Child Migration and Central America: A Humanitarian Crisis

IIHA Humanitarian News Brief

During this fiscal year, nearly 50,000 minors have been detained by U.S.
immigration authorities; almost double the number from last year. This huge influx of
unaccompanied minors from Central America is threatening to become the biggest refugee
crisis the United States has faced since 1980 during the Mariel boatlift when thousands of
Cubans fled their home country by boat. The increase in unaccompanied minors crossing
the border is said to be part of a larger flow of people fleeing Central America including
many families with small children. On June 2
nd
, President Obama ordered federal
emergency authorities to take charge of the relief effort calling the surge in unaccompanied
children crossing into South Texas an urgent humanitarian situation requiring a unified
and coordinated federal response.
When children from non-contiguous countries are caught in the United States, they
are taken into U.S. custody by Border Patrol Agents. According to Federal Law,
unaccompanied minors can only be held in a Border Patrol facility for a maximum of 72
hours. After that, they either have to be sent to a relative in the U.S. where they will await a
hearing to determine whether or not they can remain in the U.S., or they are sheltered by
the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), which falls under the Department of Health and
Human Services (HHS). HHS Spokesman Kenneth Wolfe said that the office operates about
100 permanent shelters for unaccompanied minors. Because of the steep increase in
unaccompanied minors crossing the U.S. border recently, all of these facilities are filled. In
May, the first supplemental shelter was set up at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio,
Texas, which was equipped to accommodate 1,200 minors; by early June it had already
received 1,000 minors. On June 2
nd
, officials said the youths would begin to be transferred
to a new shelter at Naval Base Ventura County in Oxnard, California, which will house up to
600 children. Now, a third shelter has been set up at Fort Still in Oklahoma.
The Border Patrols holding facilities were not open to the press until June 18
th

