“Currently, the global order and its repercussions on local societies are not governed by values such as justice and equity. On the contrary, what prevails in a hegemonic way are the interests of certain minorities with excessive economic and political powers, whose mission is to increase their wealth. The indifference of these elites to the vast majority of the population is clear. Therefore, derived from a structurally unequal and unjust system, poverty and inequality grow and expand geographically and demographically throughout the planet…. The excluded are more and more, and within these, the migrants, who now number in the hundreds of millions, are one of the most marginalized and violated groups”. Urban Arbide.

Migrations, which have existed for centuries and have shaped the modern world and the expansion of contemporary capitalism (Castles and Miller, 1998; Castles, 2003 and 2008), cannot be seen only as mere processes of mobility of human groups through diverse boundaries (Gregory et al., 2009; Sassen, 2006). In the current context of neoliberal globalization, irregular international migrations are an expression, both of the insatiable demand for cheap and flexible labor (to lower production costs) in the global north (Márquez and Delgado, 2012), and, above all, socioeconomic inequality (Delgado, Márquez and Rodríguez, 2009) and the deterioration of production processes (Lucas, 2014) and living conditions in the countries of the global south.

One of the most emblematic examples of this is the migration of Central Americans (Hondurans, Salvadorans, Guatemalans) who go to the United States (US). The causes of these cross-border mobilities have a long history of decades and, today, refer mainly to economic processes (extreme poverty, lack of job opportunities, insufficient wages, constant increase in the cost of living) (Castillo, 2018) and security (context of generalized violence, organized crime, gangs, among others) (REDODEM, 2017, 2018, 2019).

The United States is, and has been for decades, a pole of development and destination for these migrants due to the overwhelming wage difference (with an approximate remuneration of $ 10 an hour), which makes the money that migrants earn in the country to the North a fairly efficient economic survival strategy in its places of origin. This explains why hundreds of thousands of Central Americans (CONAPO, 2015, 2016, 2017), year after year and for more than two decades, leave everything and are exposed to innumerable obstacles and violence, to improve their living conditions and those of their relatives (REDODEM, 2017, 2018, 2019).

For years, the United States benefited from this geopolitical context of uneven development, where thousands of Central Americans (CONAPO, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019), after long journeys from the south, became exploited and highly productive workers who, due to their irregular immigration status and their lack of social and labor rights, increased the earnings of the American employers and companies they worked for. Central America, like Mexico, was a large regional and territorial reserve of cheap, disposable, precarious and highly efficient labor force for the various sectors and industries / corporations of the North American productive apparatus (agriculture, construction, manufacturing, services, etc.) (Castillo, 2018).

However, since the administration of the current US president, Central American migrants, like Mexicans, have become the target of racism and suffered acute processes of criminalization, which have involved violations of their human rights and being recipients of multiple acts of violence (REDODEM, 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019). Xenophobia, as a migration policy, has had several axes, from the construction of the wall and massive and illegal raids and deportations, to the closing / militarization of borders and the operation of migrant detention centers (Castillo, 2018). The latter have become one of the cruelest and most effective immigration control devices.

In detention centers (which are jails), violations of the human rights of migrants are constant and structural, ranging from lack of food and clear overcrowding and unhygienic conditions, to the lack of medical services, as well as well as legal advice and psychological care. The effects have been inhumane and multiple and are the direct result of US policies of criminalizing migrants. They range from arrests outside the framework of the law, the separation of thousands of families and the imprisonment of thousands of children and minors, to countless physical attacks on detainees and dozens of deaths due to lack of medical care and resulting from the violence of the custodians and the inhumane conditions in the detention centers.

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