The War that Followed Them: Salvadoran Migration to “Little Central America” in Washington, D.C.

This excerpt is a part of the Not From Here blog series highlighting sections of undergraduate students’ research. IEHS recognizes the intellectual labor involved in undergraduate research and advising.

“My family in L.A. says people ask where they’re from. They say El Salvador. Then they ask ‘Where is that in Mexico?’ After explaining that it’s in Central America, they ask again, ‘Yeah, but what part of Mexico?’”¹

Unlike historical immigration hubs such as Los Angeles and New York, where Latino migration was defined by Mexicans and Puerto Ricans respectively, Washington, D.C. has a distinctly Central American character. Over the past few decades, the city became known by local residents as “Little Central America” because of the overwhelming Central American culture present in the area.² The Mount Pleasant, Columbia Heights, and Adams Morgan neighborhoods define the deep Salvadoran presence in the city. Salvadoran grocery stores, bakeries, pupuserías, and other family run businesses line the streets. Even something as simple as taking a thirty-minute ride on the Green Line from the center of D.C., home to national monuments and tourist attractions, to Columbia Heights, the city begins to reveal a cultural shift. Stepping out of the train station, Spanish becomes the new dominant language, and the city comes alive with live music, poetry, murals, and an array of small businesses on the sidewalks selling food, drinks, and handmade goods. The Salvadoran presence is deeply embedded in the cultural landscape of Washington, D.C., but this vibrant community did not emerge overnight. Rather, it was built through early gendered labor migration and community networks.

Washington, D.C. attracted a variety of Latinos in the twentieth century. In the 1930s and 1940s, Puerto Rican and Mexican American citizens migrated to the DC metropolitan area in search of job opportunities created by the New Deal and WWII. The initial wave of Central American migration to the DMV occurred in the 1960s and 1970s, and was predominantly led by domestic workers commuting to houses of diplomats’ families. During this same period, Latino businesses and services began to emerge across Washington, D.C., reflecting the highly diverse presence of Latin American migrants who called D.C. their home.³ These networks, especially the ones set up by female Central Americans, became crucial for chain migration by providing access to work opportunities, housing arrangements, and social services. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the Salvadoran Civil War intensified, forcing Salvadorans to flee their country because of widespread violence and repression. As an estimated 445,887 Salvadorans fled to the US seeking refuge, Washington, D.C. emerged as one of the most significant destinations for Salvadoran migrants. While many Latin American migrants tended to migrate to California and the sunbelt region, many Salvadorans arrived in D.C., because, as Nunez recalled, “there were already flags here.”⁴ By 1990, Latinos accounted for roughly 5.5 percent of the population, the majority of whom were Salvadoran.

However, when a much larger wave of Central American migration took place in the 1980s and 1990s, Salvadoran migrants entered an immigration regime that ran on fear, criminalization, and restrictions. Many of the migrants arrived after the cutoff date and did not meet the residency requirements to be protected under the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) of 1986. While Salvadorans were allowed to apply for Temporary Protected Status (TPS) after the Immigration Act of 1990, many feared being deported as a result of giving their information to the US government. The legal denial of rights and negative political rhetoric fueled anti-immigrant sentiments, leaving Salvadorans vulnerable and invisible in the communities they settled in. As Torres notes, “The root causes of challenges facing the immigrant community include discrimination, lack of opportunities, language barriers, and harmful stereotypes. These issues are interconnected and make it harder for immigrants to access education, jobs, and feel accepted in society.”⁵ Torres highlights how Salvadorans entered a hostile environment that lacked adequate resources to aid the incoming migrant population, and how these challenges contributed to their sense of alienation.

In the summer of 2025, I traveled to Washington, D.C. to begin my research for this project. While I spent a lot of time “being a historian” and immersing myself in archival research at the National Archives, Library of Congress, and D.C. History Center, what I found most valuable was traversing the D.C. neighborhoods and talking to community leaders and activists. What I found was a thriving Latino community where Spanish filled the streets and flags from across Latin America hung in storefronts. On the street corners, vendors sold fresh fruit and poets and musicians filled the streets with cultural expression. While I spent time in the barrio, I also had the amazing opportunity to discuss my research with Gustavo Torres, director of CASA, Abel Nunez, director of CARECEN, and Ana Patricia Rodriguez, professor at the University of Maryland, College Park. Through these conversations, I was able to gain insights not available in the archives, that is, the way the Salvadoran community itself remembers, preserves, and continues to advocate for its people.

During one conversation with Gustavo Torres, he said something that completely changed my approach to this project. Torres explained, “Scholars often misunderstand Central American migration because they analyze it from a distance, stripping it of its urgency, pain, and resistance. They focus on data and policy while ignoring the lived experiences of displacement, survival, and rebellion.”⁶ When I was in D.C., I realized that I was at risk of falling into this category, relying too much on what the archives and historical newspapers could tell me about Salvadorans. Instead, I decided to spend some time within the community and center this thesis through the lived experiences of migrants and community members.

As a Mexican American scholar originally from New Orleans, I am an outsider to this story. I am neither Salvadoran nor from the D.C. metropolitan area. My interest in Salvadoran migration grew out of my academic training in Latino history, where I predominantly encountered Mexican narratives and experiences. While this helped me understand my own history and identity more concretely, I noticed other Latin American migration experiences and diasporas seemed to be missing across these fields. Engaging with community leaders in Washington, D.C. made me realize both the limits of my perspective and the responsibility I have for presenting a story that is not my own. Rather than speaking for the community, my senior honors thesis project sought to amplify the voices, histories, and resistance efforts of Salvadorans.

