Immigration Crisis: The United States Under President Donald J. Trump

Introduction

Central Americans are taking their families and fleeing their homes, leaving behind everything they know. They understand how dangerous the journey will be. They know how hard it will be to get into and stay in the USA. Therefore, it might seem reasonable to conclude that the situation there has suddenly gotten much worse. It has not. In fact, if one looks at the data in the right way, it is possible to see some good news from Central America. The number of murders has gone down; poverty rates have dropped; economic inequality is lessening, at least in parts of the region; and economic growth is solid. So why have people been leaving in record numbers?

The best available data show some undeniable progress in the Northern Triangle nations of Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. Economic growth looks good. In Honduras the GDP (gross domestic product) has grown since 1990 at a strong annual rate of 3.7 percent, hitting 4.1 percent in 2017. El Salvador’s GDP has increased by at least 2 percent a year for the past 5 years, not spectacular, but good enough. Guatemala’s economy has done even better, growing at over 4 percent a year in 2014 and 2015, before falling back a bit to 3.2 percent for 2018 and again in 2019. Guatemala’s growth record over the past several decades has earned the praise of the World Bank, which picked Guatemala as the “top performer” in all Latin America for the recent past (Banco de Guatemala, 2018, p. 5; Ibarra Piedrahita, 2018; Meyer, 2018, p. 8; Taft-Morales, 2019, p. 15).

Inequality, while still a problem in the region, is clearly coming down in El Salvador. In that nation the Gini Coefficient (a measure of inequality with 0.0 being perfect equality and 1.0 being where one person has all the income) stood at 0.54 in 2000 (a very high level of inequality), but had fallen to 0.34 (not so bad, comparatively) by 2017. The overall percentage of Salvadorans living in poverty fell marginally from 34.5 percent in 2012 to 32.7 percent in 2016 (Álvarez et al., 2018, p. 90; El Salvador, 2018, p. 43; Seelke, 2018, p. 7).

The best news is that the homicide rate in all three Northern Triangle countries has come down markedly. In El Salvador the murder rate has fallen from 103 per 100,000 in population per year in 2015 (outside of active war zones, by far the highest rate in the world at the time), to 51 in 2018. By mid-2019 El Salvador suffered its lowest monthly total of homicides in nearly three decades. In Honduras homicides fell from 87 per 100,000 in 2011, to 40 in 2018. In Guatemala the rate dropped from 48 in 2008, to 22 in 2018 (Boerman, 2018, p. 1; Capps et al., 2019, p. 17; Estepa, 2018; La prensa gráfica, 2018; Latin American Weekly Report, 2019c, p. 13; Rivera & Martínez, 2016, p. 7; Taft-Morales, 2019, pp. 1, 6; Woltke, 2018).

The problem is that these gains have not been enough to keep people from leaving. Indeed, many Northern Triangle families see no real choice but to leave their homes, embarking on a costly and dangerous journey across foreign lands, all for a quite uncertain outcome.

A Nation of Immigrants

In the USA today there are some 47 million immigrants, people both with and without formal authorization to live there. The USA has the largest immigrant population of any nation in the world. Immigrants in the USA today account for 14 percent of the total population; only in the 1890s did immigrants comprise a larger percentage of the total US population, at 14.8 percent. Still, many other countries today have a larger share of immigrants. In Canada one-fifth of the population are immigrants (8 million); and in Australia, one-third are immigrants (8 million) (Radford, 2019).

In the last decade America has seen a significant change in its pattern of immigration, especially with regard to unauthorized entries. Until recently Mexico sent nearly all of the unauthorized immigrants to the USA, but now they have all but stopped coming, sharply reducing the total number of apprehensions at the US southwestern border. Whereas previously most US border apprehensions were of single young Mexican males, today most of those detained come in family groups from Guatemala and Honduras, and to a lesser degree, from El Salvador (Motlagh, 2019; Radford, 2019).

For fiscal year (FY) 2019 apprehensions at the southwestern US border (US border apprehension statistics are provided for fiscal, not calendar, years) reached over 100,000 a month, the highest level in 12 years (Zengerle, 2019, p. 32). But until this recent spike, the number of apprehensions was actually trending downward. In FY 2017 total US border apprehensions hit a 45-year low (Hesson, 2018; Wilson, 2019a, pp. 1–2).

For Mexico, economic and demographic factors have come together to reduce out-migration. The US economic recession of 2008, coupled with a fairly steadily growing Mexican economy, has kept more Mexican workers from emigrating. At the same time, slowing population growth has gradually reduced pressure on the Mexican labor market. These days return migration to Mexico exceeds immigration to the USA.

By FY 2018 US apprehensions of Mexicans were down to about a quarter of previous levels. These days more than half of those apprehended by US immigration authorities are coming from the Northern Triangle nations, people coming from Guatemala (nearly 120,000 a year), Honduras (nearly 80,000 annually), and El Salvador (just over 30,000) a year. Salvadoran migration has faded; since FY 2016, when apprehensions of Salvadorans peaked at 18 percent of the total, the percentage of Salvadorans among all apprehensions has dropped to now just 10 percent of the total (for FY 2019) (Capps et al., 2019, p. 10; Gramlich & Noe-Bustamante, 2019; Passel & Cohn, 2019; Zengerle, 2019, p. 32).

In recent years annual Mexican GDP growth has been fairly good, reaching at least 2 percent a year every year but one since 2010 (the exception was 1.4% growth in 2013), creating more jobs and reducing the need for emigration to the USA. Growth was slower in 2019, at only 0.43 percent, and probably will not reach 2 percent in 2020 (Latin American Weekly Report, 2019e, p. 11).

Still, the slackening of Mexico’s growth will be offset by another key change, the end to the days of rapid population growth. Whereas Mexico’s annual population growth rate reached 3.2 percent a year in 1973 (that rate, if sustained, would double a nation’s population every 22 years), it has since dropped to just 1.3 percent a year (a doubling rate of every 54 years), considerably reducing the crowding of the domestic labor market.

These factors on the Mexican side of the border joined with a large, if temporary, drop in US demand for workers in the aftermath of the 2008 economic collapse. With the many layoffs during the US recession, Mexican workers quit coming. Those Mexicans already in the USA began to stream back home, often taking their US-born children born with them. American recovery from the 2008 recession was very gradual, but as the US economy added jobs, Mexicans no longer were responding. Mexicans were still migrating, but now job-hunters moved to nearby cities within Mexico. Many Mexican families had been reunited, either having joined those already in the USA, or by going home to Mexico (Cornelius, 2018, pp. 5–6).

