Migrations and the Americas / Baden-Württemberg Seminar Deporting Democracy: A Repression Boomerang Between the US and El Salvador

Using a recent deportation flight from the US to El Salvador as a starting place for analysis, I argue that the emergence of a powerful, complicit authoritarian partner in El Salvador erodes US democracy at home. Building on a decolonial literature on boomerang effects and research on transnational policing and borders, I discuss how the emergence of that partner followed a long, predictable trajectory of US imperialism and global apartheid.