Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here

“Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here is sure to take its place as one of the definitive accounts of the U.S. and Central American immigration puzzle. . . . Hopefully, those with the power to change things will listen.” —Manuel Roig-Franzia, Washington Post

An epic, heartbreaking, and deeply reported history of the disastrous humanitarian crisis at the southern border told through the lives of the migrants forced to risk everything and the policymakers who determine their fate, by New Yorker staff writer Jonathan Blitzer

Everyone who makes the journey faces an impossible choice. Hundreds of thousands of people who arrive every year at the US-Mexico border travel far from their homes. An overwhelming share of them come from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, although many migrants come from farther away. Some are fleeing persecution, others crime or hunger. Very often it will not be their first attempt to cross. They may have already been deported from the United States, but it remains their only hope for safety and prosperity. Their homes have become uninhabitable. They will take their chances.

This vast and unremitting crisis did not spring up overnight. Indeed, as Blitzer dramatizes with forensic, unprecedented reporting, it is the result of decades of misguided policy and sweeping corruption. Brilliantly weaving the stories of Central Americans whose lives have been devastated by chronic political conflict and violence with those of American activists, government officials, and the politicians responsible for the country’s tragically tangled immigration policy, Blitzer reveals the full, layered picture for the first time.

Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here is an odyssey of struggle and resilience. With astonishing nuance and detail, Blitzer tells an epic story about the people whose lives ebb and flow across the border, and in doing so, he delves into the heart of American life itself. This vital and remarkable story has shaped the nation’s turbulent politics and culture in countless ways—and will almost certainly determine its future.“Sweeping and insightful . . . a New Yorker magazine writer who for years has been one of the most perceptive chroniclers of a complex and often misunderstood bane of U.S. policymakers. Writing with clarity and grace, while avoiding the mawkish tone sometimes associated with tales of the border, Blitzer makes a compelling case that the United States and Central America are knit as one . . . The themes explored in the book feel all the more relevant as we enter a presidential campaign in which immigration is once again a centrally toxic issue . . . Far from reading like a dry policy tome, Blitzer’s book makes its case by telling in vivid detail the stories of a cast of representative figures spread over five decades . . . Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here is sure to take its place as one of the definitive accounts of the U.S. and Central American immigration puzzle, a long and ongoing saga with no real solution in sight . . . And yet, after reading Blitzer’s book, one can’t help but think that the impossible might be possible—that maybe, just maybe, this could be fixed. He’s not trying to lay out a set of policy solutions. He’s making a more nuanced plea, a rejection of the ‘selective amnesia’ of politics in favor of a deeper understanding of how we—as a nation and as a region—got here. It is a book with a ‘mission’ . . . Hopefully, those with the power to change things will listen.” —Manuel Roig-Franzia, Washington Post

“As Jonathan Blitzer shows in Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here, his timely and instructive history of the immigration crisis, the trouble at the border isn’t likely to be solved soon, since it is the outcome of a long and vexed entanglement between the United States and its southern neighbors . . . Conflicts over immigration often arise from similarity rather than difference, and the strangers at our border have a familiar history that Blitzer tells in meticulous and vivid detail. It is our own.” —Matthieu Aikins, The New York Times

“What we’re seeing today on the southern border and in cities including New York, where more than 100,000 migrants arrived in the past year—are reverberations of a long, violent history that implicates the United States for its meddling in Central America. This is the story that Jonathan Blitzer painstakingly documents in his new book, Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here . . . Blitzer shows all the ways our immigration system is in shambles. A series of misguided actions and their consequences brought us to this point. This book begins the reckoning we desperately need.” —The Atlantic

“Capacious, stirring . . . Blitzer assiduously chronicles this dark history with a keen eye for individual lives; the personal is literally political . . . Blitzer’s research and reporting are extensive and impeccable, a feat in an age of TikTok memes and Twitter mobs. But perhaps his most resonant, if damning, argument is just how oblivious Americans have been—and still are—to widespread suffering committed in our name. Out of sight, out of mind. Blitzer never shirks from his duty: to show us who we truly are. His is a vital, momentous book.” —Minneapolis Star Tribune

“What an incredibly thorough documentation of the causes of the immigration crisis, the discussions that have been going on through multiple administrations.” —Jon Stewart, The Daily Show

