Great Escape

The Neverending Cycles of Central American Refugees

Years of deterrence tactics have not prevented Central American immigrants from coming to the U.S. But they have to deal with the consequences of past deportations.

Marta and Juan’s 10-year-old daughter, Ruth. They are currently living in the south of Mexico. Ruth is studying English for when she arrives in the United States. They are planning to travel north and hand themselves to U.S. authorities and ask for refugee status. All photos by Encarni Pindado.

On the day Carlos’ stepfather died, the television was playing its usual parade of police sirens and dead bodies. It’s part of the daily buzz in Tegucigalpa, the congested capital of Honduras. Carlos was paying little attention, but when he received a panicked call from his mother, he took a closer look at the image on the screen of a man with a prosthetic foot, laying facedown in the grass. It was his stepfather, Santos.

Santos, a 37-year-old bus driver, had lost the front of his left foot the first time he tried to leave Honduras, back in 2012. He went after he’d endured a robbery of the tobacco company where he worked as a security guard. He tried to jump onto the freight train that many undocumented migrants use to reach the United States. In the night, robbers fired at the people riding beside him, and the carriage’s wheel rolled over Santos during the escape. The amputation made the skin of his heel turn raw and left him with a slow, uneven gait. He never made it to the United States.