by Ana Martínez, 2025 Welcoming Communities Program Intern at USCRI Mexico(2025)
Edited by Alexia Gardner (Policy Analyst) and Anum Merchant (Policy Intern)
Imagine building a life in a country for more than a decade—becoming integrated into the community and coming to consider a place home—only to be uprooted and abruptly sent somewhere that now feels like a distant memory. For many, this scenario sounds like a nightmare. However, for thousands of returnees in El Salvador, it is a reality.
David lived through this when he was deported to El Salvador after spending 12 years in the United States, where he built a life and a community. He says “It’s been really difficult for me–it’s something I cannot fully process. My family is not in this country, and I don’t have my friends with me either. Having to adapt to a new way of life is hard, and I feel very sad about it.”
David’s story is illustrative of a new pattern seen amongst returnees in El Salvador. In previous years, many returnees were intercepted and deported while crossing the U.S.-Mexico border. Today, an increasing number of those forced to return to their ‘home’ countries are individuals who have spent decades living in the United States. They face a distinct set of reintegration challenges that extend beyond finding employment or accessing basic assistance. Recent returnees in El Salvador also experience a profound loss of identity and community. While government and civil society programs emphasize economic reintegration and entrepreneurship, they must also address the unique psychosocial, legal, and educational needs of this group.
The Changing Profile of Salvadoran Returnees
Salvadoran returnees fit broadly into two categories: returns and removals.
Returns are cases where migrants leave the United States without a formal deportation order. Voluntary departure allows individuals present in the United States, often in removal proceedings, to leave the country without a deportation order on their record. Recently, the United States ramped up incentives for individuals who opt for voluntary departure. For example, earlier this year, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced a cash bonus to eligible migrants who voluntarily leave the United States. Fearful of the harsh conditions that detention and deportation often entail, many Salvadorans are opting for this path.
Removals are formal deportations carried out under an order issued by DHS or an immigration judge. The Trump Administration’s immigration enforcement strategy means that long-term U.S. residents are increasingly the target of deportation, including expedited removal.
Expedited removal, established by Congress as part of the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, allows an individual to be deported based on an assessment of DHS personnel, with very limited judicial review. It typically applied to migrants who had arrived at a port of entry or to some noncitizens who entered without having been admitted or paroled, as opposed to those with established lives and communities in the United States.
As a result of this shift in enforcement strategy, U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI) staff in El Salvador report a growing number of returnees with deep social ties to the United States, including those who have children that are U.S. citizens. USCRI works with returnees in El Salvador between the ages of 18 and 35 to support them in obtaining vocational training and finding jobs.
“Before January of this year, we mostly worked with people detained at the U.S. southern border or in Mexico,” says a case manager in El Salvador. “We only had two cases of people who had spent years in the United States. After President Trump took office, everything changed. Deported Salvadorans have spent years abroad and have completely different needs.”
These observations, combined with the United States’s evolving priorities and enforcement, underscore the importance of understanding the specific challenges facing this new wave of returnees. These challenges include psychosocial struggles related to migratory grief and trauma during their migration, difficulties reintegrating into a society that no longer feels like home, and persistent stigmatization within their communities of origin. Returnees also face significant bureaucratic obstacles when trying to obtain essential documentation, which limits their ability to find employment and enroll in school.
Psychosocial Challenges
Migratory Grief
These returnees face a profound psychosocial challenge: returning to a country they barely know and do not consider home. As one USCRI staff member explained, recent returnees are not reintegrating into Salvadoran society, but integrating into it, as though for the first time. Their experience can best be described as migratory grief.
Migratory grief encompasses the interpersonal, material, and abstract losses tied to return migration. Deported migrants lose not only the daily comforts of life in the United States, but also their identity, status, community, and dreams. A USCRI staff member described it this way:
“[Returnees] must adapt to everyday life in a new society with a different reality. They do not have the same comforts; for example, if they had their own car in the United States, here they cannot afford that. Salaries seem very low to them. They never imagined this could happen to them, they shut themselves off in their own world, they continue to think that life in the United States is better, and they never thought they would be deported.”
Alex’s story is illustrative of this loss. At 13, his brothers brought him to the United States. He spent the next 8 years of his life living in Houston. When he was forcibly returned to El Salvador in July, he found himself in a country he barely knew, one he recognized only through childhood memories of a small town in eastern El Salvador. For Alex, the hardest part has been the loss of a country he considered home and the daily struggle to reconnect with a culture that is technically his but feels foreign.
Trauma, Shame, and Social Isolation
Upon their return, migrants also experience shame, guilt, and a sense of failure among other negative psychological reactions. Furthermore, they feel isolated due to a lack of social ties in the community and fear judgment from their communities because of their deportation. This isolation is deepened by memories of the high levels of violence they experienced before leaving the country which, according to USCRI staff, often results in fear and self-isolation within their homes.
In some cases, returned migrants suffer trauma stemming from their apprehension and the time spent in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention centers. In some cases, once apprehended, migrants are returned to El Salvador in less than 24 hours. For example, a young man was detained from his high school and kept in detention facilities for two months where he was chained and mistreated. USCRI staff explains that now, back in El Salvador, the trauma of that experience has impeded his ability to live a normal life, and that he struggles to leave his house.
This testimony is consistent with reports showing ICE using tactics such as rousing migrants in the middle of the night, clasping shackles on their hands and feet and even using full body restraint suits. Human rights organizations have long reported on the inhumane conditions in detention centers, including lack of access to adequate medical care, abusive practices, unsanitary conditions and overcrowding. These experiences leave returnees with lasting trauma which is exacerbated by migratory grief, feelings of shame and failure.
