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The Central American boomerang: making the problem, then sending it back
Flashmag! Issue 165 October 2025
The 1990s continued this logic with mass deportations. Thousands of young Salvadorans and Guatemalans, socialized in the streets of Los Angeles and trained in its prisons, were sent back to countries in ruins. There, without jobs or a strong state, they replicate what they know: gang structure, hierarchy and violence. The maras- MS-13 and Barrio 18- are born of this brutal transplantation. Tragic irony: these maras, created by American wars and prisons, become the pretext for new anti-immigrant policies in the United States. America sends back its own ghosts- and then is frightened by their return. Between 1998 and 2005, nearly 46,000 convicts were deported by the United States to Central America, along with 160,000 illegal immigrants. These deportations contributed to the growth of gangs in the region. El Salvador, for example, saw 1,500“ pandilleros” deported in 2006 alone. The return of these individuals, often young and having been socialized in a gang and prison environment in the United States, to countries ravaged by civil war and lacking solid state structures, has fuelled violence and criminal organization. Lack of development opportunities and poverty have encouraged the rapid establishment of maras( V. Alonso, 2018). Repressive policies, such as the“ mano dura” or“ iron fist” adopted by national political authorities, sometimes reinforced gang cohesion and criminal organization, as they failed to take into account the underlying social context. Mass deportations have thus not only exported the gang phenomenon to Central America, but have also created a cycle in which these gangs, formed in part as a result of US policies, are then used as justification for new anti-immigrant policies in the United States. What the United States calls“ immigrant crime” is often a reflection of its own foreign policy.
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