Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here: The United States, Central America, and the Making of a Crisis

Content Warning: This section of the guide discusses racism, graphic violence, and violent death.

In the summer of 1996, Janet Murguía was the Clinton administration’s chief House liaison, going between Democrats and Republicans to pass a complicated welfare reform bill. The bill that finally ended up on Clinton’s desk planned to fund job training programs by cutting services like food stamps and Medicaid for legal immigrants. Immigrant rights activist Cecilia Muñoz began documenting the harm the loss of this aid would cause. She shared the information she collected with lawmakers via Murguía, but the bill passed. Clinton signed it into law even though he admitted to being “deeply disappointed” that the bill included this “provision that will hurt legal immigrants in America” (216).

Next on Clinton’s agenda was immigration, still a controversial issue. States like California were passing tough immigration bills, and Clinton felt he had to follow suit if he wanted to win reelection. Due to the Republican majority, advocates like Murguía and Muñoz knew tougher measures on undocumented immigrants were “inevitable,” so they decided to focus on fighting lawmakers’ efforts to limit legal immigration. They succeeded, but that made the rest of it “essentially unstoppable.”

The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 made mass deportation a central pillar of US immigration policy.