At Least 138 Salvadorans Were Killed After US Deported Them, Report Finds

In 2010, a young man fled gang recruitment and violence in his El Salvador neighborhood. He sought asylum in the United States, where his mother had already gone. But he and his mother were denied asylum and deported back to El Salvador.

Four months later, both were killed by gang members. The same gang that had caused them to flee in the first place.

That's just one account in a new report from Human Rights Watch, documenting the harm that can come to people deported back to El Salvador, including many asylum-seekers. The group documented almost 140 killings over a six-year period.

It comes at a time when President Trump is touting his administration's get-tough immigration policies, particularly related to arrests and deportations, as he gears up for his reelection campaign.

"Last year, our brave ICE [U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement] officers arrested more than 120,000 criminal aliens charged with nearly 10,000 burglaries, 5,000 sexual assaults, 45,000 violent assaults and 2,000 murders," Trump said during Tuesday's State of the Union address.

He also celebrated entering cooperative agreements with many Central American countries, including El Salvador, aimed at diverting asylum-seekers away from the U.S.

Human Rights Watch says it is concerned over those cooperative agreements and urges their repeal.

"What our report shows is that El Salvador is facing a human rights crisis, and the country is struggling to keep its own citizens safe much less provide safe protection to asylum-seekers from other countries in the region," said Alison Parker, San Francisco-based managing director of the U.S. Program at Human Rights Watch and co-author of the report.

According to the Pew Research Center, more people with Salvadoran origin live in California than any other state.

The Human Rights Watch report, which was compiled between November 2018 and December 2019, looks at cases of people deported to El Salvador between 2013 and 2019.

Through a series of interviews with deportees, family members, witnesses, journalists and law enforcement professionals — plus a review of Salvadoran government data, court records and news reports — the group was able to find more than 200 cases of Salvadorans being abused, beaten and, in 138 cases, murdered after returning to the country.

And, Parker says, it's likely an undercount.

"It's actually very stigmatizing to be a deportee in El Salvador," Parker said. "And that means that family members of murder victims, or other victims of crime, don't report that their loved one — or they themselves are a deportee."

In one case, Human Rights Watch found, a Salvadoran official said "we think that if a person wasn’t wanted in the United States, it must be because the deported person is bad.”

In fact, many deportees are simply people who lost an asylum claim. In order to qualify for asylum in the U.S., an individual must have "a well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion." Asylum-seekers must also prove that their government is persecuting them or unable or unwilling to protect them.

While the Human Rights Watch study spans parts of both the Obama administration and the current administration, the report points to specific Trump-era policies that narrow access to asylum protections in the U.S.

The human rights group also advocates reversing two decisions by U.S. attorneys general that make it more difficult to get asylum for people fleeing domestic violence or gang violence, or for people whose family members faced persecution.

"Each of these factors is extremely relevant to the Salvadorans whom we interviewed for this report," Parker said. "And that means it's become even more difficult for them to get protection."