Stigmatization and Social Perception
Migration scholars have long observed that voluntary and forced-return migrants experience prejudice and discrimination in their home societies. Empirical studies show that younger returnees report high levels of stigmatization, with them being perceived as having gang connections. Such experiences shape the returnees’ surroundings and can foster an unwelcome environment and reinforcing feelings of failure and shame. The conflation of deportation and criminality is especially dangerous as it perpetuates stereotypes that lead to dangerous circumstances, especially for vulnerable minorities such as the LGBTQ community. These attitudes are reflected in comments such as “they left in a bad situation, but [have] come back even worse.” That said, additional research is needed to understand if the United States’ new deportation strategy has shifted narratives about reinforce
Returnees struggle to get adequate services from local governments, who frequently lack an understanding of return migration and assume returnees will not stay in the country, but rather migrate elsewhere, leading to limited engagement and support from local authorities. Stigma surrounding mental health also discourages returnees from seeking psychosocial services, exacerbating their efforts to integrate.
Legal and Bureaucratic Barriers
Long term returnees experience substantial bureaucratic challenges in El Salvador, often without the information or guidance needed to navigate them.
Many of these challenges stem from returnees lacking information and having insufficient access to it. Returnees often don’t know what steps to take before deportation, and even when informed, the process often moves too quickly to prepare. This information gap begins in the United States, as accurate guidance is rarely shared and there are no mechanisms to help detained individuals or those awaiting removal prepare the documentation they might need. Once in El Salvador, obtaining required apostilled or translated documents is costly and often inaccessible.
Returnees with U.S. born children who lack Salvadoran nationality face particularly complex situations involving custody and nationality documentation. Several parents are unaware that U.S. born minors must be registered with the U.S. consulate or that obtaining dual nationality can simplify access to services. USCRI staff in Usulután recalled a returnee who sought help registering her U.S.-born daughter for Salvadoran nationality after hearing rumors that the U.S. government might take the child away because “Americans do not abandon their citizens.” However, she lacked the required apostilled U.S. birth certificate—a document she couldn’t obtain after being deported.
Educational Reintegration
Educational reintegration poses another significant obstacle. El Salvador’s Ministry of Education lacks standardized procedures for recognizing U.S. academic credentials or facilitating the enrollment of children educated abroad. According to USCRI staff, many children are denied enrollment because they cannot present documentation from U.S. schools verifying their grade level. These students are often placed as listeners, allowed to attend classes but not formally registered or eligible to receive certification at the end of the school year.
The lack of documentation also affects those seeking to validate their secondary education, who are unable to provide the necessary proof from their U.S. high schools. As a result, teenagers often choose not to return to school and begin work.
Consider the case of a young woman who returned to El Salvador four years after completing high school in the United States. Although she had all the required documentation, the Ministry of Education told her the expedited validation program only applied to minors. Despite complying with instructions to translate and notarize her records and submit them to the Ministry, she received no response. After years of inaction, she had to travel to San Salvador to reopen her case, navigating the bureaucracy before being able to take placement exams in the capital.
These challenges underscore the need for a clear protocol within the Ministry of Education to integrate returnee children into schools and to validate the schooling of returnee adolescents and young adults. Existing procedures are designed for foreign students or voluntary returnees who can present apostilled and authenticated records, a requirement which is unrealistic for deported families who return suddenly and without preparation. This not only undermines the right to education but further perpetuates the exclusion of returnees in Salvadoran society.
Employment and Economic Integration
While several programs aim to help returnees reenter the labor market, long-term returnees face distinct challenges related to wage expectations. Although many have work experience, they often struggle to adjust to significantly lower wages than what they previously earned in the United States. Surveys show Salvadoran workers in the U.S. earn around $22.80 per hour—roughly $3,000 monthly, compared to El Salvador’s average monthly salary of $223, as of 2023. This wage gap diminishes motivation and frustrates returnees, while employers hesitate to hire them, viewing them as not likely to stay in the job. Consequently, returnees struggle to enter the formal labor market and rebuild their lives.
Governmental Response and Gaps
In recent years, El Salvador has launched institutional efforts to address the reintegration needs of returnees, backed by new legal frameworks recognizing and addressing return migration as a priority. In 2025, the Legislative Assembly of El Salvador approved the Ley Especial de Beneficios y Protección para la Diáspora y Personas en Movilidad Humana (Special Law of Benefits and Protection for the Diaspora and Persons in Human Mobility) as well as presented the National Reintegration Plan for 2025-2029 in partnership with the International Organization for Migration (IOM), the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and the United Nations Peace Fund. Despite these significant efforts, important gaps remain.
USCRI staff characterize the National Reintegration Plan as “comprehensive but toothless,” since the plan lacks the human and financial resources necessary for successful implementation. In practice, government entities often turn to civil society organizations for resources and programmatic support that should ideally be a state-funded responsibility. This underscores the importance of ensuring a dedicated budget allocation for the implementation of the National Reintegration Plan, which will provide much needed assistance to the most vulnerable returnees arriving involuntarily and without resources.
Conclusion
As more Salvadorans continue to return from the United States, many will have spent significant time abroad and have distinct re-integration needs that often go unmet. This population has specific psychosocial challenges, with many experiencing deep migratory grief, and trauma, as well as barriers relating to legal and bureaucratic processes and economic integration.
Addressing these challenges demands a coordinated, rights-based approach to integration with sustained investment and collaboration with the United States and other regional actors. To ensure Salvadorans returning after years abroad can rebuild their lives with dignity, there must be a strong understanding of the characteristics that make this group unique, as well as a serious and sustained commitment to addressing their different needs.
Note: All names have been altered to protect the identities of those involved