In 2007 the US population of residents born in Mexico peaked at 12.8 million. It has dropped every year since. By 2017 only 11.3 million Mexican-born individuals, with 5.5 million undocumented, lived in the USA (Capps et al., 2019, p. 13; Cornelius, 2018, p. 3; Organizacíon International para las Migracíones [OIM], 2016, p. 1; Zenteno & Suro, 2019).

If Mexicans have all but stopped coming, people from the Northern Triangle are coming more than ever. By FY 2018 apprehensions of Northern Triangle immigrants made up more than half of all US border apprehensions, with Guatemala and Hondurans accounting for the most (Wilson, 2019a, p. 2).

Yet if we look at the 10-year period from FY 2008 to FY 2018, immigration from the Northern Triangle to the USA actually slowed down. The number of immigrants from the Northern Triangle fell from around 150,000 a year in FY 2009, to 130,000 in FY 2018.

This changed in 2019. By the end of FY 2019 the US Border Patrol had carried out more apprehensions that it had in a decade, taking into custody over 900,000 people (Harte & Reid, 2019; Flores, 2019).

Today there are at least 3 million people born in the Northern Triangle nations who live in the USA; in 2000 it was 1.5 million. More than half of these individuals are here in the USA without authorization (Cara Labrador & Renwick, 2018).

The Exodus from the Northern Triangle States

Of the three Northern Triangle states Guatemala is the largest, both in size (42,000 square miles), and population (17 million), and is sending the main flow of migrants to the USA. Many factors have contributed to the exodus.

One is the failure of Guatemala’s governmental institutions. Guatemala adopted a new constitution in 1985, but has made very limited progress in building democracy, with the leadership in each of the recent administrations implicated in serious corruption scandals.

Guatemalan President Otto Pérez Molina (2012–2015) resigned after being linked to a US$65 million customs and tax fraud ring. He is in jail awaiting resolution of his case. Former president Álvaro Colom (2008–2012) is free on bail awaiting trial on his US$35 million fraud case. Indictments have been secured against former president Alfonso Portillo (2000–2004) and former president Álavor Arzú (1996–2000) (González, 2019; Latin American Weekly Report, 2019b, p. 14; Taft-Morales, 2019, p. 10).

Hoping for a change, in 2015 Guatemalans elected political newcomer Jimmy Morales, running on an anti-corruption platform; his slogan, “not corrupt, not a thief” (Jonas, 2018, p. 577). President Morales had come into view as a popular TV comedian, sometimes appearing in blackface (Taft-Morales, 2019, p. 5).

President Morales (2016–2020) is at present under investigation for accepting unlawful campaign contributions and taking illegal “bonus” payments from the military.

Responding, Morales shuttered the nation’s sole independent anti-corruption investigatory body, the International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (Comisión Internacional Contra la Impunidad en Guatemala) (González, 2019; Taft-Morales, 2019, pp. 1, 3, 11).

The Guatemalan congress is no better, preoccupied with passing laws to shield its members from accountability for their own acts of corruption and influence peddling (half the members of congress are under investigation). The congress is also devoting much energy to trying to protect the military from prosecution of human rights violations. Understandably, most Guatemalans seem to have lost interest in politics; 6 of 10 eligible voters did not bother to cast ballots in the 2019 presidential election (Latin American Weekly Report, 2019a, p. 12).

El Salvador, a nation of 6.6 million people packed into just 8,100 square miles, is historically a land of profound economic inequalities and political exclusion. During the late-nineteenth century coffee boom, rural people lost their farms, the arable cropland seized by a clique of wealthy families. Known in El Salvador as the catorce (the fourteen), this group owned much of everything and, with the military, long ran the nation (Watson, 2019).

The Salvadoran people fought against this system. In 1932 peasants rose up against dictator General Maximilian Hernández Martínez. Determined and murderous, Hernández Martínez put down the revolt with great force, killing 30,000. The episode is known in El Salvador simply as la matanza, the massacre.

A civil war, 1979–1992, between leftist guerillas and the military-backed governments in El Salvador was made far more deadly by the actions of US President Ronald Reagan (1981–1989) who saw the conflict as part of the Cold War. President Reagan believed, without evidence, that the Salvadoran guerrillas had been created and armed by Moscow. The US government spent billions bankrolling the brutal Salvadoran regime. In the end, the war left over 80,000 dead and 1 million people displaced. But US power told. The rebels gave up, signing peace accords in 1992. The FMLN put their weapons down and reformed as a political party.

Corruption has plagued recent Salvadoran politics. Former president Mauricio Funes (2009–2014) and his family are facing corruption charges. Funes has fled. Former president Tony Saca (2004–2009) pled guilty to embezzlement and is presently in prison. Former president Francisco Flores (1999–2004) was charged with stealing earthquake relief funds, but died in 2016 before his court case could be heard. Current President Nayib Bukele (inaugurated in June 2019) has been linked to payouts to gang leaders, although he has not to date been officially charged with any acts of corruption (Boerman, 2018, p. 7; Seelke, 2018, p. 3; Watson, 2019).

Honduras (9 million in population and covering 43,000 square miles) is a small nation long controlled by a powerful military that has consistently done the bidding of the élite. Politics in Honduras has seldom been much more than empty contests over which traditional political party could win control of the government in order to tap into the opportunities for corruption and influence peddling.

Hope for meaningful change emerged in the 2005 campaign, resulting in the election of reformer José Manuel Zelaya Rosales (2005–2009). However, the military, pressed by the two defeated traditional Honduran political parties, ousted President Zelaya in 2009, claiming that he was considering exploring a bid for reelection, something that was not at the time lawful in Honduras. Then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pressured other nations not to cooperate with Zelaya’s failed efforts to be restored to his elected office (Borger, 2018; Looney & Markwick, 2019).

Conservative Juan Orlando Hernández has served as Honduras’ president since 2014, modifying the constitution so that he could run for reelection in 2017. The Organization of American States rejected the fraud-marred results, calling for new elections. Nevertheless, in December 2017, US President Donald J. Trump recognized Hernández as the victor. Supporters of reform candidate Salvador Nasralla have been violently repressed by President Hernández, with at least 16 citizens killed by police and the military (Meyer, 2018).