“In this urgent, extraordinary book, Jonathan Blitzer takes a crisis we generally encounter in the black-and-white simplicity of sound bites and statistics and reconceives it in complicated, unforgettable color. Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here tells the origin story of our border emergency as both a sweeping panorama, traversing decades and continents, and an intimate chronicle of the lives of a handful of indelible characters. Based on years of unparalleled reporting with migrants, activists, and policymakers, the book offers a profound reflection on one of the great paradoxes of American life—and a tribute to the astonishing indomitability of the human spirit.” —Patrick Radden Keefe, New York Times bestselling author of Say Nothing and Empire of Pain
   
“Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here is a searing, gut-wrenching, and masterfully reported account of one of the greatest humanitarian crises of the twenty-first century. No one has told this story so well as Jonathan Blitzer, whose incisive historical and political analysis brings into devastatingly sharp relief the gripping, heartbreaking tales told to him by migrants in search of ‘una cucharita de justicia,’ a little spoonful of justice.” —Jill Lepore, New York Times bestselling author of These Truths: A History of the United States
 
“As a Salvadoran, and as a previously undocumented person living in the United States, it has felt impossible to find a single comprehensive, concise timeline that could tie my existence in this country to the wars funded by US taxpayers. Through in-depth research, a commitment to truth, and brilliant storytelling, Jonathan Blitzer has written the quintessential book that links Central American migration to US imperialism. Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here is a masterpiece that everybody, everybody should read.” —Javier Zamora, New York Times bestselling author of Solito

“An immense work that is both a modern history of Central America and a collection of oral histories from those who have survived. Through sources turned characters—and their pursuit of asylum, justice, and survival—Blitzer takes us on a borderless, nonlinear journey through brutal military dictatorships, smugglers, the changing maze of U.S. immigration law, and an asylum policy that has been politicized since its inception. Ultimately, the book succeeds in holding a mirror up to our present-day crisis on the southern border and how it evolved . . . Blitzer weaves the strands of oral history and hard data to vivid effect here. His keen eye for nuance in language, as well as a gift for setting and pacing, hold this multi-narrative work together and help create a sense of urgency.” —Alta

“Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here is a welcome intervention in a toxic discourse, one that unveils the ties that bind our artificially fractured hemisphere.” —Texas Observer

“[Blitzer’s] powerful, compassionate account highlights individual stories, creating an epic portrayal of migration’s human stakes.” —Christian Science Monitor

“A remarkable volume . . . In painstaking detail, Blitzer compiles the history of the U.S.’s involvement in Central America, and illustrates how foreign and immigration policies have irrevocably altered human lives—as well as tying them to one another.” —ELLE

“An insightful, yet heartbreaking, look at the humanitarian crisis that’s unfolding.” —Cosmopolitan

“Blitzer, a staff writer for the New Yorker, debuts with a masterful portrayal of the trauma experienced by asylum-seeking migrants from Central America and the U.S. government’s often inept policy interventions . . . Blitzer has produced a model of long-form journalism that intertwines the personal and the political . . . This is a powerful indictment of U.S. immigration policy.” —Publisher’s Weekly (starred review)

“Conditions on the U.S.–Mexico border have worsened as thousands of Central Americans clamor to enter the U.S., braving diversion tactics that have included separating children from their families and placing adults in conditions that resemble concentration camps. It’s a sorrowful yet urgent topic, and Blitzer navigates it with both journalistic rigor and compassion. A sobering, well-reported history in which no one emerges a winner.”
—​Kirkus (starred review)

“I have a lot of resistance to reading about immigration because I do not feel that I, an immigrant, am the intended audience, but Jon’s writing is different. He does not ogle, romanticize, proselytize, or condescend. His storytelling is bold, and the research involved is impressive, but what I admire most about this book is its moral clarity. It’s crystalline. I really loved it. I couldn’t put it down.” —Karla Cornejo Villavicencio, author of The Undocumented Americans
  
“This book will tear your heart out. Both intimate and comprehensive, it treks deep into the tragedies of El Salvador, Guatemala, and US immigration policy. Jon Blitzer’s reporting is vast, meticulous, and authoritative. The main characters are drawn with the richness of great fiction.” —William Finnegan, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Barbarian Days

