74 pages • 2 hours read
Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here: The United States, Central America, and the Making of a Crisis
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Themes
The Connection Between the United States and Central America
In Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here, Blitzer illustrates the deeply intertwined histories of the United States and Central America, arguing that increased migration has tied the nations closer together, despite and even because of the United States’ efforts to stem movement across the border. The US’s focus on mass deportations has created a channel of exchange between the US and Central America, allowing everything from fashion to gang violence to become multinational. Blitzer argues that immigrants transform “two places at once: their new homes and their old ones” (5). Throughout the book, he illustrates how these changes often mirror one another, “irrevocably binding” nations together.
This theme of connection is most clearly seen through Eddie Anzora’s story. Growing up in LA, he watched newly arrived Central Americans start new gangs that began to change the landscape of Southern California. When the US began deporting gang members back to El Salvador, gangs began to reform in Central America. When Eddie first visited San Salvador in 1992, he was surprised to see “glimmers” of LA all around him. There were “LA transplants listening to hip-hop and flaunting cholo fashions” (261), speaking “clunky Spanish” and reminiscing about life in the States. Eventually, however, El Salvador began to mirror LA in other ways, as gang violence began to spiral out of control.
By the time Eddie was deported in 2007, El Salvador had been transformed by gang violence. “American-culturized” deportees like Eddie were targeted to see what their gang associations had been back in the States. However, this new influx of English-speaking deportees presented an opportunity for American companies like AT&T and Dell, who began outsourcing their call centers to Central American countries, where labor costs were cheaper. This was largely made possible by “US immigration policy, which was uprooting tens of thousands of Americanized immigrants each year” (265). Eddie’s experience in the call center, speaking with people in the United States while surrounded by other English-speaking deportees, sometimes made him feel like he lived in “a third country entirely” where “the realities of both [the US and El Salvador] were present in shifting proportions” (310).
In some respects, migration eventually renders borders moot, no matter how much a country tries to police them. When hundreds of thousands of people remain “in a state of perpetual flux—pushed toward the border, then pushed back again,” the borders themselves become “blurrier” and harder to define (310). It becomes less clear who belongs on which side.
The Human Impact of Political Decisions
Throughout Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here, Blitzer frames the text around a number of stories from migrants directly involved with, and affected by, many of the policies and political decisions surrounding US immigration policy and foreign policy. Often, migrants are portrayed with “blurred and anonymous” faces in media and popular discourse. They are dehumanized, grouped into “surges” or “floods,” and individual stories are often lost or forgotten. Blitzer works to remedy this: Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here reminds readers that every political decision has lasting, often tragic consequences for untold thousands of people.
Individuals like Eddie Anzora and Keldy Mabel Gonzáles Brebe de Zúniga show the direct impact of policy decisions on individual lives, illustrating how changes in the law can irrevocably disrupt lives overnight. Eddie was in and out of trouble as a boy, but he worked hard to turn his life around, and his record was expunged when he turned 18. Therefore, when he was arrested with an ounce of marijuana in 1999, it was technically his first offense. However, the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 had recently expanded the list of crimes that immigrants could be deported for, including green card holders and permanent residents, and Eddie was slated to be deported.
In between his arrest and 2007, when he was actually deported, immigration enforcement was completely transformed by 9/11. When the new agency ICE rounded up thousands of supposed “criminals” and arrested anyone else they might find along the way to meet their quotas, Eddie was caught in one of their raids. Both these instances illustrate how politicians need to demonstrate “toughness” on immigration to win elections, so they pass laws that claim to deport dangerous criminals. However, many of the individuals targeted are like Eddie, who had lived in the United States for years and posed no threat to their community.
Keldy Mabel Gonzáles Brebe de Zúniga’s story illustrates the life-shattering impact of many Trump-era immigration policies, including the “zero tolerance policy” that separated families at the border and, later, MPP, which trapped tens of thousands of asylum seekers in Mexico. Keldy was one of the first women to be separated from her children in 2016 before the family separation policy was public knowledge. They remained separated until 2021, and during this time, Keldy’s life was shaped by MPP as she worked to help the many migrants living in shelters on the Mexican side of the border.
Stories like Keldy’s and Eddie’s suggest that ignoring the nuances of why people migrate, as well as the reality of immigrant life in the United States, leads to misguided policy. Knowing the dangers people face at home, for example, could help policymakers understand the futility of deterrence policies. In ignoring these stories, the US’s immigration system has repeatedly enacted policies that give the illusion of control while failing to actually address the causes and complexities of migration. Immigrants like Keldy and Eddie are forced to pay the price.
The Resilience and Agency of Migrants and Activists
Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here is a story about the persistence and tenacity of migrants, even as they exist within a system that works to marginalize and dehumanize them. Even though they often face extreme personal hardship, the key figures profiled in the book continue working unhesitatingly for their own betterment and the betterment of those around them. With little to no government support, migrants and activists in the United States are often left to take care of themselves and each other, developing community support systems to meet the needs of vulnerable community members.
The first and clearest example of this theme is Juan Romagoza, “the heart doctor.” Living in El Salvador at the start of the civil war, Juan repeatedly put himself at risk to provide medical care to protesters and rural Salvadorians. He was captured by the military and brutally tortured, but as soon as he began to recover, he went straight to work volunteering at a clinic for Indigenous Guatemalan refugees in Mexico. Upon his arrival in the United States, he immediately started impromptu “therapy circles” for the Salvadorian men he met to begin processing their trauma. He went on to manage the volunteer-run Clínica del Pueblo in Washington, DC, dedicating his career to public health.
Juan arrived in the United States at a time when few Americans knew who Central Americans were or what they were doing in the country. Juan became an invaluable link between the growing Central American immigrant community and the broader American public, advocating and raising awareness whenever he could. This was often difficult for him because he had to share the story of his own traumatic experiences many times, but he never hesitated.
Community efforts like the sanctuary movement that began in the 1980s represent a similar grass-roots effort to fill needs neglected by official government immigration policy and enforcement. Initially, the first sanctuary activists tried to work with the government to help process asylum applicants. However, once it became clear that the State Department was unfairly rejecting Salvadorian and Guatemalan asylum seekers, the movement went “underground” as they tried “to act on the law and make practical sense of its untested principles” (104).
Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here is full of inspiring stories like Juan’s career at La Clínica, the persistence of sanctuary workers in Tucson, and the determination of individuals like Keldy, who was separated from her own family but still committed to helping asylum seekers stranded in Mexico. These examples suggest that the most meaningful work in supporting migrants and fixing a broken immigration system is being done not through policy, but on the ground by allies and migrants alike.
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