José Maximino Amaya lived in the United States for 20 years, but suddenly lost everything he had earned after being detained and deported to El Salvador as part of the new immigration policy of Donald Trump’s government. Amaya, who lived in New Jersey and worked in construction, returned to his country on a flight chartered by Washington on Wednesday, along with about fifty deportees.
“I was going to my job when they stopped me,” some immigration agents and “they told me I was under arrest,” said this 50-year-old man, born in Delicias de Concepción, an agricultural town located 174 km east of San Salvador. He had arrived in the United States in May 2005, but never regularized his immigration status. To avoid being detected – and deported – he simply worried about “behaving well,” without breaking the law.
He was detained on January 25, five days after Trump’s return to the White House, recounts Amaya, who returned to his country without any luggage, wearing gray pants and a white t-shirt. That same day US authorities arrested his wife, who also did not have a regularized immigration status. Now she faces a deportation process, so she should arrive in El Salvador soon.
Three Children in the USA
In New Jersey remained his car, his bank accounts, and all the furniture and appliances from the house that the couple rented. His three children born in El Salvador, aged 29, 26, and 22, also remained in the United States. “They remain alone there,” but fortunately they have legal residency and employment, says Amaya. Human rights consultant Celia Medrano, former consul of El Salvador in Washington, considers that “the treatment and marginalization” that migrants are now receiving in the United States is “regrettable.”
“Fundamental rights of people are not being respected, they are being treated as criminals just for being migrants,” said Medrano. After the plane with the deportees landed at Monseñor Óscar Arnulfo Romero Airport, they were taken by buses to a care center of the General Directorate of Migration in the Salvadoran capital. There Amaya was received by a brother, a nephew, and other relatives.
I Helped My Father
About 2.5 million Salvadorans live in the United States, who are an important support for their families in El Salvador and also for the economy of the Central American country. In 2024, El Salvador received $8,479.7 million in family remittances, an amount that represents 23% of GDP, so Trump’s massive deportations threaten to have an economic impact on the country.
Amaya regularly sent money to his elderly father in El Salvador, like thousands of other migrants. “It feels difficult, because in part he was fundamental help for my father. There were no other means, because here the economic situation is not very easy,” said José Adán Amaya, 41, one of the 11 siblings of the deported construction worker.
American Nightmare
“What is the country going to provide us” and “what is our president (Nayib Bukele) going to provide us too,” Amaya questions now that he is back in El Salvador. However, he assures that he is not intimidated, as he is “a fighter.” “It’s tough in the United States […], it’s no longer the American dream, it’s like an American nightmare,” he warns.
After effusive welcome hugs, the nephew makes a video call with his cell phone to the United States so that Amaya’s three children can see him in El Salvador. Everyone was very emotional. After the video call, Amaya and his relatives boarded a gray van and left for Delicias de Concepción, on a journey that takes about five hours.
