Number of undocumented children reaching Southwestern border surging

Baltimore Sun: Organizations that help undocumented children find homes in Maryland say there has been a spike in the number of unaccompanied minors from Central America reaching the U.S. border — to the highest levels since the surge of 2014.

Advocates expect the influx to have a disproportionate impact in Maryland, home to a large population of Central American families, with whom these minors are likely to be placed. During the last wave of unaccompanied Central American children, federal officials reported that Maryland took in more of them on a per capita basis than any other state. Read more.

Child migrant crisis endures on Mexico's south border

AFP: His face lit up every time he mentioned his destination -- the United States -- but like many Central American children, Juan's dream ended abruptly when Mexican officers caught him riding a freight train.

The willowy 16-year-old boy's story is the same as that of thousands of minors from El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala who are still crossing Mexico's southern border alone despite a crackdown on illegal migration. Read more. 

In Mexico's fields, children toil to harvest crops that make it to American tables

LA Times: Alejandrina Castillo swept back her long black hair and reached elbow-deep into the chile pepper plants. She palmed and plucked the fat serranos, dropping handful after tiny handful into a bucket.

 

The container filled rapidly. Alejandrina stopped well before the pepper pile reached the brim.

She was 12, and it was hard for her to lift a full 15-pound load. Read more.

Inter-American Commission on Human Rights Compares U.S. Migrant Detention Centers to Guantánamo

La Jornada, Oct. 2.  Washington. The United States is going back to old practices with the practice of keeping children and families of undocumented migrants in detention, reported the vice president of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), Felipe González, on Thursday. He compared the detention center with "prisons."

"We're very concerned because we see that the United States is returning to policies that appeared to have been left in the past, like having detention centers for children and families," said Gonzalez, who is also the Rapporteur on Migrant Rights.

Gonzalez led a delegation of the Commission this week that visited the U.S. southwest border, where about 66,000  unaccompanied minors-and a similar number of families-from Mexico and Central America have been apprehended since October 2013, registering record numbers .

Some migrant children have been sent to relatives or shelters to await their appearance before an immigration judge.

But the fact that many remain in detention centers is a "setback" and a quick solution "looks complicated," Gonzalez said.

In a statement, the IACHR--an autonomous organ of the OAS--said the detention of migrants is "undesirable" and must be "only used as an exceptional measure" and for a short period. In that regard, it called on the United States to enact legislation to ensure that children and families are not sent to those centers.

The numbers of children caught at the border has been falling since June, but the government has been cautious in declaring the situation resolved. It is currently expanding capacity for detention of migrants.

The Department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) plans to open a new facility this year in Dilley, Texas that could accommodate 2,400 beds.

The United States "is returning to policies that existed more than five years ago," Gonzalez said, referring to the center in Hutto, Texas that was forced to cease housing child migrants in response to demands from civil organizations.

The conditions of migrants in the United States is of concern to the Commission, which has already announced a hearing to discuss the issue during the next session later this month.

"Equivalent to prison"

González, accompanied by the Rapporteur on the Rights of Children, Rosa María Ortiz, and other experts, visited the ICE center for children and families in Karnes, Texas, and interviewed former detainees from the center of the Border Patrol in McAllen, Texas since they were denied access to  migrants currently detained there.

The U.S. government applies "the same standard as Guantánamo" in the migrant centers, the commissioner said.

Migrants reported lack of privacy and recreation, and restrictions on calling relatives from the centers, according to testimony gathered by the Commission. The Commission considered that the human rights situation has been "exacerbated" by the recent wave of migrant children.

It also noted that the detention is arbitrary and that many migrants lack legal representation, which is a major factor in determining the probability that an asylum case be accepted, Gonzalez said.

For the Commission, the facilities "are equivalent to prisons."

Another complaint is that U.S. authorities do not thoroughly investigate the asylum claims of migrants, who flee drug violence, mainly in Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala.

"It's a very serious situation of violence in these countries and therefore each case should be analyzed carefully," Gonzalez said.

"This means that people who face risks in their countries are being deported," he added.

