"Our Country is Full"

America’s asylum system was already broken. Then Donald Trump turned it into a machine of unchecked cruelty.

- By Ian Gordon

You need a story. That’s what they say, anyway. You need sympathetic characters, a villain, some violence, maybe a dramatic escape. That’s what it takes to gain asylum in the United States. You need lots of other things, too—a principled Border Patrol agent, a competent asylum officer, a good lawyer, a fairminded judge—but before any of that you need a story, something that can be fitted into the rapidly narrowing margin of American benevolence. You need a man, say, draping his arm around your shoulder, telling you, “We are watching you.”

That’s where the story of Gaspar Cobo Corio and Francisco Chávez Raymundo might begin. “We are watching you,” the man said out of nowhere. “You didn’t even notice that I have been following you. This was not just today. I have always been following you.”

It was not the first time that Gaspar had been threatened, but this time—right after a town hall meeting he’d organized with Francisco, a fellow Mayan human rights activist—was different from the harassing phone calls, the angry texts, the break-ins, and even the stickups the two had endured ever since they’d started challenging Guatemala’s culture of official impunity.