Project

Honduras: Seeking Protection, Detained in the United States, Deported to Danger

Hundreds of asylum-seeking women from the Northern Triangle region of Central America have been deported from family immigration detention centers in New Mexico and Texas since last July. Often without an adequate opportunity to fight their cases in the U.S. immigration system, they are returned to extremely hostile environments. Honduras has the world’s second highest murder rate; violent deaths among women there rose 263 percent between 2005 and 2013 and the impunity rate for femicide and sexual violence claims is 95 percent.

In this project, journalist Emily Gogolak documents the stories behind these statistics. She reports on life inside family immigration detention centers, on the realities of the deported, and on the context of violence that forced them to flee and to which they return. She explores how the crisis of violence against women in Honduras is perpetuated by transnational gangs, shifting narco routes in the wake of the Mexican drug war, the effects of the 2009 coup, intergenerational trauma, and cyclical deportation.

Meet the Journalist: Emily Gogolak

Emily Gogolak, from the field in Tegucigalpa, discusses her reporting on violence against women in Honduras and the deportations of mothers and children from immigration detention centers in Texas.