Many Mexican child migrants caught multiple times at border

Pew Research Center: With the surge in unaccompanied children apprehended at the Southwest border, much has been written about the unusually high numbers of kids arriving from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador. The number of apprehensions of Mexican child migrants rivals those of the other three countries, but many of those caught are ones who tried to cross multiple times — meaning that the total number of child migrants from Mexico is lower compared with the Central American nations.

Out of the more than 11,000 apprehensions of unaccompanied Mexican minors during this fiscal year (October 1 through May 31), only 2,700 children (24% of all the apprehensions) reported being apprehended for the first time in their lives, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of Mexican government data obtained from the Mexican Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The other three quarters of the apprehensions were of children who reported that they had been apprehended multiple times before — 15% were of children who had been apprehended at least six times. Read more. 

California plans aid to immigrant minors

AP:  California lawmakers will approve legislation supported by Gov. Jerry Brown to spend $3 million in state money to provide legal help for unaccompanied children from Central America, Democratic leaders announced Thursday.

Making the money available to help children is "the decent thing to do and it's consistent with the progressive spirit of California," Brown said in a statement.  Read more. 

The process Congress wants to use for child migrants is a disaster

Vox: Congress and the Obama administration are scrambling to respond to the humanitarian crisis of 57,000 unaccompanied Central American children who've crossed the border into the US this year.

One policy change that Republicans are expected to demand (in order to give the Obama administration the $3.7 billion in emergency funding it's asked for) has actually gotten the support of members of Congress from both parties, and encouraging hints from the White House. That change: updating a 2008 law so that Central American children could be returned to their home countries as quickly as Mexican children are today. Read more. 

Kids First: A Response to the Southern Border Humanitarian Crisis (Congressional Progressive Caucus)

Congressional Progressive Caucus: The United States and the international community have long recognized the unique needs of children seeking asylum. As an extremely vulnerable population, unaccompanied migrant children need special care and protection. We must not allow politics to jeopardize any child’s safety and we should immediately reject attempts to solve the migration crisis on our southern border by circumventing due process or rule of law. Calls for expediting removal of children without due process, back to the violence they have escaped, is an attempt to simplify a complex situation and it is a derelict of U.S. responsibility under international standards. When examining the reasons for migration, the United  Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) found nearly 60 percent of children had fled violence and were in need of international protection. Only two of 404 children interviewed reported that they had traveled to the U.S. because of rumors of potential immigration reform.

 An effective response must recognize that this is largely a refugee crisis and must place the best interest of the children first. Abrogation or repeal of the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act,
including the protections to children arriving from non-contiguous countries, will do nothing to alleviate the situation and could place children in harm’s way. Read more. 

'Nobody's Children' at the Mexico-U.S. Border (La Prensa, Honduras)

WorldMeets (La Prensa): The tears of those now in government, who listen to the stories of children who have made it to the United States in search of a better life, are tears of hypocrisy. Such stories have been known for over two decades, starting when an easy solution could have been found to a problem that now seems to constrain some people's souls. The distressing phenomenon of migrant children was reported by Casa Alianza over 20 years ago, but there has never been the political will on the part of any government.

What compels migrant children to undertake the perilous journey is the certainty that they would die of hunger or violence if they remained in homes stricken by a poverty that killed their parents and forced them emigrate. It is despair over a promised future that was never fulfilled. Making the trip puts their lives at risk, but there is hope of getting through, whereas to stay means being resigned to die. Read more. 

US mainstream press notices child migrants, tells half the story

There has been a blitz of stories over the past couple of weeks on child migrants arriving on the U.S.'s southern border. For many of us in Mexico, this is nothing new. But US press attention to it is relatively new, as one major media outlet after another features stories on the plight of unaccompanied minors.

It's a positive step that these kids do not remain invisible. What they go through should be cause for indignation on a global level. The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees issued a report last March that found that half had experienced or been threatened with serious harm on the journey north.

But most of these mainstream press stories are telling half-truths about child victims while muddling or downright manipulating the question of who and what is responsible.

The New York Times, AP and others outlets have been running stories that follow a pattern of emphasizing two general conclusions. One, that parents in the United States are selfishly and irresponsibly encouraging this phenomenon and putting their own children at risk by sending them north and, two, that more children are migrating to the United States because they perceive Obama administration policies and practices as lenient on child migrants and think they have a good chance of staying--even if they get caught.

