asylum seekers, allowing some applicants to reapply.

By 1985, cities across the country were declaring themselves sanctuary jurisdictions. There was also an immigration reform bill “lumbering toward a vote in Congress” (144) that would offer a pathway to citizenship for millions of undocumented immigrants who had arrived in the United States before January 1st, 1982. The bill threatened to die many times as lawmakers tried to find common ground, but it was finally signed into law by Reagan on November 6th, 1986.

Juan had always intended to return to El Salvador, so he was surprised when a lawyer friend suggested he apply for asylum. His friend thought it might encourage the other migrants Juan worked with to do the same. In the spring of 1987, his asylum application was approved, and Juan moved to Washington, DC, to accept a volunteer position running La Clínica del Pueblo, a “bootstrap operation” that served the local immigrant population.

After leading the National Guard through the bloodiest part of El Salvador’s civil war, Carlos Eugenio Vides Casanova was tapped by the US government for the role of defense minister. In his role, he took a “stealthier” approach to continuing the human rights violations that the US was trying to avoid. However, by 1988, Vides Casanova’s officers were more difficult to “corral.” He obtained a green card through his wife, who was the daughter of an American citizen, and moved to the United States. Two months later, General José Guillermo García also landed in Miami with a plan to apply for political asylum.