President Hernández stands accused of accepting illegal campaign contributions and of stealing the 2017 election. He has continued to try to shield family members and himself from additional charges of money laundering and of weapons and drug smuggling (Looney & Markwick, 2019; The Economist, 2019a).

A core issue in the Northern Triangle nations is the lack of functioning government services: staffing for bureaucratic offices, provisioning potable water and sanitation, or providing public health facilities. In the rural zones government has very little presence (Jonas, 2018, p. 574).

The problem is revenue. The Northern Triangle nations show among the lowest tax revenue to GDP ratios in the world. The developed nations of the world (the OECD—Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) average 34 percent tax revenue to GDP, but Honduras stands at 22.8 percent, El Salvador at 20.4 percent, and Guatemala is at the bottom for all Latin American nations, at 12.4 percent (Cara Labrador & Renwick, 2018; Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, the Inter-American Centre of Tax Administrations, the Inter-American Development Bank [OECD/ECLAC/CIAT/IBD], 2019, p.1; Taft-Morales, 2019, p. 17).

Poverty

The Northern Triangle is a land of economic misery. The per capita income for Honduras is US$5,000; for El Salvador and Guatemala each, around US$8,000. By way of comparison, the per capita income for Mexico is US$18,000 (Capps et al., 2019, p. 14).

Inequality remains a key concern. The Gini Coefficient numbers for Honduras (Gini at 50) and Guatemala (49) rank among the worst in the world. Of all Latin America nations, Honduras has the most unequal income distribution (Álvarez et al., 2018, p. 90; Ibarra Piedrahita, 2018).

A majority of the people in the Northern Triangle live in poverty. Guatemala is worst off, with 6 of 10 residents living below the poverty line. One-third of Guatemalan homes lack access to potable water. Half of Guatemalan infants under 5 years old are stunted in their growth due to chronic malnutrition. Most impacted are Indigenous rural Guatemalans, where poverty rates soar to over 80 percent. The highlands, where most people work as seasonal farmhands typically earning around US$4 for a day’s work, sends the majority of the nation’s emigrants (Banco de Guatemala 2018, pp. 16–17; Jonas, 2018; OIM, 2016, p. 13; Rivera & Martínez, 2016, pp. 5–6; Taft-Morales, 2019, p. 16).

Moving to urban areas in Guatemala is not an attractive option. Most workers in the cities labor in the informal (or black market) sector, paid in cash, without benefits, without job security. About one of every three families in Guatemala depend on remittances sent from relatives working in the USA. Conditions are not getting better. Guatemala is the only nation in Latin America where the percentage of the population living in poverty has actually increased since 2000 (Banco de Guatemala, 2018, pp. 5, 49; Cobo, 2017; Perdomo & Díaz Burdett, 2014; Quintela Babio, 2016; Rivera & Martínez, 2016, p. 1; Taft-Morales, 2019, pp. 16–18; Velásquez, 2017).

Honduras, like its Northern Triangle neighbors, has traditionally served as an exporter of agricultural goods—coffee, sugar, and bananas— receiving in return industrial imports. However, over the last several decades some industry has come to the region, maquilas, textile, and electronic assembly plants. Yet this has done very little to improve overall economic conditions for ordinary people. In Honduras two of every three people live in poverty (Banco de Guatemala 2018, pp. 40, 42, 44; Ibarra Piedrahita, 2018; Meyer, 2018, p. 2; Seelke, 2018, p. 2; Taft-Morales, 2019, p. 1).

The families of El Salvador do not do much better. One of six Salvadorans live in dirt floor homes. Fully one-third of Salvadorans are not educated past the third grade. Less than 1 of 10 Salvadorans ever attends a class in college. Amongst the poorest fifth of the Salvadoran population, not even two in 100 have any form of health insurance (Álvarez et al., 2018, p. 19; El Salvador, 2018, pp. 13, 16, 34, 37).

Though population growth is now slowing in El Salvador, there are still not enough jobs for the available workforce. Salvadoran households continue to depend heavily on remittances from family members working in the USA. The social realities in El Salvador notwithstanding, International Monetary Fund has been actively pushing for cuts to social support programs and public health care spending (Álvarez et al, 2018, p. 15; Seelke, 2018, p. 5).

An added regional concern is the growing impact of climate change. Rainfall is becoming increasingly irregular in the Northern Triangle’s “Dry Corridor,” the farming zone which cuts through the heart of the region, comprising a fifth of Honduras, over a third of Guatemala, and more than half of El Salvador. Drought conditions began to reach crisis levels in 2014, sharply reducing the corn and bean harvests upon which families depend. Around the same time waves of migrants began to leave the region (Capps et al., 2019, p. 15; Meyer & Taft-Morales, 2019).

Gangs, Large and Small: Maras and Pandillas

People leaving Honduras and El Salvador usually point to gang-related violence as their leading motive for departing. Guatemalans, though chiefly motivated by economic privation, also increasingly mention the threat of violence as a cause for leaving, especially as Mexican cartel presence has increased there over the last decade.

Gangs, or maras, number some 50,000–85,000 active members in the Northern Triangle region, although accurately counting can be devilishly difficult (Boerman, 2018, p. 3). Two maras dominate, the infamous Mara Salvatrucha 13 (MS-13) (the name’s origins coming either from the words for guerillas and a fierce type of ant, or perhaps slang for a “vigilant” Salvadoran), and Barrio 18 (M-18) (named for 18th Street in the Pico-Union district of Los Angeles, where they were first located) (Cara Labrador & Renwick, 2018; Martínez, 2018; Motlagh, 2019, p. 86; Raderstrof, Wilson, Zechmeister, & Camileri, 2017, p. 3; Stark, 2016).

Both of these gangs formed in the 1960s in Los Angeles, CA, USA. Initially comprised of the children of immigrants from El Salvador, these gangs were created as defensive organizations to fend off predators from other nearby street gangs. By the mid-1990s US authorities began to deport non-citizen gang members after they violated US laws. Once in Central America, MS-13 and Barrio 18 members deepened their gang ties. A crime wave soon followed (El País, 2018).

Most mara members are young urban males born into poverty. Maras recruit from among the unemployed. There are many: one in four Salvadorans aged 15–24 do not work and do not go to school (El Salvador, 2018, pp. 29, 46; Estepa, 2018).

