MANY YEARS AGO, following a hitchhiking trip through Syria and Lebanon, I returned to the United States for a visit. Upon arrival to passport control at the Newark airport, I was asked to reveal the nature of my business in Syria in particular. My response — “I have friends there” — was quickly judged to be insufficient and perhaps even blasphemous, and the questioning officer demanded: “Why do you have friends in Syria?”
How to explain to US authorities that, for several months, Syrians and Lebanese had picked my companion and me up on the side of the road, accommodated us in their homes, and fed us relentlessly? And all of this for no other reason than, well, friendliness and hospitality.
The hostility of my reception in Newark pales in comparison to the “welcome” extended many incoming visitors to the United States — such as those fleeing violence, poverty, and other catastrophic situations. In his new book The Dispossessed: A Story of Asylum at the US-Mexican Border and Beyond, John Washington masterfully exposes the ruthlessness of US border policy, focusing primarily on the trajectory of a 24-year-old Salvadoran asylum seeker named Arnovis — who, unlike me, has had to deal with a lot more than a few minutes of shaming by immigration officials.
A single father facing death threats from the Barrio 18 gang and recruitment efforts by the rival MS-13, Arnovis undertakes the first of three attempts to reach the United States in 2017, a journey that will variously see him intercepted in Mexico; kidnapped and nearly killed; and detained, duped, and deported by the guardians of the American frontier.
The most traumatic experience occurs during the third attempt, when his young daughter Meybelín is taken from him at the border and the official promise of swift reunification is spontaneously forgotten: “[T]hey took me to another detention center and I asked, Where’s my daughter? And they told me, I didn’t you know had a daughter. Meybelín, I told them. Who’s Meybelín? She’s my daughter.”
Arnovis is deported alone to El Salvador, and his prolonged terror only comes to an end when, thanks in part to a rare onslaught of media coverage, the US government manages to remember who and where Meybelín is and to send her back home, as well — “home” unfortunately being a place of existential peril and other forms of terror. READ MORE AT LOS ANGELES REVIEW OF BOOKS.