Nightfall in El Salvador’s capital was fast approaching and Ernesto Pena was waiting for a bus that never arrived. His work day delivering rice and cooking oil to street vendors in the bustling district of Santa Tecla had ended and like most people he was anxious to get home before the gangs that control the poor neighborhood where he lives enforce an informal curfew.
For years, he and his wife have been saving what they can on their combined $700-a-month income to one day pay smugglers to ferry them and their 8-year-old son to what they hope will be a safer future in the U.S. But the searing images displayed across local newspapers this week of children held in fenced cages after being separated from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border has led the 30-year-old to rethink his plans to journey northward.
“We’ve always thought about going but we haven’t been able to scavenge together enough money,” said Pena, looking around nervously out of fear a gang lookout might spot him talking to a journalist. “And now we have to think about this,” he added, referring to what he worries could be a cruel reception if he manages to reach the U.S.
Still, thousands are pressing on. The number of families entering the U.S. illegally at the southwest border jumped six-fold in May to 9,485 compared with the same month in 2017. Since October, more than 58,000 have arrived, the bulk from Guatemala, followed by Honduras and El Salvador.
Feelings of desperation and impotence are being felt throughout Central America, where the lawlessness, endemic poverty and levels of gang violence akin…
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