Beyond the maras are the countless smaller groups of young violent criminals, pandillas. Both maras and pandillas commonly gain their income mainly through petty crime, especially extortion. The typical monthly quota imposed on small businesses is around US$20, small sums that nevertheless place a serious burden on already hard-pressed families. Ordinary people in Hondurans hand over to the maras and pandillas some US$200 million every year. Salvadorans pay out double that. Seven of 10 small businesses in El Salvador report that they must make monthly extortion payments to the maras and pandillas (Cara Labrador & Renwick, 2018; Seelke, 2018, p. 6; Stark, 2016; The Economist, 2018b; Wilson, 2019a, p. 5).

In the decade from 2007 to 2017 the Northern Triangle nations suffered a total of over 150,000 murders. El Salvador still has one of the highest homicide rates on earth, the worst in Latin America, 10 times more than the USA. The city of San Salvador remains especially dangerous, with a murder rate four times above the national average. Honduras is home to two of the most violent cities in the world, San Pedro Sula (homicide rate of 51) and Tegucigalpa (40). Guatemala City is even more violent, with a homicide rate of 53. By way of comparison, the most murder-prone city in Canada, Winnipeg, has an annual homicide rate of 3 per 100,000 residents (Medecins Sans Frontieres, 2017, p. 8; Motlagh, 2019, p. 90; Woltke, 2018).

A recent survey conducted by Doctors Without Borders of migrants-in-transit through Mexico, found that one-third Guatemalans, over half of Hondurans, and nearly 7 of 10 Salvadorans never felt safe in their home country. Nearly half said that in the last 2 years they had at least one relative who was murdered; even more than half of Salvadorans reported that this was the case (Medecins Sans Frontieres, 2017, pp. 5, 10).

Violence against women is a particular danger. Husbands, boyfriends, fathers, too often treat spouses, partners, and daughters as subject to all male commands. Any deviance from obedience can be met with violence.

It is wrong to assume, as some seem to, that fears over family safety will drop automatically when the homicide rate falls. However, a lower homicide rate might just mean that a war among maras or pandillas had produced a winner, sorting out which would be in charge of terrorizing and extorting money out of the neighborhood, their conquered territory marked off with concrete barriers blocking vehicle entry. Victorious gangs do not need to drop as many bodies; their threats are already credible enough. Even if the number of murders has declined, people still correctly fear for the safety of their family (Boerman, 2018, p. 12; Raderstrof et al., 2017, p. 5).

Public opinion surveys have found that nearly half of the people of the Northern Triangle continue to modify their daily behavior because of mara and pandilla threats, for example, by not letting their children go outside to play. In El Salvador two thirds of people express fear over riding public transportation. In the more violent urban neighborhoods of San Salvador, it is still seen as foolhardy to go out after dark (Raderstrof et al., 2017, pp. 4, 7; Seelke, 2018, p. 10; Stark, 2016).

Worse, there is no reason for anyone to have any confidence in the police. Crime pays; 95 percent of serious crimes in the region go unpunished. In Honduras, only 1 of 10 homicides is ever even investigated. Many people report that they are more fearful of law enforcement officers than of gang members. In the neighborhoods where crime is the most frequent the police seem to behave the worst, with law enforcement officials competing with gang members in extorting money out of the families that live in these communities (Cara Labrador & Renwick, 2018; Estepa, 2018; Martínez, 2018; Raderstrof et al., 2017, p. 10; Seelke, 2018, p. 9; Stark, 2016; Taft-Morales, 2019, p. 3).

The Hondurans and Salvadorans who come to the USA are usually parents traveling with their children. What has commonly occurred is that one or more of the family’s children has been a crime victim or has received a direct threat from a gang. This typically involves forced gang recruitment, either as a foot soldier for boys or as a sex slave for girls. In this context the family is compelled to decide which parent should take the child and go, leaving at once. There is no point in just going to another neighborhood or different city. The gang will usually find them there, or else the new one there will. The only real option is trying to gain entry into the USA and hope to meet up with a relative already there (Boerman, 2018, p. 16; Hiskey, Córdova, Malone, & Ocrés, 2018).

All three Northern Triangle nations adopted aggressive, mano dura (“hard-handed”), anti-crime policies beginning in the early 2000s, unleashing the police and military. Encouraged to pursue the gangs using any means at their disposal, the police and military launched indiscriminate attacks, with countless innocents killed in the assaults, followed soon after by the inevitable counter-attacks by the gangs (Cara Labrador, & Renwick, 2018).

But while the press often focuses on the latest mano dura raids, more prosaic factors best explain the long-term trend toward fewer homicides in the Northern Triangle. The cause is not get-tough policies such as locking up anyone with a tattoo. The cause of the change is primarily demographic.

The gender and age cohort of people who commit the most violent crimes, the world over and across history, are young men. No other age/gender cohort comes close. When this demographic is overrepresented in any nation’s population profile, there will be more murders. When this demographic cohort is underrepresented, homicides fall. It happens everywhere, almost always. Take for example US crime statistics. The portion of the US population aged 20–44 fell from a peak of 40 percent in 1990 to 27 percent today. The US violent crime rate peaked in 1990s and has been dropping ever since, falling to about one quarter of its prior levels (Gramlich, 2019).

Guatemala and Honduras have younger populations than does El Salvador and both still have higher comparative population growth rates. El Salvador is in the midst of their demographic transition, with the birth rate falling every year, dropping from very high rates in the 1960s to very low rates now. The Salvadoran cohort of young men, 18–25 years old, is becoming a smaller portion of the population with each passing year (Capps et al., 2019, p. 13).

Honduras is moving in the same direction as El Salvador, but is not yet as far along in its demographic transition. In Honduras in 1990, 16.5 percent of the population was under 10 years old, but by 2017 the percentage had dropped to 10.1 percent. In Guatemala, the demographic transition has been much slower to get underway, although population growth is at least beginning to show signs of tapering off. In 1960 Guatemala was rising in population by 3 percent a year (a doubling rate of every 23 years), but today it has slowed to just below 2 percent a year (doubling in 35 years), still relatively rapid, if not as fast as before (PopulationPyramid.net, 2019).

Meanwhile, the population proportion of elderly folks, people who nearly always lack the energy or enthusiasm to commit crimes, least of all violent ones, is increasing fast in El Salvador and nearly as fast in Honduras. These demographic factors do the most to explain why murder rates are coming down in the Northern Triangle.