This amplification of Salvadoran experiences is pivotal as they return to immigration discourse in the US Policymakers are challenging the renewal of TPS, which has protected thousands of Salvadorans from deportation since the 1990s. This threatens to return many Salvadorans to a precarious legal status and reinforces a cycle of instability and vulnerability. Immigration policies and rhetoric, especially during President Trump’s second term, has fueled anti-immigrant sentiments nationwide, calling into question the very presence and belonging of Central American migrants and immigrant communities in the US.⁷

Just nine days after his inauguration, Trump signed the Laken-Riley Act, a law which requires the detention of non-US nationals who have been arrested for minor or petty crimes. Framed as a public safety measure, the law linked noncitizens with criminality and further blurred the lines between immigrant and criminal. It reinforced long-standing anti-immigrant narratives that called for stricter border enforcement and security. These sentiments became a reality in March 2025 when Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran national living in Maryland that was legally protected from deportation, was illegally deported and detained in the CECOT prison. Officials denied him due process, a constitutional right for all persons in the country, and justified his deportation with accusations of involvement in the MS-13 gang– a label often imposed on Salvadorans despite the active role the US played in the emergence of these groups.

 The “criminal immigrant” narrative is further heightened by transnational cooperation and expanding systems of enforcement and intimidation. In April of 2025, Trump met with the Salvadoran president, Nayib Bukele, where they discussed collaborating for deportation and detention. Trump complimented Bukele’s handling of gang members imprisoned in CECOT and former Department of Homeland Security (DHS) secretary, Kristi Noem, toured the facility. These encounters were heavily saturated in the media, and the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) began to conduct immigration raids throughout the country. These events have sparked intimidation and fear, leaving migrants and US citizens scared to go to work, school, or leave their homes. Daily life becomes shaped by surveillance, uncertainty, and a constant threat of removal.

Instead of retreating back into the shadows, the solidarity networks nurtured by grassroots organizations discussed in this thesis continue to advocate for change. A popular protest sign I often see in public demonstrations reads, “gracias jóvenes por gritar lo que tus padres y yo callamos por miedo” (thank you young people for shouting what your parents and I are afraid to say due to fear). This message captures both the silence migrants face and the emergence of a new generation unwilling to be silenced.

CASA and CARECEN, along with thousands of allies across the country, have initiated protests, circulated petitions, and demanded for the safe return of migrants wrongfully deported. They continue to inform migrants of their rights and have brought attention to the communities most impacted by these policies.⁸ Across the country people are actively resisting ICE raids that have heightened the criminalization, racialization, and surveillance of immigrant communities. These efforts are a legacy of the work grassroots organizations discussed in this thesis have dedicated themselves to. It shows how migrants are not only displaced and targeted by policy, but are active agents resisting the systems that render them invisible and disposable.

In November of 2025, Gustavo Torres retired from his position at CASA. I asked him about his hopes for the future, he reminded me that even during times of uncertainty, fear, and exclusion, the future is built through collective action and a demand for justice. Despite the persistence of a decades-long struggle for recognition and belonging, Torres remains hopeful. That sense of enduring struggle is also evident in the testimony of Juan Romagoza, who once stood in a courtroom and showed the scars left behind by a war that was supposed to be over. His testimony was not easy to relive, but it was necessary for the pursuit of justice for the Salvadoran community. As this thesis has shown, the conditions that forced migrants to leave in the first place have traveled with them into Washington’s backyard. Instead of being passive, Salvadorans transformed their marginalization and invisibility into cultural and political might. The networks and organizations that developed as a result of this stand strong today and continue to advocate for migrants. Like the scars on Romagoza’s arm, the physical pain, violence, and displacement of migrants remain visible. Yet, as Torres reminds us, by continuing the legacy of those who began the struggle, the new generation will continue to fight the war that never truly ended.

1. “Interview with Abel Nunez by Stephanie Hernandez, July 15, 2025.” This was the joke in Nunez’s family, but it also captures a deeper reality about how Salvadorans, and Central Americans at large, are cast under the umbrella term of “Mexican” in the broader narratives concerning Latino migration to the US. ↩︎
2. Ana Patricia Rodriguez, Avocado Dreams: Remaking Salvadoran Life and Art in the Washington, D.C. Metro Area, (Arizona: Tucson, University of Arizona Press, 2025), 34 ↩︎
3. Maria Sprehn- Malagon, Jorge Hernandez- Fujigaki, and Linda Robinson, Latinos in the Washington Metro Area, (South Carolina: Charleston, Arcadia Publishing, 2014), 7-8; Olivia Cadaval and Brian Finnegan, Creating a Latino Identity in the Nation’s Capital: The Latino Festival, (New York: New York City, Garland Publishing) ↩︎
4. “Interview with Abel Nunez by Stephanie Hernandez, July 15, 2025.” ↩︎
5. “Interview with Gustavo Torres by Stephanie Hernandez, July 18, 2025.” ↩︎
6. “Interview with Gustavo Torres by Stephanie Hernandez, July 18, 2025.” ↩︎
7. Ana Patricia Rodriguez, Avocado Dreams: Remaking Salvadoran Life and Art in the Washington, D.C. Metro Area, (Arizona: Tucson, University of Arizona Press, 2025), 18 ↩︎
8. “Interview with Abel Nunez by Stephanie Hernandez, July 15, 2025,” and “Interview with Gustavo Torres by Stephanie Hernandez, July 18, 2025.” ↩︎