Huddled Masses at the Guatemala City Airport

Huddled Masses at the Guatemala City Airport

By William R. Meara

During the spring of 2019 I was on a visit to Central America with a group of students from the National War College.  I was a Foreign Service officer assigned to the War College faculty.   Our students were in the region to gain first-hand understanding of the challenges facing U.S. policy makers.  On April 3, 2019 as part of that trip we were visiting the Deportee Reception Facility at the Guatemala City airport – this was the place that “received” those Guatemalans who had been deported from the United States.  The vast majority of the deportees were being sent back for trying to enter the United States illegally along the Mexican border.

At first everything seemed quite normal.  We were listening to briefings from the staff.  But then a few of us noticed that the staff got a bit apprehensive.  Someone was hurriedly straightening out the rows of plastic chairs. Someone else was putting pamphlets on each chair. Staff members were looking at their watches and looking out the windows. It seemed like something was about to happen.

I guess I should have known what was going to happen. As one of the faculty members I should have paid more attention to the itinerary. But we had left the planning to the students, all of whom were fairly senior in either the U.S. military or in a civilian agency. I knew we were scheduled to visit the reception facility, but I hadn’t realized that we would be there to witness the arrival of a plane full of deportees. One of the U.S. officials at the center confirmed it: A flight from Brownsville, Texas with a full load of deportees was about to land in Guatemala City. For the deportees the facility we were visiting would be the last stop on a very long and difficult journey. 

Guatemalan migrants who were deported from the U.S. arrive at La Aurora airport in Guatemala City, July 10, 2014.Pakal Koban /

It was a fairly large plane, like a 737. It rolled to a stop close to the reception center. We walked out to the plane as they wheeled a staircase into position. One of the U.S. officials explained that the women on the plane would come off first. They were kept apart from the much larger group of men on the aircraft. The door opened and we got our first look at the deportees.

Three teenage girls stepped out onto the stairway. And they were crying. This was, for them, a completely unwelcome homecoming. They had risked their lives, gone deeply into debt, and had likely faced horrendous abuse – including the likelihood of rape – in order to get to the United States. They had made it all the way through Mexico, only to have gotten caught at the finish line.  And now we had sent them back to Guatemala. They would probably have to go through the ordeal of the journey all over again.

It was easy to understand why they were crying. I felt sorry for them. They were just a bit older than my own daughter. In them, I saw her, and tried to imagine her distress. I also thought of my wife, who, like them, is from a small Latin American country.

The men got off next and the group filed in to fill the plastic chairs. They were mostly young.  Most were the age of my son.  They all seemed to be covered with dust. They looked to me like what Emma Lazarus must have had in mind when she wrote that poem that ended up on a plaque on the base of the Statue of Liberty (see below).   Lazarus wrote of the “wretched refuse” and “huddled masses” who we were happily taking in.   But we weren’t processing this group into the country at Ellis Island. No, unlike the Americans of Emma Lazarus’s time, we were treating these people like wretched refuse.  We were sending these huddled masses back where they came from.

For me, the most surprising thing about that arrival was the reaction of the other Americans – faculty and students – on our team. We had spent months studying the Central American migration situation, so the others on our team knew all about the “push factors” that caused young people to undertake the dangerous journey north: gang violence; crushing, child-stunting poverty; climate change-induced hunger.  All of this with no real prospect of improvement. I thought that this background knowledge, combined with an actual look at the distress caused by deportation, would make my colleagues sympathetic to the plight of the deportees. But in most of our group, I saw no signs of sympathy, no sign that they felt bad about what they were witnessing. Most seemed largely indifferent to the plight of these young people.  This was surprising and disturbing – my colleagues were all good people, people with families.  I talked to them about it afterwards and they confirmed the indifference. I think that is the most disturbing aspect of the problem we face with Central American immigrants: our empathy deficit.

Part of this can, I think, be explained by some basic misunderstandings about immigration.  People sometimes try to portray the migrants at people who are just trying to jump the line, to get into the United States without waiting their turn.  They claim that while their immigrant forebearers came here legally, the Central American migrants are jumping the line and coming in illegally.  But this ignores the fact that most of our immigrant relatives essentially walked through an open door (Emma Lazarus’s “golden door”).  I have the letters that my great-grandfather wrote from Ireland to his sister in New Jersey as he prepared to come to America – in these letters there is absolutely no discussion of visas or immigration quotas.  At age 20, he just came over.  That was it.  The Central American migrants cannot do this.  For them, Emma Lazrus’s golden door is closed – there is simply no way that they can legally migrate to the United States. A twenty year-old Guatemalan can’t just go to the U.S. Embassy, announce that he wants to migrate to the United States, and then wait for an immigrant visa. He would not be allowed to legally migrate to the United States. Our immigration system is based largely on family reunification. If you have no close family members who are legally in the U.S. and who can petition for your immigration, you are out of luck.  You can’t even visit. Foreign Service officers who have worked in Consulates know that largely because of their age and nationality, these poor people would routinely be denied tourist visas, because they would almost certainly overstay their visas and remain in the U.S.   

So the truth is they simply can’t come to the United States legally. They are not in any line. There is no line for them to jump. They can come here illegally, or they can stay home. And in Central America, staying home could be fatal.

This nostalgia about earlier migrations also ignores another important parallel with the present: We often fail to realize that that earlier wave of migrants was driven by many of the same “push factors” that propel today’s migrants. Most of my ancestors came here fleeing hunger and poverty in Ireland during the years following the great famine. When I looked at those dust-covered young people in the Guatemalan reception center, I was reminded of my immigrant great-grandparents. We have a tendency to disparage “economic migrants.” We act as if they are not as worthy as political refugees. We should remember that most of us are the descendants of economic migrants.

“There but for the grace of God go I.” The nuns in Catholic school taught us the morally correct way to look at someone who is suffering, someone in distress. When we consider the migrants, we should ask ourselves:  What would I do if I were in their shoes? Would I just resign myself to a lifetime of hopeless poverty and violence for me and my family? Or would I head North, taking the only real chance available to me? The Bible is filled with quotes that remind us of the need to try to put ourselves in their shoes: Exodus 23:9 “Do not oppress a foreigner; you yourselves know how it feels to be foreigners, because you were foreigners in Egypt.” The comedian Chris Rock talked about the role of luck in determining which side of the border we are all born on: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKwyIccIQvI I think most of us – certainly most of the military people in my group – would do whatever it took to feed and protect their kids. We too would head north, and we would try to cross that border. Illegally if necessary. If we were in their shoes, we’d be doing just what they were doing.

My grandmother was big on the Golden Rule: “Do unto others as you would have them to unto you.” How would I like to be treated by those I meet at the end of a difficult migration journey? How would I want my children to be treated?  We’d want to be treated with empathy by the people on the other side. We’d certainly want our children to be treated kindly.

I don’t have any brilliant ideas on how the United States should approach the migrant problem. Many problems in international relations have no real solutions.   There are dilemmas here. But whatever we do, we should approach this problem with empathy, and act in a manner that is consistent with our values. We should realize that if we were in their shoes, we too would be trying to get into the United States by any means possible. And we should remember that they are coming here for the same economic reasons that propelled most of our immigrant ancestors. 

There but for the grace of God go I.  Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.