Demography has another role as well, impacting employment opportunities in the Northern Triangle. Those who leave Guatemala, the majority of Northern Triangle emigres, are young men looking for work. The core issue is continuing demographic pressure. As of 2017, half of the Guatemalan population was aged 19 or younger (Banco de Guatemala, 2018, p. 12). The Guatemalan economy is not creating nearly enough jobs, and too many young people join the workforce every year. As one departing Guatemalan put it, “here there is no work, but every day there are more young people” (Cobo, 2017).

In the long run demographic forces are unstoppable. As population growth continues to slow and the population ages, there will be less crime, and less competition for jobs. Before long, migration from all of the Northern Triangle nations will slow down significantly. The current refugee crisis that the USA is dealing with is temporary.

Pull

When people make the difficult decision to leave their homes, they are nearly always acting upon a mix of motives. For the recent Northern Triangle migrants, push factors (why people feel the need to leave where they are) are much more important than pull (being induced to go). Were it not for the push, they likely would not leave (Capps et al., 2019, p. 17).

A recent survey of migrants conducted by a team of researchers from Vanderbilt University concluded that “the push factors of crime, violence, and flawed governments are far more powerful than any shifts in US policy with respect to what happens to an individual upon arriving at the border.” Migrants are, moreover, “acutely aware” of the tougher US immigration policies and enforcement practices (Hiskey et al., 2018; Mercy Corp, 2019). These findings, as researcher Wayne Cornelius has summed up, have been repeatedly confirmed in “thousands of face-to-face interviews” carried out “in long-term field research programs … using divergent research methodologies” (Cornelius, 2018, p. 9).

Pull factors only really come into force in determining where in the USA the migrant families will settle. People are, understandably, drawn toward the communities where family members and friends are already living. Eight of 10 Guatemalans report that they have family living in the USA, 9 of 10 Hondurans do as well, and so too 99 percent of Salvadorans. Pushed to leave, they are pulled toward relatives (Capps et al., 2019, pp. 19–20).

Crossing the Guatemalan–Mexican Border

Guatemala shares a 594 mile long border with Mexico, with eight formal border crossing points. Guatemalans from adjacent highland departments have long crossed over to the Mexican states of Tabasco and Chiapas to take jobs as seasonal agricultural laborers, especially in the sugar and coffee industries. Each year there are at least 100,000 lawful entries of Guatemalans coming into Mexico, counting multiple entries, people traveling with various forms of entry permits (Rivera & Martínez, 2016, pp. 18–19).

But most Guatemalans working or shopping in Mexico do not bother getting a legal transit permit. At narrow points on the Suchiate River, (300 feet across), which forms part of the western Guatemala–Mexico border, most people usually just pay the US$3 fee to cross on a raft, or even less to rent an inner-tube, and enter Mexico without authorization. Guatemala has increased its efforts to slow the currents of Honduran and Salvadoran migrants flowing through their nation on the way north, now setting up checkpoints on Guatemala’s principal highways, blocking the main transit routes (Aguilar & García, 2018, pp. 2, 4; Cobo, 2017; OIM, 2016, p. 14).

Mexico’s government has long followed a policy of detention and deportation of unauthorized immigrants. In fact, Mexico has deported more unauthorized immigrants from the Northern Triangle than the USA: from FY 2002 to FY 2017 Mexico deported 1.9 million unauthorized Northern Triangle immigrants, while the USA deported 1.1 million (Badillo & Arista, 2019; Rodolfo, 2018, pp. 116–117; Flores, Noe-Bustamante, & López, 2019; Medecins Sans Frontieres, 2017, p. 5; Wilson, 2019a, p. 9).

The Northern Triangle migrants do not plan on resettling permanently in Mexico. In 2016, Mexico considered only 9,000 asylum applications from Northern Triangle immigrants, granting fewer than half. However, in FY 2019 Mexico saw a surge in requests, considering some 80,000 asylum applications. This rise is mostly explained by petitions coming from migrants who have been bottled up along the Mexican–US border, hoping to press a US asylum claim. While waiting there, many now seek Mexican asylum as a stopgap to deportation back to the dangers they fled in their home nation (Medecins Sans Frontieres, 2017, p. 21).

The Mexican asylum bureaucracy is tiny, hopelessly overwhelmed by the unprecedented crush of asylum requests to process and deny. Mexico never needed much staff to handle immigration request, for it is not an immigrant destination country. Immigrants make up less than 1 percent of the Mexican population, three-quarters of whom are Americans. Mexico cannot be a destination for Northern Triangle migrants. It is far too dangerous for them (Capps et al., 2019, p. 32; Cornelius, 2018, p. 18).

Trouble in Mexico

At least half of a million people from the Northern Triangle cross through Mexico on the way to the USA every year, up from 200,000 a year in 2013. Both the United Nations and the Organization of American States have long raised alarms regarding human rights abuses of migrants-in-transit across Mexico. They have estimated that one thousand people die each year en route to the USA while passing through Mexico (Medecins Sans Frontieres, 2017, p. 9; OIM, 2016, p. 1; Wilson, 2019a, p. 7).

Organized crime in Mexico, including Los Zetas, the Cártel del Golfo, and the Cártel de Sinaloa, claim ownership of the territory along the principal migrant routes, demanding payments from those who pass through. The cartels have brought every manner of cruel predations upon those who have fallen into their grasp (OIM, 2016, p. 23; Rivera & Martínez, 2016, p. 13).

Since 2012, Doctors Without Borders in Mexico has operated many shelters and health clinics for these migrants, and recently conducted a survey to better understand the challenges these people face. The information provided by the interviews is chilling (Medecins Sans Frontieres, 2017, p. 6).

Seven of 10 Northern Triangle migrants who enter Mexico are victims of some form of violent attack, by gangs members or by Mexican law enforcement. Rape is common. Of the Northern Triangle migrants interviewed, more than 1 in 10 females reported having been raped while in Mexico, some attacked several times. More than 4 percent of the male migrants from the Northern Triangle nations reported that they had been raped in Mexico. Other surveys echo these concerns. Among Guatemalans who cross Mexico, 6 of every 10 females reported that they had been subjected to some form of sexual assault. Many migrants see no choice but to exchange sex for food or shelter as they attempt to cross Mexico (Medecins Sans Frontieres, 2017, pp. 5, 12, 26; Menjívar & Gómez Cervantes, 2018; OIM, 2016, p. 26; Rivera & Martínez, 2016, p. 11).

