Contents

Prologue: Piedras Negras—Arnovis in the safe house—Paying the wrong coyote—Harvesting coconuts in Corral de Mulas—Gimme Shelter—Asylum defined—How to quantify fear?—The discriminatory politics of asylum—Fear and civilization—Frederick Douglass

FIRST ATTEMPT

1 Bombing the Bridge of Gold—Gang presence in Joyous Saint John—A soccer match and an asylum claim—Gangs as state actors—Pressure to join one gang, threats from the other—Peluca keeps pushing—Pistol to the head—Escape

2 Fear and the state—Biases in asylum adjudication—Greek heroes—Non-refoulement—Principle and practice—More asylum seekers, more bordering—The meaning of the crisis—Blurring of economic migrants and refugees—The doubly dispossessed

3 Arnovis traveling north—Horrors and hardships—Caught in Mexico—Mexican immigration enforcement—Siglo XXI

4 Fear, the state, migration—The highway comes to Corral de Mulas—Rise of the gangs—Dangerous and do-nothing police—Police target Arnovis—Chris Rock and Max Weber—Isolation and danger in Corral de Mulas—Inability to relocate in El Salvador

SECOND ATTEMPT

5 Deportation—A sad night in a sex motel—Poverty in Corral—Heading north again—Bribery in the jungle—The Beast—Pushbacks and the deterrence– Hiring a coyote—“Safe third country agreements”—Mexico’s dysfunctional asylum system—Are refugees safe in the United States?—Arnovis arrives in Piedras Negras

6 Escape from the safe house—Dodging Mexican marines—Nights in the desert—Pushing away asylum seekers at the border—Fording the Rio Grande—Entry fiction doctrine—Taken into custody

7 The century of the refugee—Hebraic law and asylum—Islamic and Arabic traditions of hospitality—Sanctuary and asylum among the early Greeks—Sophocles and Aeschylus—Democracy and asylum—Sanctuary in Rome and the early Christian church—Calvin and Luther—European states and asylum—Fugitive slaves as refugees

8 Requirements of proof for asylum claims—The World Trade Center and asylum policy—Immaterial inconsistences—Las hieleras—Border Patrol’s lies—Arnovis and credible fear—Playing trilingual telephone in courts—Scheherazade—Arnovis deported

9 Twenty people displaced a minute—Nansen passports—Failures in 1933—Évian Conference and Kristallnacht—The saga of the St. Louis—Nineteen Eighty-Four—The “right to have rights”—1951 Refugee Convention—Anti-communism and United States asylum policy—Refugees fleeing the United States—1967 Protocol and mass exodus from Southeast Asia—Denying Central American asylum claims—Anti-Haitian policies and the rise of Guantánamo—Welcome to the Cubans—War crimes and El Salvador at war—United States extends its border south—Australia learns from US pushbacks—Perdition, downfall, doom, extinction, and ruin

THIRD ATTEMPT

10 Arnovis in chains—Domestic split in Corral de Mulas—Gang control on the peninsula—Another threat—Arnovis and José flee with their daughters—A smuggler’s cramped truck

11 Santos witnesses his twin’s murder in Juárez—The dungeons of US detention—Time as a weapon—Refugee literature—Bona fide or bogus claims—Climate refugees—Arnovis and Meybelín in a southern Mexican safe house—Border militarization—Racist immigration enforcement—Rise of the coyotes—Refugee Roulette—“Asylum to the virtuous”—Fifty-two hours in a truck—Death trucks—Darlene gets sick—“Zero tolerance” and family separations—The family crosses the river in a raft—Back in the hieleras—The girls are separated

12 Trump to eliminate courts and judges—A caravan—Particularistic refugees—US meddling in El Salvador—The Central American “laboratory”—Rise of gangs in LA—Failures of the Drug War—The CIA, the state, and local police collaborating with gangs and drug smugglers—US foreign policy in Honduras—NBA jerseys in Honduran slums

13 Where is Meybelín?—“Twenty-three days of terror”—United States backs out of refugee resettlement accords—Narrowing grounds for asylum—Arnovis prosecuted

14 Martín threatened by Acapulco cops—Detention of asylum seekers—“We were locked up like dogs”—The feeling of fear—Torturing a grandmother—Psalms of asylum—Assassination of Archbishop Romero

15 Arnovis back in Corral without Meybelín—Contact with Meybelín—Media sensation—Welcome-home balloons—My first visit to Corral—Arnovis still on edge—Dancing in the dirt—Another trip north?

CAN I LIVE?

16 Consequences of asylum denial—Sixty bullet casings—Chronicling death upon deportation—Emergency evacuations

17 Sanctuary outside Austin—Hilda’s story—A childhood of abuse—Fleeing with her son—Detention—Hunger strike—Making home in a church—Growing up in a church

18 Lingering fear in Corral—New threats—The price of a bullet—Blistered identity—A nation’s capacity to protect—Asylum as triage—A state’s own fear—“Freedom is a place”—Heidegger, Arendt, Hölderlin—Changes in El Salvador—Meybelín loves her father—Arnovis’s dream

Acknowledgments