El Salvador has long been a byword for violence. But 2015 saw more homicides than in any of the civil war years, making the tiny Central American nation the world’s murder capital. Nearly one person dies every hour, and less than five percent of the killings are solved. At the center of the mayhem are rival street gangs spawned on American streets: Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) and Barrio 18 (18th Street). They now command some 60,000 members and have moved from petty crime and drug trafficking to extortion rackets that dominate urban and rural economies. The gangs’ competition for turf and profits has brought more extreme brutality: torture, beheadings, dismemberments. New generations, forced to pick a side or die, are instead fleeing north to the US border. For years legions of Salvadorans enjoyed temporary protected status in America. But the Trump Administration, swept to power by a wave of nativism, has announced plans to strip more than 200,000 Salvadorans of protection and begin deporting them back to their homeland late next year. This could amount to a death sentence for some deportees — and place an unprecedented burden on a state that is close to failing. As the reckoning approaches, we travel to San Salvador to meet with recent deportees whose plight foreshadows the troubles to come: A US high school soccer star who must now dodge the gangs that divide his neighborhood, and the ex-girlfriend of an abusive gang leader taking refuge in a women's safe house, where she must choose between leaving again or hiding in the countryside. In the vacuum of law enforcement, we show how San Salvador’s brash millennial mayor, Nayib Buckle, is using gentrification, Instagram and Youtube to fight the gangs’ control of public space and people’s minds, with limited success. Meanwhile, hardened military officers, backed by right-wing elites, are turning to more familiar methods, unleashing death squad violence reminiscent of the 1980s. With exclusive access to an active squad, we reveal how impunity on all sides will compel more and more Salvadorans to flee in the years ahead. Along the way, we also track the brave efforts of Israel Ticas, the government’s lone forensic criminologist. Relentlessly (and often with the cooperation of ex-gang members turned informants), he digs up mass graves to give closure to relatives of the disappeared, a bulwark of hope in desperate land. Can El Salvador’s cycle of violence be turned around — or is it doomed by the legacy of a civil conflict that was never resolved? How is the United States responsible for its unraveling, and what will the impact of another 200,000 people be on a failing state whose economy depends so heavily on remittances? Facing death threats, some of our subjects contemplate taking the 1500-mile journey on the migrant underground to reach the US once more, dangers be damned. WHY? Now, Spiraling violence is fueling a mass exodus toward the U.S.—it’s one of the largest, most under-reported migration streams worldwide. With the Trump Administration preparing to send 200,000 migrants back to El Salvador, it is the perfect time to show the deadly perils that await deportees and underscore the US’ hand in the intensifying the gang war that now consumes the country.