TAMANIQUE, El Salvador Reuters) -Fearing detention by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers and being separated from her two young daughters, Yessenia Ruano self-deported back to El Salvador with her family from the United States in mid-June.
Now, Ruano, a 38-year-old elementary school teacher, and her family are seeking to rebuild their lives in the Central American country she fled more than a decade ago to escape poverty and violence, and to chase the American dream.
She arrived in Milwaukee in 2011, where she had family, and for 14 years built a new life: she married a Salvadoran man, had twin daughters, bought a house, and was in the process of trying to get a visa.
While her life in the U.S. was happy, her journey there had been traumatic. Having paid a smuggler to get her to the U.S., she was held against her will in the U.S. until she could pay off her debts.
That led Ruano many years later to apply for a T visa, available to victims of human trafficking that allows people to remain in the U.S. legally if they help authorities detect or prosecute criminal cases.
Ruano worked at a public school and went to the ICE offices once a year to report.
But since President Donald Trump took office in January, everything changed: she now had to go to ICE once a month. At the end of May, ICE officials warned her that she had to return to El Salvador until the process concluded or else be detained and deported.
“I was afraid of persecution as part of the government’s anti-immigrant policy,” she said in an interview at her mother-in-law’s house in Tamanique, a small mountain town near the capital, San Salvador, where she now lives with her daughters and husband. “So I decided to start over.”
ICE did not respond to a request for comment.
The Trump administration has promised to implement the “largest deportation operation in U.S. history.” Hundreds of thousands of people have been deported since he took office.
This had an impact on migrants: many are wondering whether it is better to stay and live in fear of arrest or to leave.
A NEW BEGINNING
In early June, the family bought plane tickets for Ruano and her two daughters, Elizabeth and Paola, both aged ten and U.S. citizens.
Ruano’s husband, Miguel Guerra, a 39-year-old Salvadoran teacher, also self-deported weeks later along with their dog, Copito, a white poodle. Guerra had entered illegally in 2008 and been working jobs in construction and at a frozen pizza factory.
Now, they are beginning to plan their new life: they want to build their own home with the money they managed to save abroad.
Despite ICE raids and operations, data from the Salvadoran government show the number of Salvadorans deported from the United States has decreased by almost 24% between January and June, compared to the same period in 2024, reaching 5,551 people.
Meanwhile, the government of President Nayib Bukele has been promoting a law to encourage the return of Salvadorans abroad through economic and social incentives, with 388 families returning to El Salvador under the program, government data shows. The Salvadoran government did not respond to requests for comment on Ruano’s case.
Ruano and Guerra plan to apply for jobs as teachers, in construction, tourism, or starting an ice cream or tortilla business. Maybe, when their daughters are over 18, they will return to Milwaukee where they still have a home.
(Reporting by Wilfredo Pineda in Tamanique, El Salvador; Editing by Diego Oré and Diane Craft)
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