Although many of these stories mention conditions of poverty and violence in the places where the children come from, they almost never mention how these places have become so poor and violent, or much less the direct role that U.S. foreign policy has played in making them that way and forcing the children to leave.

To give a few examples: In April the NYT ran a story on child migration focused on a 12 year-old Ecuadorean girl who apparently committed suicide in a shelter in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. The article stressed the grandparents' reluctance to let her go and the insistence of the parents, who live in New York. It described the lone terror of the girl and her body found in the shower. it did not delve into the circumstances or the allegations that Mexican police captured her before her arrival at the shelter or why her parents could not provide for their family in Ecuador.

Readers were left with the impression that it was the parents that were to blame, not a system of injustice that stretched from the Andes to the US-Mexico border. This induced conclusion was reflected in the gist of many of the hundreds of comments on the page that expressed genuine compassion for the death of the dark-eyed child in indigenous dress, but also many variations on this comment: "The parents are at the root of this crime".

An AP story June 3 leads with a 14 year-old boy heading north with friends, saying that he had heard that minors were being allowed to stay in the U.S. Alhough the story later mentions the conditions of violence in his native Honduras, again there is no context and the boys seem to be going to the border to take advantage of the US government's largesse--a message sure to inflame anti-immigrant forces.

The AP follows up with this interpretation in a June 6 story stating the thesis explicitly: "Rumors of asylum raise hopes for migrant families". These stories present anecdotal evidence of the thesis that the spike in child migration is due to hopes of being allowed to stay, in the form of interviews that often appear to have been reporter-led into giving this as the cause. In fact, none of the unbiased surveys on reasons for leaving list lenient migration practices in the U.S. as a major cause.

The predictable result of the spate of articles on children migrants is to urge the creation of more detention facilities (potentially good news for the private prison industries) and call for an end to releases, as noted in the AP article:

Texas Gov. Rick Perry last week asked that the Department of Homeland Security stop releasing immigrants with notices to appear. On Monday, Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer asked the same for the hundreds of immigrants, mostly women and children, who in recent weeks have been flown to Arizona from South Texas for processing.

Following the thread, a New York Times article June 7 called "Child Migrants Strain Make-Shift Arizona Shelter" described a veritable junior brown tide pouring into the US and echoed the criticisms of Arizona's anti-immigrant governor Janet Brewer regarding administration efforts to house the migrants.

“I am disturbed and outraged that President Obama’s administration continues to implement this dangerous and inhumane policy, meanwhile neglecting to answer crucial questions our citizens demand and deserve,” the governor, a Republican, said in a statement late Friday.

Not once did the article bother to cite an immigrant or an immigrants' rights advocate, of which there are, fortunately, many in Arizona. Much less did it or any of the other articles on the issue mention a need for policies that would facilitate family reunification.

Children in harm's way
No one would argue that it is a good idea to attempt to bring a child to the United States without a trusted companion. Note that these children are not usually "unaccompanied". Their parents have paid large sums of money to smugglers to bring them over the border safely. But they often do not know the smugglers and human smuggling has become a big business for organized crime over the past decade, thanks in large part to increased security making it necessary for anyone trying to cross to hire professional help. As the cost of crossing went up, organized crime recognized a new business opportunity and replaced independent coyotes or relatives in getting migrants over the border.

The press stories seek to pull heartstrings over the trials and traumas of the kids, while containing a strong hidden message of opprobrium against the parents. How could they let this happen? How selfish of them to expose their children to such perils! 

Maybe the reporters and publishers don't have children. Or maybe they do, and they simply cannot imagine what it's like to know your son is growing up and you cannot be there for him, or to mark your daughter's birthday on a calendar and wonder what she looks like now. This heart-wrenching tragedy, repeated millions-fold, is the direct result of US immigration policies.

A New York Times editorial at least took a somewhat more compassionate view of the situation, recognizing the "false narrative" of the enforcers:

The crisis comes at a bad moment in America’s stalemated immigration debate, with Republicans gleefully seizing on a situation seemingly tailored to fit their false narrative, that any reform short of an aggressively militarized border will create yet another magnet to pull more of the wretched poor over our border, and that all the chaos in the system is Mr. Obama’s fault.

