Sunday morning, I spoke to a woman working at a hotel in Phoenix, Arizona who had arrived to the United States just two months ago. She said she was told it would be warm here. We gazed over the city’s industrial parking lot and gently spoke of the Nicaragua landscape. Her name was Cynthia and she had a young daughter. I too was suffering from a culture shock having returned to the U.S. to try and teach youth about food system. I threw away so much food that week and having known hunger in Nicaragua it deeply broke my heart. Urulsa A. Kelly in her work Losing Place: Reluctant Leavings and Ambivalent Returns claims migration is type of death, a transition needing a type of mourning not often given or address culturally. Kelly writes of migration and death, “death, it seems, cannot be allowed to disrupt the economies of efficiency that organize contemporary (postcapitalist) life. The moment in the morning was brief, but there was very few individuals who could meet us in our liminal state. And I am grateful for the human connection.

Cynthia told me hesitantly of the journey, the difficulty at the Mexican border and how we left her daughter for fear of loosing her in the States. $100 here, she said is actually not that much money and in Nicaragua it could last a month. I nodded and thought of the young 21 year old Angel, a Nicaraguan I had met three weeks prior. He was preparing to take the journey by land from Nicaragua to the United States. Roughly 3 months, 5k in coyote fees, and exponential danger. I urged him not to go, knowing his dream to work in a nice hotel like this woman. Perhaps he too would not find his dream in the reality of the US economy. I prayed he would be as lucky as Cynthia to at least arrived safely and find work. e said it was dangerous now in Nicaragua.

I asked Cynthia why she chose to come. She said it was dangerous now in Nicaragua.

According to November 2021 reports “authorities caught over 50,000 Nicaraguans trying to cross the U.S. border illegally in 2021, up from 2,291 in 2020, according to Customs and Border Protection data. Erlinton Ortiz was deported last year, one of over 5,000 Nicaraguans returned from the United States since 2019, into the hands of an administration that Washington has accused of civil rights abuses, corruption and holding sham elections.”

That is a shocking increase from country the size of an East Coast State. Moreso when one considers the number of undocumented migrants that have arrived to stay into the United States and the many who were turned around, returned or killed on the journey.

The stories of fear from Nicaragua began increasing in Central America around 2018 when student protest were first met with violence on the street. However, the current situation of increased violence and migration is not gaining the coverage the needed coverage in the national news. According to USN News article, judges are sending Nicaraguans back to their country without understanding the situation or dynamics in Nicaragua, deporting in a fashion that is against international civil rights.

Interestingly, “Under U.S. law, asylum seekers cannot secure U.S. residency because they are fleeing gang violence. They must convince authorities they have credible fear of persecution on grounds of their race, religion, nationality, or political opinions.” It seems our notions of asylum are deeply dependent on the context of our morals. In a region plagued by gang violence due to US government insurrection, gang violence is a very serious and worthy reason for migration and asylum. However, our legal system contextualizes asylum based on our sense of constitutional rights.

“In Nicaragua, it’s about state terrorism,” Orozco said. The White House did not reply to a request for comment.”

I am humbled by the reality that so many people are fleeing their homes out of fear from the States and local violence. I am humbled when I think of my young friend Angel making the journey. Because one you leave you cannot return. To migrate is a type of death. In my travels in Central America, I distinctly remember the people I met who were deported. They felt like angry, lost souls. Stuck in the limbo between here and there. I agree with Kelly, our governments and culture do not understand the psychological implications of migration. Justice would look like legal and social systems that would gently support the transition to a new life