Supporting Migrants Through the Asylum Process

Here's something I wrote for our Latin American Studies spring newsletter.

Precarious economic and social conditions have forced hundreds of thousands of people from Central America’s Northern Triangle to flee their homes in recent years. The plight of the people of Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala was brought home to the U.S. public during 2014’s “unaccompanied minors crisis,” when thousands of children and families voluntarily turned themselves in to the U.S. Border Patrol. While forewarned, the U.S. was unprepared wholly to care for this vulnerable population. The U.S. did not have enough beds, doctors, and social workers. In many ways, the U.S. also made life difficult for those who made it to the border so as to deter future migrants from making the same trip. Instead of dedicating additional emergency resources to tend to the needs of these people, the U.S. sought to beef up security along its southern border and even further south, Mexico's border with Guatemala.  

In the Latin American courses that I teach, we often study present day conditions in Central America. Poverty and inequality led to civil wars in Guatemala and El Salvador during the second half of the twentieth century. In many ways, peace agreements to end the wars in El Salvador (1992) and Guatemala (1996) resolved the political violence but did little to address the social and economic conditions that led to the outbreaks of the conflicts in the first place. El Salvador’s poverty rate is the best among the three at approximately 35%; Guatemala (55%) and Honduras (66%) score notably worse. Life is extremely difficult and made even worse by high levels of inequality.  

However, poor economic conditions are nothing new and is not the only driver of migration. For the most part, the peace agreements ended the political violence. However, that insecurity has been replaced by escalating violence carried out by street gangs, organized crime, and drug trafficking organizations. El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala are among the three most violent countries in the world not at war in the traditional sense of the term. The violence has led many of those who have made it to the United States to apply for asylum. They seek asylum because they are escaping persecution rather than searching for economic opportunities.  

I have volunteered as an expert witness on asylum cases from El Salvador. In my capacity as an expert witness, I provide immigration authorities with background on the country’s conditions and weigh in on whether the experience of persecution that the asylee presents in his or her testimony is consistent with my understanding of life in the country. During the spring semester, Political Science and History double major Jay Cuny and I worked with law students from Georgetown University to win asylum for a young man who fled gang violence. Political Science major and Latin American Studies and Women’s Studies concentrator Kaelyn Jacques and I are currently helping a man from Guatemala pursue asylum based upon political persecution. Finally, students in this year’s Central America course will be debating an actual asylum case that I worked on last year.  

If  you are a student at The University of Scranton and would like to work with me in the future, please contact me.