By Bill Littlefield

The history of US policy on immigration might charitably be described as shameful.

Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here: The United States, Central America, and the Making of a Crisis by Jonathan Blitzer. Penguin Press, 523 pages

In the introduction to this ambitious and compelling account, Jonathan Blitzer characterizes immigration policy as “a politics of permanent crisis.” Then he defines his mission “to tell each side’s story to the other; to find a way to bring the Homeland Security officials into the (Mexican) housing-complex basement; and to allow the migrants in the basement to participate, for once, in the privileged backroom conversations that decide their fate.” Blitzer accomplishes this mission through historical analysis and some powerful storytelling about individuals who’ve been banged up trying to negotiate a way through that “permanent crisis.”

The history of United States policy on immigration might charitably be described as shameful. As Blitzer points out, cynicism has been paramount in its formulation. Most of his focus is on Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. In each country, US administrations have often supported violent dictators eager to embrace US policies and positions, one of which has been noisy opposition to anything that smacks of socialism: US policy has generally maintained that it is not worth distinguishing between democratic socialism and Stalinism. The transporting of drugs through Central America and into the US has also been a constant concern, at least according to campaign platforms and promises. The truth is that dictators lining their pockets with money generated by the cultivation, transport, and sales of cocaine could often count on support from the US government, as long as said dictators battled leftists seeking such mad goals as land reform and health care for the poor. Such developments would have suggested that communism was gaining a foothold in the hemisphere.

One of the tenets of immigration policy in the US has been that people who seek to enter this country because they fear for their safety should be given an opportunity to make a case for asylum. The overwhelming number of immigrants who’ve sought asylum complicates the process of determining which people fall into that category. That’s not hard to understand. But, perversely, US policy toward El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala has created more reasons for people living in those countries to fear for their safety.

Blitzer demonstrates that, when gang members who’ve learned their trade in US cities are deported back home, they quickly put what they have learned to use. It’s simple enough for authorities at the border to understand the peril faced by an immigrant who’s been tortured or sentenced to death in his or her homeland. There may even be documents to support that immigrant’s case. The woman whose brother has been killed by gang members for not agreeing to pay protection money on his roadside stand and who fears that her 10-year-old son may be forced to join a gang faces a more difficult circumstance. She may find herself waiting months in Mexico for a hearing. Eventually she may find herself on a plane bound for the city she has fled. Then there are the immigrants who have come north not so much because they’re afraid they’ll be killed, but because they are afraid they will starve. Blitzer understands that people have multiple, powerful reasons for coming to the US: deciding to migrate is never easy or painless. If only our immigration policy embraced those simple facts — and respected those who’ve made the difficult decision to leave home.

Immigration policy during the Trump administration was distinguished by its unapologetic interest in cruelty as well as how incompetently it was “administered.” The purpose, as Blitzer sees it, was to tap “a rich vein of American outrage.” For Trump, militant opposition to virtually everyone trying to cross the border from Mexico made for good politics, though it also fit with his jaundiced worldview. Under the supervision of Trump surrogate Stephen Miller, children were separated from their parents at the border: the idea was to scare people and dissuade them from trying to enter the US, no matter how bad their circumstances at home. As Attorney General, Jeff Sessions signed on to the attitude, maintaining that adults traveling with children were “smuggling” the kids in, probably for some nefarious purpose. Subsequent efforts to reunite families were complicated because the officials who’d done the separating didn’t know where many of the children had gone.

Within the discouraging history he tells so thoroughly and so well, Blitzer manages to locate some exceptionally admirable people. Foremost among them is Juan Romagoza, a doctor who was born and eventually tortured in El Salvador. He has devoted his life to caring for migrants there and in the US. But the book’s greatest achievement is to deepen our understanding that US policies — over many years and under various administrations — have been responsible to a great extent for the seemingly intractable difficulties that are loosely grouped under the heading “border crisis” today.

Bill Littlefield volunteers with the Emerson Prison Initiative. His most recent novel is Mercy (Black Rose Writing).