As an example, it quoted Bob Goodlatte, the Republican chairman of the House Judiciary Committee:

“Word has gotten out around the world about President Obama’s lax immigration enforcement policies, and it has encouraged more individuals to come to the United States illegally... Enforcement at the border and in the interior of the U.S. is crucial to end these kinds of situations, not another bureaucratic task force.”

The editorial emphasized the "push" factors and that children "are fleeing for their lives". It called for the government to humanely attend to the flows but did not mention longer-term solutions regarding disastrous U.S. policies in their home countries.

On June 3, President Obama referred to the "humanitarian crisis" and issued a memorandum calling for the formation of a "Unified Coordination Group" to attend to unaccompanied children migrants. He asked for $1.4 billion dollars to create infrastructure for the influx of minors.

An article in VOX notes that the US government seems to understand that the real solution lies in improving conditions in countries of origin but has failed to address them:

Ultimately, any long-term solution has to address not only the "pull factors" that bring children here, but the "push factors" that drive them out of their own countries. The federal government appears to understand this, but there aren't many good ideas for how to deal with it. Last week, Jeh Johnson, the Secretary of Homeland Security, suggested to Congress that the US government could launch a public-awareness campaign in Central American countries to advertise the dangers of migrating to the United States.

Again the "solution" suggested blames the victims for risking the journey.

So why does the mainstream press seek to place the blame on the parents and a supposed softening of immigration policy?

Because the alternative to blaming migrant families themselves is unpalatable to them.

The alternative is to accept that the Central American and North American Free Trade Agreements have left thousands of youth with no economic opportunities.

It is to accept that US security aid for drug wars has armed and aggravated violence in Mexico and Central America.

It is to understand the high cost of supporting the Honduran coup and how the Honduran people and the US population continue to pay that price, as out migration has surged over 500% in the past two years and human rights violations, instability and violence are skyrocketing.

In my travels to migrant shelters and interviews with migrants coming through Mexico I have found that, astoundingly, they do realize the risks and yet decide to make the journey anyway.

The public-awareness campaign we really need is one addressed to U.S. citizens and Congress regarding the impact of economic and security polices on their southern neighbors, and especially on the children.

Then we need a public action campaign to do something about it.

UPDATE: Here's an interesting post on the legal aspects. Note the graph on where the child migrants come from.
NOTE June13: Still trying to get to the bottom of this. These figures indicate that there is no doubt about the surge in detentions of child migrants, in Texas ONLY. No other crossing point even shows an increase while the Texas figure is more than twice as high. Is this at least partly a result of a state of Texas policy decision to apprehend more child migrants?  http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/06/10/number-of-latino-children-caught-trying-to-enter-u-s-nearly-doubles-in-less-than-a-year/

Leaked Images Reveal Children Warehoused In Crowded U.S. Cells, Border Patrol Overwhelmed

Breitbart Texas
By Brandon Darby
June 5, 2014

Houston, Texas - Breitbart Texas obtained internal federal government photos depicting the conditions of foreign children warehoused by authorities on U.S. soil on Wednesday night. Thousands of illegal immigrants have overrun U.S. border security and their processing centers in Texas along the U.S./Mexico border. Unaccompanied minors, including young girls under the age of 12, are making the dangerous journey from Central America and Mexico, through cartel-controlled territories, and across the porous border onto U.S. soil.

The photos illuminate the conditions of the U.S. Border Patrol’s processing centers, as well as the overwhelming task Border Patrol is facing.

Breitbart Texas Border Expert and Contributing Editor Sylvia Longmire reviewed the photos.

“Given the deteriorating security and economic conditions in the Central American countries where most of these children and adult immigrants came from, it's hard to understand how DHS didn't see this coming,” Longmire said. “The trend towards increased cross-border movement towards south Texas and away from Arizona has been apparent; the trend of Central Americans starting to outnumber Mexican crossers has been apparent. Even worse is believing that DHS knew this was coming, but didn't have the resources or ability to cut through bureaucratic red tape to prepare more quickly. Read more.