“With rare humanity, narrative acumen, and a detective’s eye for the telling detail, Jonathan Blitzer has given the U.S.-Central American immigration crisis the epic treatment that it deserves. This is the story of ordinary people forced to live extraordinary lives in a time of endless tumult. Reminiscent of classic past social inquiries by the likes of George Orwell and Tracy Kidder, Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here is an unparalleled piece of modern journalism about one of the most compelling, and polarizing issues of our time. A remarkable and invaluable achievement.” —Jon Lee Anderson, bestselling author of Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life

“A decades-long regional tragedy plays out in riveting detail, and no one who reads Jonathan Blitzer’s marvelous new book will ever view the current headlines in quite the same way. Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here is a breathtaking and immersive work of journalism, laying out in novelistic detail the violent, treacherous roots of the current immigration crisis. It’s a riveting, maddening, and ultimately moving story that every American who cares about immigration should read.” —Daniel Alarcón, author of At Night We Walk in Circles and Lost City Radio
 
“Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here is a book about immigration of unparalleled significance: a definitive history of the human tragedy wrought by decades of flawed U.S. policies, and the rare triumph of those who outrun, outwit, and outlast them.” —Eliza Griswold, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Amity and Prosperity
 
“Powerful and deeply compelling, Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here shows how Central American migration has created deep interconnections between the US, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. This story reminds readers that migration is not only a political issue but a human one.” —Ana Raquel Minian, author of In the Shadow of LibertyJonathan Blitzer is a staff writer at The New Yorker. He has won a National Award for Education Reporting as well as an Edward R. Murrow Award, and was a 2021 Emerson Fellow at New America. He lives with his family in New York City.1.

The Heart Doctor

As a boy in Usulután, in eastern El Salvador, Juan Romagoza grew up knowing that one day he would become either a doctor or a priest. The church called first, with the casual force of inevitability. The signs of a future life in the Catholic ministry were everywhere, starting on the street where he lived, in a Spanish colonial house with his parents, eight siblings, grandparents, an aunt, and an uncle. It was just around the corner from the city’s main church, a simple but imposing building with two towers and a broad front staircase. Early each morning, the family attended mass. On Sundays, at the house of Juan’s great-grandparents, the bishop would often visit for lunch. He was a stiff, corpulent man, who dressed in a flowing white robe. Jewelry covered his hands and neck. The adults used to summon Juan and the other children to kneel before him and kiss one of his rings. The whole family was muy beata, neighbors used to say; they were church folks, pious in the extreme. In 1964, when Juan was thirteen, he announced to the family that he wanted to leave home to attend the seminary, in the nearby mountain town of Santiago de María. “One less mouth to feed and one more saint in the family,” his mother said.

It didn’t take him long to realize his mistake. Juan loved Usulután’s pulsating sense of community; neighbors were linked together in an atmosphere of friendly complicity. The seminary felt closed off and drained of communal life. It was also treacherous in ways he hadn’t foreseen. At night, he learned to wrap himself tightly in his bedsheets and blankets to avoid the attentions of one priest who was notorious among the young seminarians for making rounds after dark. When Juan came home, six months later, he not only refused to return to the seminary; he thought he might be an atheist.

Medicine became Juan’s enduring religion. As with the church, his attraction to it ran deep, dating from the day he watched his fifty-two-year-old grandfather die of a heart attack. Juan was eight at the time, and he clung to his grandfather’s side while the family waited three hours for a doctor to arrive. Untreated ailments addled other family members. They developed chronic debilitations-blindness in an eye, a bad limp, a lifetime of stomach trouble. “A doctor is really a kind of high priest,” he told his family as he grew older. The profession answered to a higher calling.

Juan was short and scrawny, with wispy dark hair, olive skin, and alert eyes. Quiet charisma hung off him like a loose shirt. At school, and on the streets, he always found his way to the center of group activity. There were soccer matches and neighborhood pranks in his boyhood, and, as he got older, demonstrations organized against local authorities. The prevailing attitude in town was a ready sympathy for the obreros and campesinos in their midst-the workers and the peasants-and a corresponding coolness toward men of overweening authority. Church figures were a sometimes polarizing exception.

Juan’s mother was a seamstress, his father a gym teacher. They could only afford to send one child at a time to college, but Juan, who was his school’s valedictorian, earned a scholarship from the Casa Presidencial, in San Salvador. In 1970, he arrived at the University of El Salvador to study medicine, a seven-year degree that wound up lasting ten.

