Border Patrol has captured more than 52,000 unaccompanied minors since October — double last year’s number. Some experts project the number of children to reach 142,000 for all of fiscal 2015. By Johannes Schmitt
Five-year-old Dalisei spent her first night in the United States in jail.
Her mother had paid a “coyote” — as traffickers of migrants are known — 6,000 dollars to guide the two of them illegally into the United States. They left their small village in Honduras, crossed Mexico to the Texas border and floated across the Rio Grande River on a raft at night.
After a five-hour march through the Texas hinterlands, they were captured by police at a highway overpass.
Hungry, dirty and completely exhausted, the two were taken to a Border Patrol station in McAllen, Texas.
“We slept on the bare floor, some lying down, others sitting. There were no blankets, there was nothing,” the 27-year-old mother, Karla Lara, said in Spanish.
They were in US custody for five days and were only given a tortilla with a small amount of egg, an apple and a bottle of water daily.
Dasilei cried.
“You cry, because you didn’t think it would be like this,” said Lara.
Every day, hundreds of illegal immigrants reach the heavily patrolled border in the Rio Grande Valley without possessions and often heavily in debt — young parents, hordes of unaccompanied children, occasional loners.
They’ve got nothing but the dirty clothes on their backs. An 11-year-old boy from Guatemala, who was recently found dead in the
bushes, was wearing nothing but boots and jeans. The phone number of his brother in Chicago was engraved on his belt.
Their numbers have exploded. While US politicians argue incessantly over immigration reform in Washington, and whether or not to grant President Barack Obama another $3.7 million to deal with the crisis, the Border Patrol stations and courts are bending under the onslaught.
Border Patrol has captured more than 52,000 unaccompanied minors since October — double last year’s number. Three-quarters come from Central America’s northern triangle: Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.
Some experts project the number of children to reach 90,000 by October and 142,000 for all of fiscal 2015.
Obama has called it a humanitarian crisis.
“It’s damn ugly. There are a lot of drug dealers, a lot of murders,” a woman from Guatemala said of the life in her homeland which prompted her to make the perilous journey.
“Sometimes they kill people on the bus or the highway, because they are enemies or have not paid,” her 12-year-old son said in the makeshift refuge in a McAllen church. As he speaks, he spoons chicken soup out of a plastic bowl — he hasn’t eaten in almost a week.
Because the smugglers know a good business opportunity when they see one, they’ve spread false information among migrants about American immigration policy to attract more people to the north.
They talk about “permisos” (permits) and even free passes to stay in the United States.
There actually are “permisos” for undocumented immigrants. They just don’t do what their name implies: rather than a free pass for a new life, the immigrants receive a yellow envelope containing a court summons where their future and possible deportation will be decided.
A mere 230 immigration-law judges are dealing with a backlog of 375,000 cases, according to TRAC Immigration — more than 15,000 cases per judge. Many cases have been pending for years.
While the justice system creeps along, the children continue to stream across the border.
The US government’s new information campaign is attempting to ward off the storm.
“I thought my child would easily get papers in the US ... I thought wrong,” says a poster in Spanish put up by the Border Patrol. The photo shows a person wandering through a barren landscape.
In a tone of near desperation, Obama warned Central American parents in a TV interview: “Don’t send your children unaccompanied, on trains or through a bunch of smugglers.”
He asked Congress to adjust rules it passed in 2002 and 2008 that regulate the handling of child migrants and give special protection to all minors except those from Canada and Mexico.
Right now, the children, some as young as 4 and 5, are in the custody of the federal Department of Health and Human Services and their detention centres. They may be sent to stay with relatives in the United States or foster families until their cases are resolved.
Only the children from Canada or Mexico can be deported immediately.
The Obama administration wants to expedite deportations. It wants Border Patrol to be able to decide right at the border if a child will be allowed to see an immigration judge or if the child should be immediately returned to its homeland.
The child would have to make clear that he or she is afraid of persecution or trafficking in their homeland.
