Men, women and children fleeing violence in Central America arrive at the U.S. border seeking safety and a new home. But policy changes from the Trump administration have closed off a path for immigrants seeking asylum from gang violence or domestic abuse. In "Asylum," Newsy travels to El Salvador to examine the root causes of the U.S. border crisis and to show the impact of President Trump's new "zero-tolerance" immigration policies.
Want to check our math? Here are a links to key facts and figures in our report.
While arrests at the U.S. border have dropped over the last few years, the number of immigrants seeking asylum in the U.S. from persecution in their home country is way up.
In 2016, there were more than 180,000 asylum requests, while only about 10,000 people were actually granted asylum.
Almost three-quarters of credible fear screenings in 2016 were with someone from the Northern Triangle of Central America: Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador.
These countries have some of the highest homicide rates in the Americas, with rampant gang violence and violence against women.
These countries also have some of the highest rates of denials of asylum. More than 75 percent who made it to court ended up deported back to their home countries.
More than 39,000 people have been deported from the U.S. to El Salvador in the past two years.
El Salvador is one of the most dangerous countries for women. The country has one of the highest rates of gender-based murder in the world — in 2017 alone, 468 women were murdered in cases categorized as femicide — murders in which the victim was killed because she was a woman.
There are thousands of cases of violence against women in El Salvador each year.
