"More than 50,000 unaccompanied migrant kids have been detained in the past
eight months — an almost 100 percent increase from the previous fiscal year.
In the Rio Grande Valley, currently the nation's crossing hotspot, the
Border Patrol catches about 700 people a day, and 20 percent of them are
youngsters traveling alone. The rest are adults, some with children."
http://www.npr.org/2014/06/20/323657817/from-a-stream-to-a-flood-migrant-kids-overwhelm-u-s-border-agents
>From A Stream To A Flood: Migrant Kids Overwhelm U.S. Border Agents
by
June 20, 2014 4:49 PM ET
Like a marathoner at the end of a grueling race, 16-year-old Jorge Romero
sits on the grass, exhausted. A county constable has detained him about a
hundred yards from the Rio Grande.
For a month, Romero traveled from El Salvador through Mexico to Texas,
avoiding predatory police and gangs, warding off mosquitoes and hunger.
Migrants like Romero are creating a humanitarian crisis for federal border
authorities. Record numbers of Central American immigrants are crossing the
Rio Grande into South Texas, overwhelming the Border Patrol's limited
holding facilities.
Even in a region accustomed to immigrant surges, no one has seen anything
like this before.
Romero looks like he's on the verge of tears as he explains how he waded
across the international river at the tip of Texas, and then wandered for a
day looking for a border officer to surrender to.
Like most young migrants, Romero gives a push-pull explanation for the
journey. He left Central America to avoid conscription by street gangs and
to join his family in the U.S.
"In a way I feel good, because I arrived at my destination," Romero says in
Spanish. "If God wills it, I'll get political asylum. I don't want to
return to El Salvador."
*Catching And Holding Unaccompanied Children*
What to do with Jorge Romero and others like him has become a burden for
the U.S. government. Because he's underage and he's from a noncontiguous
country, he cannot be treated like an adult or promptly deported.
More than 50,000 unaccompanied migrant kids have been detained in the past
eight months — an almost 100 percent increase from the previous fiscal year.
In the Rio Grande Valley, currently the nation's crossing hotspot, the
Border Patrol catches about 700 people a day, and 20 percent of them are
youngsters traveling alone. The rest are adults, some with children.
The numbers have been steadily climbing for the past two to three years.
The central bus station in McAllen, Texas, is full of migrants waiting for
transportation north to unite with their families. Often they're young
mothers like Osiris Sandoval, who is from Honduras and traveling with a
rambunctious 2-year-old.
An hour before, the Border Patrol finished processing Sandoval and dropped
her and her child off at the bus terminal. She says agents kept 50 to 60
people in a single holding room for four days. She said it was so crowded
they stood most of the time, with their children in their arms. She says
there was scarcely room to sit or sleep.
Border Patrol stations are not set up to handle so many detainees, says
Chris Cabrera, vice president of the local chapter of the National Border
Patrol Council, the agents' union.
"We're a short-term hold [facility]. We're not looking to hold anything
more than one to two days, preferably 12 hours," says Cabrera. "And in some
cases we're hitting about seven, eight to 10 days holding some people."
The station doesn't have showers, a recreation area or proper bedding. The
intention is to process the detainees as quickly as possible and then move
the children to shelters that are being opened around the country. From
there, caseworkers find family members who will take care of the children
until they appear in immigration court.
Cabrera says agents want to be on the border, catching lawbreakers, but
they end up baby-sitting.
"If we're going to catch these people and Border Patrol is going to do
their part to enforce these laws, and then [the Department of Homeland
Security] is going to release them, then more people are going to come,"
Cabrera says. "You can't fix this with enforcement and enforcement alone."
Part of the solution, say Obama administration officials, is changing
expectations.
Immigrant kids think they can get political asylum if they say they were
threatened by gangs at home. Thirty years ago, an earlier wave of Central
Americans poured across the Southern border fleeing the civil wars; they
were asking for political asylum, too.
Sister Norma Pimentel, executive director of Catholic Charities of the Rio
Grande Valley in the Brownsville Diocese, was there three decades ago and
she's still helping today.
"Before, we were seeing great numbers of families — mother, father,
*abuelito,* the little kids. Everybody was coming as a family and entering
our country," says Pimentel. "Here, it's unaccompanied children. It's
amazing. So many children."
*Specializing In Smuggling Children*
All the children from Central America who want to go the U.S. have created
a business opportunity for some.
A human smuggler who goes by the name El Lobo, or "The Wolf," sits in an
outdoor cafe on a rundown street in Matamoros, Mexico, just across the
bridge from Brownsville, Texas. His specialty: smuggling children.
"From Honduras to Brownsville it's $2,500. That's just to the border. The
crossing is extra," says El Lobo. "Depending on their size, that will cost
$1,000, $800 or $500 more."
He says not all smugglers are bad. If you take care of your juvenile
clients, making sure they're healthy, fed and sheltered, you get repeat
business.
El Lobo, 25, is lean with a thin mustache, white teeth and flinty eyes. He
asked that his real name not be used, but his story was corroborated by a
veteran Border Patrol agent and an immigrant advocate attorney, both of
whom are familiar with the smuggling trade.
"If they're small — 3 or 4 years old — I cross them in inner tubes one by
one, to make sure they don't fall out or drown. It only takes a few
minutes," El Lobo says.
His clients range in age from 2 to 13 years old. He says the little ones
are usually in the care of a relative who is also a minor.
El Lobo says he switched from smuggling adults across the Rio Grande to
children.
"Adults are different from children," he explains. "An adult has to flee,
but a child — you just deliver them to the other side of the river and they
wait to give themselves up to the Border Patrol. It makes our job easier."
Received on Tue Jun 24 2014 - 19:04:27 EDT