Narrator: In August 2019, in a basement in Tapachula, Mexico, a group of ten Honduran migrants gathered for a prayer meeting. They were deportees and asylum seekers, stranded far from a home they could no longer return to. They shared stories of being hunted by criminals, of starvation, and of harrowing journeys north. One young man, looking at the state of his country, made a grim prediction: "Even Juan Orlando is going to leave when his term is up," he said, referring to the Honduran president. "Just watch. He’ll ask for asylum in the US, too." This scene, a mix of desperation and resilience, captures the central puzzle of the modern immigration crisis: a system so broken and a reality so dire that the very concept of "home" has been replaced by the perilous journey itself.

The book Homieland: An Immigration History by Raj Patel and Saúl Armendáriz provides a gripping exploration of this reality. It argues that the chaos at the US southern border is not a recent phenomenon or a simple problem of enforcement, but the direct and predictable result of a century of American foreign policy and immigration laws that have irrevocably bound the fates of the United States and Central America together.

Narrator: The story of modern Central American migration cannot be understood without first looking at the violent history of El Salvador and the United States' role in it. The book traces the roots of this turmoil back to events like the 1932 massacre known as La Matanza, where the Salvadoran military slaughtered tens of thousands of Indigenous peasants to protect the interests of the coffee-growing elite. This event created a legacy of fear and repression that defined the country for decades.

During the Cold War, the US, fearing the spread of communism, poured military aid and training into the Salvadoran government, effectively arming and legitimizing a regime engaged in widespread human rights abuses. This intervention is brought to life through the harrowing story of Juan Romagoza, a young medical student in the 1980s. Juan was dedicated to providing care to anyone who needed it, a commitment that put him in the crosshairs of the government. One night in February 1980, a student protester, shot by police, was brought to his hospital. After surgery, as the student recovered in the ICU, masked gunmen from a government death squad stormed the ward. Juan could only watch in horror as they executed the young man in his hospital bed. This brutal act, a violation of the most sacred of spaces, was a turning point for Juan and a stark illustration of the state-sponsored terror that forced hundreds of thousands to flee. It was this violence, fueled by US policy, that created the first major waves of refugees heading north.

Narrator: As Salvadoran refugees began arriving at the US border in the 1980s, they were met not with compassion, but with a system designed to deport them. The Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) viewed them as economic migrants, not legitimate asylum seekers fleeing a war their own government was funding. This led to the creation of the Sanctuary Movement, a grassroots effort by American citizens to defy their government's policy.

The book highlights the work of activists like Margo Cowan and Lupe Castillo in Tucson, Arizona. They faced immense challenges, including government raids on their offices and the difficulty of even accessing detainees in remote facilities like the El Centro detention center, where Salvadorans faced swift deportation. Their work was a race against time to prevent people from signing "voluntary departure" forms that would waive their right to an asylum hearing. This moral and legal battle was joined by religious leaders like pastor John Fife and Quaker rancher James Corbett. After realizing the legal system was rigged against the refugees, they made a radical decision: to create a modern-day underground railroad. They became "pro bono coyotes," smuggling Salvadorans across the border and hiding them in a network of churches and homes, a direct act of civil disobedience against what they saw as an illegal and immoral government policy.

Narrator: The book argues that US immigration policy created a devastating feedback loop that fueled a new kind of violence. The story of Eddie Anzora, who grew up in the gang-ridden neighborhoods of 1980s and 90s Los Angeles, illustrates this perfectly. As a Salvadoran immigrant, he navigated a complex world of established Black and Chicano gangs. To survive, he and other Central American youths formed their own crews, which eventually evolved into the notorious Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13.

In 1996, the US passed the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA), a law that dramatically expanded the list of deportable offenses and applied them retroactively. This led to the mass deportation of thousands of immigrants with criminal records, including many MS-13 members, back to Central America. El Salvador, a country just emerging from a brutal civil war and lacking the resources to handle this influx, became fertile ground for the gang culture that had been forged in the prisons and streets of Los Angeles. This policy effectively exported a new, more organized form of violence back to the very countries people were trying to escape, creating a new generation of refugees fleeing the gangs that the US had helped create and then deport.

Narrator: The narrative shows how, for decades, US immigration policy has been governed by what the authors call a "politics of permanent crisis." Rather than addressing the root causes of migration, successive administrations—both Democratic and Republican—have focused on deterrence. This strategy assumes that if the journey north is made harsh enough, people will stop coming. The book details how this philosophy led to increasingly cruel policies.

Under President Clinton, "prevention through deterrence" involved militarizing the border, forcing migrants into more dangerous desert crossings. Under President Obama, record-high deportation numbers earned him the title "deporter in chief" from activists. This long history of deterrence culminated in the Trump administration's "zero tolerance" policy, which systematically separated thousands of children from their parents at the border. The story of Keldy, a Honduran mother who was separated from her two young sons, provides a devastating look at the human cost of this policy. Detained and lost in a bureaucratic nightmare, she organized other mothers, compiling lists of separated children on scraps of paper, a testament to the resilience of those caught in a system designed to break them.

Narrator: Finally, Homieland looks to the future, identifying a new and powerful driver of migration: climate change. The book takes readers to the western highlands of Guatemala, a region where unpredictable weather, prolonged droughts, and crop failures are making life unsustainable. For generations, families have relied on farming corn and beans, but now the land can no longer support them.

This environmental collapse acts as a "threat multiplier," exacerbating existing poverty and instability and leaving families with no choice but to migrate. The story of Feliciano Pérez, a farmer working on a local seed bank project, shows a community struggling to adapt to a changing world. But these efforts are often not enough. As the climate becomes more volatile, the book argues that the flow of people heading north will only increase, presenting a new and profound challenge to an immigration system already in a state of permanent crisis.

Narrator: The single most important takeaway from Homieland: An Immigration History is that the chaos at the US-Mexico border is not an invasion, but a reflection. It is the direct consequence of a long and troubled history in which American foreign policy, economic interests, and immigration laws have actively shaped the conditions in Central America that force people to flee. The book powerfully reframes the narrative, showing that the United States is not a passive victim of a migration crisis, but an active participant in its creation.

The book leaves us with a challenging question: What does it mean to have a home? For the countless individuals profiled in its pages, "home" is not a place of safety, but a source of danger. Their "homieland" has become the treacherous path north, a journey defined by violence, exploitation, and the desperate hope for a better life. The book forces us to confront the reality that as long as we fail to address the root causes of this exodus—many of which originate in our own policies—the cycle of crisis and human suffering will continue.