when under mounting pressure from lawmakers and immigrant rights groups, reporters
were allowed access to processing facilities in Nogales, Arizona and Brownsville, Texas
under strict guidelines that included being prohibited from speaking to any of the children.
Previously, leaked photographs have shown cramped cells and an inadequate supply of
food, beds, toilets, and showers. A recent lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties
Union and four immigrant rights groups on behalf of 116 children are chronicling a
situation that they say paint[s] a consistent picture of widespread abuse and
mistreatment. The groups interviewed about 1,000 children between ages 5 and 17 who
had been detained in Texas this year, and found about 80 percent of them had been
provided inadequate food and water. The complaint states that, approximately half of
the children described the denial of medical care. More than half reported physical
abuseApproximately 70 percent of these children were detained beyond the 72-hour
statutory limit.
After the children are either reunited with family, or housed by the Office of Refugee
Resettlement, they are given a court date where they are, in theory, given the opportunity
to present their claims for asylum. In reality however, the children are not required by law
to have a government appointed lawyer because they are not involved in a criminal
proceeding. Non-profits have been scrambling to find lawyers to represent the
unaccompanied minors pro bono. Immigrant Advocacy Organizations have been calling for
federally funded public defenders for unaccompanied minors, and their cries for assistance
have taken on a wider scope and a new sense of urgency in the face of this new influx.
Recently, the Obama administration said it was starting a program to provide lawyers for
children facing deportation. Under the program, the federal government will issue $2
million in grants for 100 lawyers and paralegals to represent immigrant children. In a
statement issued by the Justice Department, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said, How
we treat those in need, particularly young people who must appear in immigration
proceedings many of whom are fleeing violence, persecution, abuse or trafficking
goes to the core of who we are as a nation. Advocates gladly welcomed the program
saying that it was long overdue. There are however, challenges presented by the new plan
such as lack of training for this specific type of court case. Other advocates have critiqued
the program as a seemingly small measure that fails to cope with a much larger problem,
saying that, a hundred lawyers nationwide is not going to satisfy our commitment to
protecting these childrenIf we have to give lawyers to murderers, then perhaps we
should give them to refugee orphans. A spokeswoman for a community service
corporation noted that, The program has been in the works for a really long time its
consistent with the [Obama] administrations efforts to provide a comprehensive response
to the influx. Despite the administrations commitment to support lawyers who will help
these unaccompanied minors attain asylum in the U.S., Cecilia Munoz, Director of the
Domestic Policy Council at the White House, surprisingly anticipates that many of these
young children may be deported regardless of the legal representation. In a recent article,
Munoz states, The end result of this process is likely to be that the vast majority of those
kids end up going back. There may be some isolated cases where there is some basis for
them to be able to stay, but the borders of the United States are not open, not even for
children who come on their own, and the deportation process starts when they get here,
and we expect that it will continue for the vast majority of these kids.
There are many push factors that are creating this influx of unaccompanied minors
crossing the border. The unrest and economic hardship plaguing many Central American
countries due to gang related violence is one of the main reasons why many young people
are fleeing their home countries. Daniel Penado Zavala was 17 years old when he decided
to leave his home country of El Salvador after his stepfather was slain by gang members.
He thought that if he stayed, he too would be a victim if he resisted the wishes of the gangs.
He saved $7,000 to pay a smuggler, frequently known as a coyote, to arrange his journey
first from El Salvador to Mexico, and then from Mexico to Texas. Daniels story is just one
of many tales of young children fleeing gangs who are increasingly recruiting from schools,
youth centers, and youth groups at churches to fill roles such as drug mules and assassins.
In a meeting at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Washington, DC on June 13
th
, the
President of Honduras spoke of the role that U.S. drug consumers have played in this
disaster, We are very worried about the children, but sadly this is a security problem
provoked by drug trafficking from the drugs consumed by the U.S., and this has had an
impact on the situation involving the displacement [of Hondurans]. Honduras currently
has the highest murder rate in the world. In one of its cities, San Pedro Sula, 169 out of
100,000 people are murdered, making it the deadliest city in the world.
Some lawmakers, Republicans especially, are blaming President Obama and his lax
immigration policies as possible pull factors for why so many children are coming into
Texas. On Sunday, Vice President Joe Biden extended a planned trip to Central America in
order to have a summit-type meeting, to be held in Guatemala, on this issue with the
Presidents of Guatemala and El Salvador along with a top official from Honduras. Senior
Obama Administration officials told reporters that they are greatly concerned by the surge
of unaccompanied minors from Central America coming to the United States. They said,
our top priority is to manage this urgent humanitarian situation The entire U.S.
administration is engaged in addressing the situation, in making sure these children are
housed and fed and receive medical treatment, but at the same time we also realize the
crucial importance of stemming the tide of migration. There are misleading rumors in
Central America that children who make it to the United States by June 2014 will be eligible
for deferred deportation or may be eligible to stay in the U.S. indefinitely or permanently.
Usually June and July are months where immigration rates are not as high, but this year will
be an exception. Senior Obama administration officials said that, The vice president will
be making this trip to Guatemala to discuss both the violence and economic opportunity
side and the misperceptions of U.S. immigration policy while hes there in Guatemala he
will emphasize that illegal immigration is not safe. That putting your child in the hands of a
criminal smuggling organization is not safe. And he will make clear that recently arriving
children are not eligible for [the deferred deportation program] or earned citizenship
provisions in current immigration reform legislationthe bottom line is that its not worth
subjecting children to a perilous journey when, at the end of the day, there is no light at the
end of the tunnel. Last Wednesday, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson told
Congress that his agency was struggling to keep up with the increase in unaccompanied
minors crossing into the United States saying, the numbers are rising Undeniably, there
is a problem of humanitarian proportions.
A Texas lawmaker, U.S. Representative Henry Cuellar of Texas 28
th
District, recently
visited with Border Patrol agents and children while touring an immigration detention
facility. Talking to the Border Patrol agents, Cuellar found that they were pained to see so
many children and mothers crossing the border. He has asserted that the United States
must do more than use enforcement to stop this surge of child migrants. He is urging the
country to do more to prevent children from dangerously travelling to the United States in
search of economic opportunity and safety by helping to build up the Central American
economy: We as Congress pay attention to all over the world except our own backyard
Ive been saying we have to do more with those economies in the south. If not, they are
going to keep coming.
To deal with the influx of immigrants the Senate Labor, Health and Human Services
Committee unveiled a $1.94 billion bill that would give the Department of Health and
Human Services the means to fully deal with the increase. Meanwhile, the White House has
announced that the issue will be addressed in the upcoming Homeland Security and State
Department appropriation bills. The bills will not ask for increases for the already-written
departmental allocations, but will instead halt or reverse sequestration limits for more
than two-dozen areas. Administration officials further announced $9.6 million in
additional support to El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala to help them reintegrate
people who have been sent back, along with $40 million to launch a program to improve
security in Guatemala, a $25 million program to provide services to youth in El Salvador
who are vulnerable to organized crime, and $18.5 million to build youth outreach centers
in Honduras. While most of the recent attention has been focused on the influx of
unaccompanied minor immigrants coming into the U.S., law enforcement officials are
becoming increasingly worried about the effect this surge is having on drug traffic coming
into the U.S. The Border Patrol union representative in the Rio Grande region, Chris
Cabrera, highlighted the issue in a recent statement, saying, The arrival of large groups of
women and children on the U.S. side of the Rio Grande is pulling agents away from their
patrol stations elsewhere along the border, creating gaps in coverage that the traffickers
can exploit The smugglers wait on the southern banks of the Rio Grande as migrant
groups as large as 250 wade across at dusk and turn themselves in to the Border
Patrolthen groups of single men proceed to cross under cover of darkness...The most
recent statistics...show that narcotics seizures have fallen across the entire border with
Mexico this year."
Updated 6/23/14
Margaret Dunne, IIHA Intern

For More Information:

Joe Biden to Discuss Child Migrants in Latin America - Politico
Enforcement Alone Cant Stop Surge in Child Migrants, Congressman Says - LA
Times
Daniels journey: How thousands of children are creating a crisis in America - CNN
Child Migrants Strain Makeshift Arizona Shelter - NY Times
New U.S. Effort to Aid Unaccompanied Child Migrants - NY Times
Mary Sanchez: Humanitarian Crisis at Border Defies Rights Platitudes About
Immigration - Merced Sun-Star
Humanitarian Crisis on the U.S. Border - Courthouse News Service
Youths Facing Deportation to be Given Legal Counsel - NY Times
This is What an Overcrowded Holding Center for Migrant Children Looks Like -
The Nation
U.S. Boosts Aid to Central America to Cope with Migrants - BBC News
Migrants Flow in South Texas, as Do Rumors - NY Times
Humanitarian Crisis For Unaccompanied Minors Crossing U.S.-Mexico Border -
MintPress News
Child Migrants from Central America: War Refugees - Huffington Post
No Country for Lost Kids - PBS Newshour
Wonkbook: What to do about Americas child-migrant crisis - Washington Post