El Salvador’s politics were dominated by an alliance between the business elite and the armed forces, which grew increasingly turbulent during the 1970s as the broader public rebelled. Protests and protracted worker strikes led to government crackdowns. The university kept closing for months on end. During these stoppages, Juan would volunteer in different hospitals across the country-in places like Usulután and Sonsonate, where he knew people-and this way got some training in before school reopened. He had already chosen his subspecialty. He wanted to be a heart surgeon.

The surgery residency came near the end of his education, one of the last rotations before completing the degree. This was why, on a hot, humid evening in February 1980, Juan found himself at the San Rafael National Hospital, in Santa Tecla, twenty miles west of San Salvador. It was his fourth week at the facility, and he was beginning to feel comfortable there. The building was old but charming; a single story, it was organized around an interior courtyard, with a facade made of stone painted white and blue, the national colors, and lined with deep-set windows and decorative columns. Like any medical resident, Juan spent more time at the hospital than he did at the garret-size room he rented in San Salvador. He worked long hours and took naps where and when he could, in between assignments assisting with surgeries and running down doctors’ requests.

At around five p.m. a gurney came crashing through the doors of the emergency room. On it was the bloodied, unmoving body of a student protester. Juan later learned the identity of the patient. He was the leader of an association of high school students called the Movimiento Estudiantil Revolucionario Salvadoreño (MERS), a junior offshoot of the teachers union. It frequently mobilized in anti-government demonstrations around the capital.

The student had been strafed in the neck and stomach by police gunfire and rushed by his friends away from the scene of the shooting to his parents. But they had all been reluctant to bring him to a hospital. The state security forces had a reputation for searching hospitals after violent incidents and dragging out injured protesters. Often, these protesters would never be heard from again, or else their mutilated bodies would be deposited a day or two later on a street corner as a warning to their confederates. The family had decided to take him to San Rafael because the hospital was just outside the city and therefore, they hoped, beyond the immediate watch of the police.

For four hours, Juan assisted with the surgery, and eventually the student was stabilized and transferred from the operating room. At San Rafael, the intensive care ward was a single rectangular-shaped hall, with beds arranged in rows and cordoned off from one another with curtains. Juan pulled a chair up to the patient’s bed. He checked his blood pressure, adjusted his catheter, and recorded his vital signs. It was after ten p.m. by the time Juan was done with the first round of tasks, and the hospital had grown quiet. Only Juan and a nurse remained in the ward. Sitting upright alongside the bed, he drifted off, lulled to sleep by the sound of the nurse padding along the tile floor.

A thumping sound jolted him awake a few minutes later. The intensive care ward was in the eastern wing of the hospital, and the emergency room and parking lot were on the western side. It took Juan a few seconds to realize that he was hearing the rhythm of soldiers’ boots marching the length of the hospital, down the colonnaded archway, toward where he sat with his patient.

“They’re coming for you,” he found himself saying aloud to the boy sleeping beside him. He rose and spotted the nurse, who was standing up, ramrod straight. Before either of them could do anything, there was a loud, guttural shout. Juan wheeled around to see a group of a half dozen men masked in balaclavas and armed with rifles and pistols coming through the door. Some wore the green uniforms associated with the national security forces; others were dressed like civilians.

“Get on the ground. We’ll shoot you if you try to get up,” one of them yelled. Juan dropped to the floor. He kept his eyes on their boots as the men walked toward his patient, stopping right in front of the bed. They knew their target. A member of the hospital staff had likely tipped them off.

Without saying a word, the men opened fire. Spent cartridges rained down around him, pinging off the floor. The bed rocked and rattled from the force of the bullets. Then, just as swiftly as they had entered, the gunmen left, marching off the way they had come.

“Did they leave?” Juan called out to the nurse. She was in her fifties, calm and experienced, but she was crying. “I think so,” she replied. He jumped to his feet and gratuitously grabbed the wrist of his patient to feel for a pulse that wasn’t there. Juan’s eyes were on the window, and he moved toward it cautiously before looking out. In the parking lot, he could see a fleet of green trucks before their taillights flickered on-a flash of red in the dark-and they peeled out into the night. Juan began picking up the cartridges, which were still hot to the touch.

“Why are you taking those?” the nurse asked.

“To remember this,” he replied.US