But the idea that a 4-year-old would be able to convince a Border Patrol officer of that is “patently absurd,” said Wendy Young of Kids in Need of Defense (KIND), an advocacy group for unaccompanied migrant children.
A venture into the scrubby landscape of south-west Texas uncovers remnants of the dangerous journeys. A pair of forgotten child-size sandals lie on the dirt road, run over again and again by the white Border Patrol SUVs.
A few kilometres away on the banks of the Rio Grande, a local reporter says he discovered clothes, water bottles, diapers, swimsuits and even condoms.
Small rafts carry up to 12 people across the murky Rio Grande waters under the cover of darkness. Karla Lara and Dalisei crossed there, a trip of less than 100 metres that cost 1,000 dollars.
Just beyond the river bend, the motorboats of the Texas Highway Patrol could be waiting, armed with M240B machine guns, M4 carbines, pistols, floodlights and surveillance cameras. Masked and camouflaged policemen search for “coyotes” and drug smugglers.
Some migrants swim, others wade through the shallow waters, said one of the border policemen during his lunch break in Anzalduas Park, a green reserve in Mission, Texas where Texans come to fish in the river, grill steaks and have picnics.
The park is patrolled around the clock. A woman park visitor tells a TV reporter how happy she is that the park is well protected. Her small son warily eyes the partially masked officers with their machine guns.
“They’re protecting the water and the park,” the mother tells him.
“So that no one can come and hurt you.”
Obama wants to spend $2 billion (1.46 billion euros) to reinforce the US border. As a US senator in 2005, he voted to secure about one-third of the 3,200-kilometre-long US-Mexico border with fences and gates.
But for now, what the border needs is more police, more judges and more shelters for the throngs of immigrant children.
In the border town of McAllen, brick facades and barbed wire hide the droves of women and children cowering on a concrete floor in 30-degree-Celsius heat. In the hopelessly overcrowded border station, hundreds share a few portable toilets.
About 50 of them are mothers, cooped up in this confined space for days on end with their children. The uniformed officers only touch them wearing blue rubber gloves.
The US General Services Administration (GSA) has leased a 5,000-square-metre warehouse near the border, where remodelling has already begun to accommodate more.
“We need a shower here, and another here and another here,” a GSA official told a worker. “We have to at least give them some space.”
The space was designated to accommodate up to 1,200 children.
It’s still not enough to shelter everyone, so migrants are being flown to other destinations within Texas or to other states in the region.
In a newly organised camp on a US Air Force base in San Antonio, measles, chickenpox and scabies are making the rounds, Fox News reported.
In southern California, protesters barred the way for three busloads of migrants from Texas. An angry, hateful mob shook its fists and yelled at the children, who were sitting behind windows masked for their protection.
“Everything is taken from them,” said Ofelia de los Santos, a volunteer at the Sacred Heart Catholic Church in McAllen.
The children are dehydrated and suffering from colds, flu, diarrhoea and upset stomachs when police drop them off at the bus stations for the trips and hand them their yellow envelopes.
Often they face 10, 20 to 40-hour bus rides — alone and without being able to speak English — to get to their relatives’ homes. The volunteers explain to them where and when they need to get off.
“We give them a meal, a bath, clean clothes, and a bag of snacks,” Santos said. Behind her, next to a mobile-shower trolley, stands a table with shampoo, soap and stacks of towels.
In the hall next to the showers, volunteers have lined up diapers, milk powder and baby oil, next to them combs and toothbrushes and piles of clean donated clothing. There are toys for the smaller ones.
Five-year-old Dalisei gets a plastic pony and children’s book and now she doesn’t want to let go of her new treasures.
The stream of migrants keeps up.
Soon another mother with a nearly naked baby in her arms is dropped off at the bus station, where the Sacred Heart volunteers warmly welcome and guide her to the circle of those who, washed and fed, wait for their ride into what they hope will be a better life.
But right now, she has fear written on her face and her clothing reeks from the long journey so far. — DPA
STRUGGLE: Karla Lara, left, and daughter Dalisei at the Sacred Heart Church welfare centre in McAllen, Texas. Lara was waiting to leave for Chicago by
