U.S. has ‘immigration crisis’ on its hands
Over the last eight months, about 47,000 children between six months and 16 years of age have risked a dangerous journey to escape the violence of El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala.
BY WILLIAM MARSDEN, POSTMEDIA NEWS JUNE 11, 2014
They are mere children yet they travel almost 3,000 kilometres seeking sanctuary.
They cling to the roofs of trains and buses. They walk across deserts in blazing heat, often lacking food or water. They fall prey to thieves and other criminals.
Those who survive this gauntlet are more often than not rounded up by U.S. border guards and imprisoned in crowded detention centres. In the vocabulary of immigration, they are “undocumented aliens.”
In reality, however, they are North America’s war refugees.
Over the last eight months, about 47,000 children, from six months old to 16 years, have risked this dangerous journey to escape violence in El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala, according to White House officials and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP). At the current rate of entry, officials predict that the total could possibly reach 90,000 by year end.
A United Nations report ranks Honduras as the murder capital of the world; close behind are Guatemala and El Salvador, with rates five to nine times higher than those in Europe and Asia. The bloodshed, it says, is a “legacy of decades of political and crime-related violence.”
Drug cartels and militias control large swaths of these countries and extort money from shop owners, villagers and farmers, threatening to kill their children if they fail to pay. So the parents send the children north, usually accompanied by a relative or a paid smuggler.
Once they reach the U.S., those who are caught become wards of the state until they can be safely returned home, if that is possible given current conditions.
The children now have become part of the ongoing immigration reform debate, which remains a priority issue among many of the U.S.’s 25 million Latinos who are eligible to vote. The debate is over what to do with an estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants, most of them from Mexico and Central America.
The Democrat-controlled Senate passed a bill last year that offers them a path to citizenship. But the Republican-controlled House has so far opposed granting special treatment, arguing that it rewards illegal behaviour and encourages yet more illegal people.
Meanwhile, the government has quietly stepped up deportations that often result in family breakups, says Marisa Franco, an organizer with the campaign Not One More Deportation.
“Every day I hear from Latinos across the country who are struggling to get by after their husbands, parents or partners have been deported,” she said.
“Over 5.5 million children have parents who are undocumented and 4.5 million of these children are U.S. citizens. Between 2010 and 2012 the Obama administration deported more than 200,000 parents of U.S.-citizen children, and more since that time.
“Many of the children deported end up in the childwelfare system and may be separated indefinitely.”
If a mother tries to return to the U.S. to reunite with her children she can face a felony charge and up to 20 years in prison.
With more than two million deportations during the Obama administration, “Latinos remain under siege across the country by a government that is fixated on immigration enforcement and mass deportations … and the bulk of the blame lies at the feet of Republicans,” said Jose Calderon, president of the Spanish Federation.
Franco called the deportations a crisis that disproportionately targets Latinos.
“This is not just an immigration crisis, it is a racial crisis, a civil rights crisis,” she said.
The multibillion-dollar fence the U.S. has built along portions of the Mexican frontier has had little impact on illegal immigrants, most of whom are lured by the promise of jobs. Latinos like Franco believe the U.S. could better spend that money helping Central America out of its chronic poverty, political instability and crime.
Latinos are also furious with the conduct of many CBP agents, who have been accused of killing at least 42 people – mostly people on the Mexican side of the border – in retaliation for throwing rocks at the agents. Some were killed when agents fired behind protective fencing. One dead teenager had been shot 10 times. In the last few years, more than 800 complaints have been filed about border guard killings and misconduct.
In response last year, the CBP commissioned a Police Executive Research Forum investigation into the use of deadly force by border agents and officers. Their report recommended a prohibition on shooting at vehicles and rock throwers. It suggested the agents simply “remove themselves to a safe distance” and wear protective gear. Instead of firing at moving vehicles, the agents should “focus on … getting out of the way.”
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