Families torn apart. Asylum seekers turned away. America’s undocumented retreating into the shadows. These are the people caught up in the U.S. immigration system, straining against its invisible walls.
Last spring, Elsa Johana Ortiz Enríquez and 8-year-old Anthony left their village in rural Guatemala. Elsa had a boyfriend working construction who was waiting for them in the United States.
Elsa was among hundreds deported without their children. She was quickly sent back to Guatemala; Anthony was still being held at a shelter in Houston. The Trump administration has identified more than 2,700 children who were separated over a six-week period in the spring of 2018. There may have been thousands more, according to a recent report by the inspector general for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The report noted: “The total number of children separated from a parent or guardian by immigration authorities is unknown.
Murder rates in parts of Central America are among the highest in the world. Gangs control entire neighborhoods — extorting businesses, recruiting children and killing with impunity. The Trump administration says the system is being exploited by people fleeing poverty, not violence. With help from Mexican immigration agents, the U.S. government is trying to prevent asylum seekers like Karla from reaching the U.S. side of the border and making their claim.
America has always fought bitterly over what it means to be a nation of immigrants, over who should be welcomed and who should be kept out. For decades, political leaders have lamented a broken system but failed to fix it. Trump has exploited the deep divisions on immigration, framing the issue in existential terms: ‘A country without borders is not a country at all.’ For many who crossed the border illegally and made the country their home, life feels newly precarious, circumscribed by fear.
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