From the Lawrence Daily Journal-World for July 22, 1989:

Local resident Jill Jenkins and her family had taken in Reynaldo Cuellar, a 17-year-old refugee from Central America who was appealing a Texas judge’s decision to deport him. Cuellar had fled for his life from his home in El Salvador earlier this year after soldiers had raped his younger sister and then killed all of the other members of his family. “The judge agreed that his life is probably in danger, but he didn’t fit the requirements for political asylum,” Jenkins said. Jenkins was a coordinator of the Lawrence Latin American Refugee Committee, whose members were bringing refugees who were on their way to Canada to the area, where they were to stay for up to a year while waiting to be admitted to Canada. Two other Canada-bound refugees had arrived this week, sponsored by the refugee committee and the Respect Life Committee of St. John the Evangelist Church. One of them, Melvin Espinal Navarrete, was a cabinet maker who had fled El Salvador because he had been threatened after serving as a poll watcher and reporting that he had seen a military commander force people to cast unmarked ballots. The other, Jose Arnoldo Polillo Flores, had left El Salvador after his father had been killed by unknown assailants and Flores had been repeatedly threatened.