Donate NowPulitzer Center grantee Jonathan Blitzer covers the impact deportation has had on Salvadorans who fled their war-torn country as children, only to be forced to return as adults, unfamiliar with the culture or language. In the 1990s the United States began deporting gangsters—they would often arrive in El Salvador with nothing.
Many are stigmatized for having been deported. Local gangsters extort and brutalize them; employers refuse to hire them; and banks don't extend them credit. Those who can have found work in an unlikely new industry: call centers now that American corporations are increasingly outsourcing their customer service and technical support to Central America, where there's a growing English-speaking workforce. Deportations help fuel the industry.