Some points in the journey have become so notorious for sexual assaults that migrants have posted copies of hand-drawn maps on the internet to alert travelers to stay away. One such spot is the old granary, “La Arrocera,” just outside of Huixtla, not far from the border with Guatemala. Human rights workers there reported that eight of every 10 women who sought refuge for the night at La Arrocera were subsequently sexually assaulted there. Nearly no one is ever punished for these crimes. Indeed, because the migrants-in-transit lack legal standing, they seldom even report the attacks (El Universal, 2009; OIM, 2016, pp. 27–28).

Guatemala and Mexico seek to warn migrants of the dangers that lie ahead. The USA spends millions each year to post signs and run ads on TV, radio, and on the internet, throughout the Northern Triangle, trying to warn people away from migrating. They keep coming anyway.

US Policy

If an immigrant enters the USA without authorization they face civil penalties. They may also receive a court order not to try to enter again. If they violate this court order, they can face criminal penalties, including up to 2 years in federal prison. Although this usually is not the outcome, several thousand migrants are currently being held in US prison for illegal reentry (Wilson, 2019a, p. 13).

Those who cross the US border without authorization and are apprehended at or near the border are typically subject to “expedited removal,” that is, they can be deported directly back to their home nation, without a hearing, without the right to appeal (Smith, 2018, p. 3).

Unless, that is, they make an asylum claim. And once an asylum claim has been made, the individual or family cannot be deported from the USA until at least an initial screening has been conducted. Nearly all of migrants from the Northern Triangle do so request asylum (Aljazeera, 2019; Wilson, 2019a, p. 13).

Grounds for asylum in the USA are limited to just a few categories. As the US Congressional Research Service sums up, to win an asylum case one most establish that there exists a “well-founded fear of future persecution based on one of five protected grounds (race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion)” (Wilson, 2019a). In June of 2018, US Attorney General Jeff Sessions ruled that credible threats of being a targeted victim of gang violence would no longer be grounds for asylum. In December 2018, however, a federal district court halted this practice. For the moment, those fleeing violence in the Northern Triangle may still make asylum claims. Still, only a tiny fraction of asylum requests are granted. In FY 2018, only 725 people from El Salvador were granted asylum. Even fewer Guatemalans and Hondurans won US asylum (Capps et al., 2019, p. 6; Radford, 2019; Wilson, 2019a, p. 14).

Many of the Northern Triangle migrants are minors. Teenagers often travel without their parents. For the 5 years from FY 2013 to FY 2018 the number of unaccompanied minors apprehended at the US southern border totaled 93,000 from Guatemala, 63,000 from El Salvador, and 58,000 from Honduras. Meanwhile, US apprehensions of families traveling together rose from 14,855 in FY 2013 to 77,674 in FY 2016, nearly all coming from the Northern Triangle. In 2013 nearly no family units were apprehended at the southwestern US border; now over half of those detained at the border are traveling in family units (Aguilar & García, 2018, p. 3; Gramlich & Noe-Bustamante, 2019; Kandel, 2017, p. 3).

Under the terms of a 1997 US court settlement, the Flores consent decree, US border officials had followed a policy of holding children in detention centers for no more than 20 days. Thereafter they were required to release the child in the USA into the care of a family member or guardian or, failing that, a charity that would be willing to accept legal guardianship. In 2014, when waves of families and children began to come to the USA from Central America, the Flores decree order was extended to cover families. Now, not only was the child to be released in 20 days, so too were the parents or guardians traveling with the child at the time of apprehension (Kandel, 2017, p. 8).

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) lacks sufficient space to hold asylum seekers. As a result, ICE has followed the practice of offering most asylum seekers “street release,” that is, being permitting them to just walk out the front door of the detention facility. ICE also provides free rides to the nearest bus stop or nearby shelter. Thousands of church groups and NGOs have taken in immigrant families as they are released by ICE. Until recently, the most common outcome for those seeking asylum was release in the USA while awaiting an immigration hearing (Flores, 2019).

As Henry Lucero, an ICE field office director in Arizona, bluntly put it, “we don’t have the time or space to hold all these families” (Flores, 2019). “A year ago,” Lucero noted, “we dropped off 50 people at shelters a day. Now, it’s 300 a day” (Flores, 2019). In the space of just 10 weeks in late 2018 into early 2019, Lucero reported, ICE released nearly 15,000 immigrant families in Arizona alone. At present ICE has holding capacity for up to 2,500 family members. With roughly 1 million family members coming and seeking asylum in the last fiscal year alone, there is not nearly enough space to house all those apprehended. Most released go to one of the shelters or the home of a church volunteer for a day or two, and then move on, usually joining relatives already settled in the USA. Hundreds of thousands of detainees have been released after getting their immigration court date (Aljazeera, 2019; Capps et al., 2019, p. 21; Smith, 2019).

The Trump administration briefly sought to criminally prosecute all caught entering or present in the USA without authorization, the “zero tolerance” policy, beginning in April 2018. Some 3,000 children were separated from their parents. These actions earned considerable bad press, including a scathing op-ed authored by former first lady Laura Bush, published in The Washington Post. As the outcry rose, Trump backed down, ending the family separation policy in June 2018 (Seelke, 2018, p. 20; Wilson, 2019a, p. 13).

However, US officials could not undo all the damage they had done; there was great difficulty in figuring where the parents now were—in detention somewhere, deported, released. Many families were not reunited. Border officials continue to separate some children from their parents, although now they need to claim a different basis for the child separations, usually charging that the parents or guardians are unfit (Zengerle, 2019, pp. 37, 45).

Trump announced a new plan in June 2018 to detain unauthorized immigrant parents and their children together, until such time as the removal hearing was completed. This plan was ruled in violation of the Flores agreement, and was blocked in federal court (Smith, 2018, p. 1).

The Trump administration then sought for a time to fingerprint and deport any unauthorized immigrant relatives coming to take custody of unaccompanied children being held in a detention facility. The Trump administration had to also stop this practice due to a court order. The Trump administration then attempted in November 2018 to block hearing any asylum claims from those who entered the USA outside of authorized border crossing points. This attempted policy change was swiftly blocked by federal court(Capps et al., 2019, p. 23).