Laura's Blog: The Iceberg in the Desert

Mexican new reports state that 162 migrants were rescued from clandestine camps by the Mexican Army on April 3 and freed. During rounds, soldiers of the 45th Batallion discovered four camps in Saric, Sonora, near the U.S. border, located on the edge of the Sasabe desert, a common crossing zone that has recently become an area teeming with organized crime groups seeking to use crossers to carry contraband.

The Secretary of Defense release gave very few details, stating,

Among the persons liberated were 97 mexicanos, 60 Guatemalans, three Hondurans and 2 Salvadorans, who appeared in good health and were placed in the hands of the corresponding authorities.

The brief note leaves a lot of questions unanswered. It does not tell us who was holding the migrants (if they were kdnapped, they had to have guards), nor why, according to the information provided, not one single culprit was arrested. 

It does not tell us if drugs, arms, cash or other possible contraband was found at the scene of the alleged crime. We don't know how many are men, how many are women, what their ages are or where they were heading. We also don't know what states they are from or if they are indigenous.

The authorities have this information but the fact that it has been reserved from publication creates deep doubts regarding any subsequent investigation or judicial process.

Once again, nameless victims make ephemeral headlines under strange conditions. Then they disappear into anonymity, taking the dark secrets of what really happened with them.

For public consumption, there is only this (again, from SEDENA):

With these actions, the Mexican Army and the Air Force are working alongside the efforts of the Government of the Republic to attain a Mexico in peace, affirming its commitment to guarantee the security and tranquility of the citizenry.

The release of captive migrants is cause for celebration. And 162 is a huge number. But I, for one, don't feel tranquil.

If this represents the tip of the iceberg--and that seems to be the case given the number of similar cases in the area within the last year--then we're looking at a tremendous iceberg in the desert. Local newspapers have been reporting an increase in the use of border-crossers as "mules" to carry small quantities of prohibited drugs over the border. Scores of stories report the abduction, confrontations and murder of migrants in run-ins with alleged criminal groups. In most of the reports, the story is unclear and the migrants' themselves seldom speak publicly about what occurred.

The area is famous for flows of drugs, cash, arms and human trafficking. Inexplicably, this all happens under the nose of the 45th Battalion, police and other security agents and in spite of, or sometimes with the help of, U.S. and Mexican government agents. 

The Globalized Grapes of Wrath
In addition to forced recruitment for the drug smuggling that is the lifeblood of cartels, human trafficking for agrobusiness is growing.

Sin Embargo, a Mexican information service, notes of this recent case and others:

The victims of kidnapping are not just migrants from other countries, but also Mexicans from other states, like the case of 54 day laborers from the state of Puebla who were kidnapped in Caborca by a criminal group. The day laborers escaped to denounce that their captors had offered them a well-paid job in Sonora.

Some 57,000 farm laborers arrive in Sonora every year from the states of Puebla, Chiapas, Guerrero and others to work in the grape harvest, where 59 companies install work camps for the harvest. Companies even receive government support and subsidies to bring migrant workers in. The state of Veracruz, for example, announced this year that it will provide $42,000 pesos "to support the day laborers" being sent from the state to Sonora. 

This is not a subsidy to low-wage farmworkers--it's a subsidy to private-sector agribusiness. The government of Tlaxcala also has a program to send migrant laborers to the grape harvest. Sin Embargo and others have documented child labor and the death of several children-workers in the Sonora farmworker camps.

Dossier Político, out of Hermosillo, Sonora notes that in May of 2010 in a similar incident 66 farmworkers were rescued. The workers reported being recruited and held as virtual slaves, working 13-hour days in the vineyards without pay and prohibited from communicating with their families.

The grape industry has sprung up in Sonora since the eighties and especially since NAFTA. Tucson Business reported in 2012 that the Mexican state produces 16.3 million, 19-pound boxes that pass through at the U.S. Port of Entry at Nogales beginning in May for about nine weeks.

Sonora accounts for 90 percent of Mexico’s table grape production. The state exports almost all of its production, dispatching several dozen brands to more  than 30 countries. Some10,000 acres are under cultivation...

the recent abductions could indicate a trend toward the alliance of agrobusiness with organized crime to provide virtual slave labor in the harvest. The possibility merits at least full investigation.