Despite these Trump administration initiatives, until recently most of those who made asylum claims were still being released in the USA. For a while ICE put ankle bracelets on those being set free (costing US$4.50 a day), but it had to abandon this practice when it ran out of the tracking devices. In some cases those released pending their asylum hearing posted a bond, usually around US$1,500, but in some cases as much as US$25,000 (Capps et al., 2019, pp. 2, 36).

It usually takes at least half a year but sometimes as long as a couple of years for the hearing date. With appeals, it can take several years to definitively settle some asylum cases. At present there is an estimated backlog of 700,000 to nearly a million cases waiting to be heard in US immigration courts (Aljazeera, 2019; Flores, 2019; Wilson, 2019a, p. 6).

Asylum hearings are civil administrative proceeding, not criminal trials. Of those that show up for their asylum hearing, only about 1 percent are represented by an attorney. Because there is no right to counsel for asylum seekers, applicants must either pay out of pocket for a lawyer, or try to get one free from a legal aid organization. Those asylum applicants without legal representation have almost no chance of being granted asylum (Smith, 2018, p. 2).

When immigrants are given a court date but fail to show up for it, the reason might be that they did not know when and where the hearing would be, or because they left and went back home, or because they found somewhere to live in Mexico, or because after their release in the USA they decided to just take their chances of staying in the USA without papers. Of those granted asylum hearings, three of every four do actually show up for their court hearing in the USA. If they win, a very rare event, this means they are granted relief from removal. If they lose, nearly always the case, they are ordered to leave the USA (Medecins Sans Frontieres, 2017, p. 23).

Nearly all people who lose their asylum hearing and ordered to leave the USA are not actually deported. Instead, they are handed a deportation order, directing them to leave the USA. They do not. Rather, most stay on in the USA without authorization (Capps et al., 2019, p. 2).

Unaccompanied children are the least likely to ever be deported. Only 3 percent of unaccompanied children who were apprehended in FY 2014 had been deported by the end of FY 2019. Of the 68,000 family members apprehended in FY 2014, only 10 percent had been deported by the end of FY 2017 (Capps et al., 2019, pp. 21, 35; Kandel, 2017, p. 7).

In FY 2017 the USA carried out 68,000 deportations of people from Central America. For the returning families, return is fraught with peril. In El Salvador those deported are dumped off at a reception facility situated right in middle of MS-13 gang territory. Half of Hondurans report that it is not safe to return to their home country no matter what. Several deportees have been murdered immediately upon their arrival (Capps et al., 2019, p. 18; Medecins Sans Frontieres, 2017, p. 23; Motlagh, 2019, p. 83).

President Trump has attempted several other policy changes to deport more people, but at least for the moment these measures are being blocked in the courts. Trump has sought to end the granting of Temporary Protected Status (TPS), a designation used to permit people to stay in the USA after a natural disaster or other catastrophe in their homeland. After Hurricane Mitch in 1999, TPS was extended to Hondurans, and Salvadorans got TPS in 2001 after devastating earthquake in El Salvador. TPS has been renewed for both nations several time since. TPS has never applied to Guatemalans. Trump called for an end to the TPS program for Salvadorans beginning in September 2019, but the matter is being challenged in US courts. As of mid-2019 roughly 200,000 Salvadorans and over 86,000 Hondurans lived in the USA under TPS protection (Menjívar & Gómez Cervantes, 2018; Meyer, 2018, p. 17; Motlagh, 2019, p. 86).

The Trump administration has settled on another approach to block potential asylum seekers, a “metered access” system. The new policy permits only a trickle of asylum applicants at border checkpoints. In the Tijuana, Mexico, US authorities have been taking only 40–100 applications a day. Thousand wait in line every morning only to be turned away to try again the next time the office is open (Mercy Corps, 2019).

In January 2019 Trump started his “Remain in Mexico” policy, requiring asylum applicants to wait in Mexico for their US court hearing date. Unaccompanied minors are not subject to this order, but under this policy fewer and fewer people who passed the initial “credible fear screening” (9 of 10 pass this screening) are permitted to wait in the USA for their hearing. From late January to mid-July 2019 already some 20,000 family members had been sent back across to Mexico to wait for their asylum hearing. One problem with the policy, however, is the difficulty in contacting those waiting to tell them when and where their hearing will be. Today, many migrant families from the Northern Triangle are bottled up at the border, waiting to make an asylum claim or waiting for their court hearing. Many of these people are staying in Tijuana, the city with the highest homicide rate in the world (138 per 100,000). Given the long waits and the dangers, many migrants now decide instead to hire a coyote and enter the USA without authorization. Sometimes they attempt to enter without authorization on their own, for example, by swimming across the six foot deep Río Grande (Capps et al., 2019, p. 25; Hesson, 2018; Wilson, 2019a, p. 10).

The Trump administration recently added the requirement that all US asylum seekers must have applied for and been rejected for asylum by all of the nations they passed through on the way to the USA. Of the hundreds of thousands of Guatemalans who have left their country, less than 2,000 total have, over the years, resettled in Mexico as legally recognized refugees. Less than 1 percent of the people residing in Mexico were not born there, and of these, many are children of Mexican parents who moved back from the USA after the 2008 recession (OIM, 2016, p. 10).

In the summer of 2019 Trump announced an accord with Guatemala’s President Jimmy Morales, officially designating the nation a “third safe nation” where migrants must first seek asylum. This action triggered immediate lawsuits in the USA and Guatemala. Guatemalan legal analysts point out that this policy would need to be taken up and approved by the Guatemalan congress. The winning candidate in the Guatemalan 2019 presidential election, Alejandro Giammattei, denounced the accord with the Trump administration and promised to quash it.

Guatemala hosts nearly no permanent alien residents: immigrants make up 0.5 percent of the Guatemalan population, one of the lowest levels in the world. Guatemala’s underfunded, barely functioning bureaucracy is not equipped to handle asylum applications. In 2018 the tiny Guatemalan asylum office, sandwiched in a hard-to-find block adjacent to three strip clubs, had a total staff of eight. In 2018 these government employees successfully processed a total of 20 applications for asylum.

In September 2019 the Trump administration announced an accord with El Salvador, designating the nation as another “safe third country” for migrants. El Salvador has no government officials who work full-time on processing the paperwork for those seeking asylum because such applications for resettlement in this violence-plagued nation are rare. In late 2019, the Trump administration added a similar accord for Honduras after threatening them with economic sanctions if they refused.

The US Supreme Court has temporarily upheld the “safe third nation” policy, pending a final ruling at some future point. For the moment, those fleeing the Northern Triangle are not to be permitted to request asylum in the USA unless they can show that they requested asylum in any nation they passed through. As a practical matter, this means that most of those families coming from the Northern Triangle will select instead the dangerous option of trying to enter the USA without official authorization.

At points President Trump has threatened to simply close the US southern border. Critics note that the US–Mexican border is a very busy point of commerce and day-to-day commutes to work, shop, or go to school. Trade between the two nations totals over US$612 billion a year. Every day nearly 1 million people cross lawfully from Mexico into the USA, most using a US-issued Border Crossing Card. These cards are mainly acquired by Mexican students attending US border-zone colleges, or by middle-class Mexicans who shop at American big box stores set up for them right across the border. Trump’s threatened action would halt all lawful daily crossings and end nearly all trade between the two nations (Harte & Reid, 2019; Serrano, 2019).

Burden or Benefit?

President Trump announced in April 2019 that “our country is full.” “Turn around,” Trump advised (Meissner, 2019; Orrenius, Zavodny, & Gullo, 2019; Zengerle, 2019, p. 32). But at the beginning of 2019, there were 7.6 million employment openings in the USA, but just 6.5 million people looking for jobs. The biggest areas of US economic need are the vacancies that immigrants commonly fill, such as home health aides, restaurant workers, and hotel staff. Today unauthorized immigrants make up about 5 percent of the US workforce. Undocumented workers account from a quarter of the hotel housecleaning staff and half of the farm laborers in the USA (Dudley, 2019; Fernández Campbell, 2019).

Some, in line with Trump’s opinions, hold to the belief that unauthorized immigrants are a drag on the US economy, costing more in services that they take than they contribute in taxes, especially by crowding taxpayer-funded public schools. But it is worth remembering that of the children of unauthorized immigrants, more than eight of every ten were born in the USA. This means that they are US citizens. As such, it is unconstitutional to deny these children the same level of public education and care provided to any other American citizen (Addy, 2012).

Some erroneously claim that unauthorized immigrants do not pay taxes. However, immigrants of course pay sales taxes in the 45 out of 50 states that have them. Unauthorized immigrant workers also pay US$12 billion in state and local taxes every year. They contribute even more in federal income taxes, at least US$24 billion each year (Fernández Campbell, 2018).

Undocumented workers who are on a company payroll have taxes and other deductions routinely taken from every paycheck, just like everyone else. Even undocumented workers who are self-employed or paid in cash are required by law to pay their taxes, and it seems that about half of them do this, at least according to the US Internal Revenue Service. They do this perhaps because they reason that if regulations later change and citizenship becomes possible for people like them, then they would need to be able to prove that they have been law-abiding. They understand that not paying their taxes is a crime (Fernández Campbell, 2018; Roberts, 2019).

There are other large contributions made by the undocumented immigrants. Nearly all are so poorly compensated that they would be eligible to file for the Earned Income Tax Credit (in effect, a negative income tax, providing added income for workers and their families living in poverty). However, unauthorized immigrants almost never file for this benefit, chiefly out of fear of coming to the attention of authorities and being deported.

Another very important contribution made by undocumented workers comes in the payroll deductions taken for Social Security. They pay in with every paycheck, but nearly no unauthorized immigrant has ever filed for this benefit. All told, unauthorized immigrants have paid some US$240 billion into the Social Security program over the years. Undocumented workers pay in around US$13 billion into Social Security every year, with an additional US$3 billion dropped into the Medicare program annually, helping keep both program afloat (Roberts, 2019).

Toward Solutions

Holding immigrants in detention awaiting an immigration asylum hearing is costly, an outlay of over US$300 per day for each detainee. Supervised release is much more cost effective, US$38 a day. Pilot programs for supervised release show that 99 percent of asylum seekers managed in this way show up for their immigration hearings. Supervised release for asylum seekers is a more rational approach. It is not cruel, and it is much more affordable (Capps et al., 2019, p. 2).

Granting Temporary Protected Status to those arriving from the Northern Triangle would offer the swiftest solution for ending the crisis situation on the US southwestern border. As the law is presently written, Temporary Protected Status can be appropriately granted, as the Congressional Research Services has put it, to those fleeing “extraordinary and temporary conditions in a foreign state that prevent its nationals from safely returning” (Wilson, 2019b, p. 2). This would certainly apply to the Northern Triangle refugees.

The present immigration crisis will not last forever. Demographic forces will change the situation in the long run. Departures from El Salvador are already slowing as the population turns grayer, and Honduras and Guatemala will not be long behind. Even more, the population of these three countries is just not large enough to produce many more waves of immigrants.

In 2015 the USA launched a 5-year US$1 billion program to provide aid for social programs in the Northern Triangle nations, the Alliance for Prosperity (Plan Alianza para la Prosperidad). Aid like this does not go to Northern Triangle governments, but rather provides funds for nongovernmental organizations, such as Mercy Corps and other charities that seek to assist those living in poverty in the region. Ironically, when President Trump cut off nearly all aid to the Northern Triangle nations, the Plan Alianza was just beginning to show evidence of success in reducing poverty and making neighborhoods safer (Flores, 2019; González, 2019; Mercy Corp, 2019; Wilson, 2019a, p. 7).

A wise and humane policy for guest workers, focused on areas of employment needs and with assurances of fair pay and safe working conditions, would be vastly better than the present system that actually encourages the exploitation of desperate and highly vulnerable people. The US economy needs immigrant workers, but it does not need unfairly treated immigrant workers (Meissner, 2019; Orrenius, Zavodny, & Gullo, 2019).

Despite the many cruelties of the present crisis, there are yet many acts of great kindness, demonstrations of empathy, and at times some reason for hope—people giving apples and bottles of water to the migrants riding the trains through Mexico, and those who volunteer their time and expertise to translate for migrants and help explain the complexities of applying for legal authorization to stay in the USA.

Too much of the political dialog in the USA today about these matters is poisoned by fear, racism, and fixed views that seize upon negative anecdotal examples as illustrative of the whole. It is time to consider the best available evidence and to construct policies that demonstrate America’s wisdom and compassion.