The news reports on the rescue of migrants indicates that at least some were kidnapped as forced labor for the harvest.

The government of Veracruz states that the average wage for the farmworkers is $153 dollars a week, with some workers earning more. However, reports from the region say it's more like ten dollars a day, and half that for children.

So what kind of a society makes it an attractive business plan to kidnap workers as slaves rather than to pay ridiculously low wages?

A society where life is cheap. And where the criminals know they can get away with murder.

A Healthy Future for Immigrant Children Is a Healthy Future for the Nation

Huffington Post 
By Irwin Redlener
April 30, 2013

After years of postponing the inevitable, the U.S. is finally on the verge of reforming our dysfunctional immigration policies. For millions of immigrant families who have committed themselves to building better lives for themselves and their communities, change cannot come too soon. And for the children in these families, their hopes for the future are very much part of America's future.

Immigrant children are highly vulnerable. Their level of disadvantage and fragility has consistently grown due to factors outside their control. This population was explicitly excluded from the benefits of the president's health reform initiative. Read more. 

Activists demand end to sex abuse of migrant children in southern Mexico

Activists march in Mexico's southern Chiapas state last week to demand an end to the sexual exploitation of migrant children, a growing and largely unaddressed problem.

Los Angeles Times 
By Tracy Wilkinson
April 23, 2013, 1:44 p.m.
Mexico City - The flow of migrants from Central America across the Suchiate River into southern Mexico is steady but the journey perilous.  Uncounted thousands end up at the mercy of drug-and-extortion gangs that hold them for ransom, force them into slave labor or kill them.

The dangers are especially acute for what officials say is a growing number of children and youths who cross into Mexico without adults. Many are kidnapped and made to work as prostitutes, with police and authorities turning a blind eye, says Ramon Verdugo, an activist based in Mexico's southernmost city, Tapachula, in the state of Chiapas.

And so, with a march and a hunger strike, Verdugo and supporters are demanding that the local government of Chiapas, which borders Guatemala, put an end to the child sex trade and punish police and others who allow it to flourish.  Read more. 

Returning Migrant Children Pose Educational Challenge

Frontera NorteSur
November 25, 2012

In different migrant-sending regions of Mexico, educators are coping with the new challenge of teaching children of return migrants who speak little or no Spanish. In the north-central state of Zacatecas, for instance, 150 teachers began a crash course this month in English to help them communicate with new students coming from the United States.

Sponsored by the state education department, the class will consist of 60 hours of Saturday sessions, video-conferences and field work. Antonio Jacobo de Luna, Zacatecas under-secretary for educational planning and support, said the new teacher program is addressing the concerns of U.S.-based migrant clubs from Zacatecas that got in touch with state officials about the presence of young, primarily English speakers suddenly thrust into a Spanish-language learning environment. Read more. 

Mexico, the End of the ‘American Dream’ for Child Migrants

IPS: By Edgardo Ayala

Thousands of Central American minors, like this 16-year-old Guatemalan migrant, make the dangerous journey across Mexico every year in the attempt to reach the United States. Credit:Wilfredo Díaz/IPS

SAN SALVADOR , Oct 1 2012 (IPS) - For many undocumented child migrants from Central America, Mexico is the end of the road in their endeavour to reach the United States, driven by economic reasons, gang violence and domestic violence.

“Children have always migrated, and they have always been the most vulnerable,” Mexican academic Carolina Rivera, of the Centre for Research and Higher Studies in Social Anthropology (CIESAS) in Mexico, told IPS.

Since the flow of Central American migrants to the United States intensified in the 1980s due to the civil wars lashing the region, family breakdown has become a bigger and bigger problem. Parents leave in search of a better future and leave their children in the care of grandparents or other relatives.

According to estimates by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, around 15 percent of the 11.5 million undocumented Latin American migrants in the United States are from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.

Added to the need for family reunification and the traditional economic reasons are other motives, like domestic violence, driving children and adolescents to leave the region, said Rivera, who has experience in the field with Central Americans in Mazatán, in the impoverished southern Mexican state of Chiapas. Read more.