Parents Must Stop Sending Their Children …

Today, the state of Texas asked the U.S. Department of Homeland Security for $30 million to help with the crisis unfolding on the Mexico-U.S. border, after the number of immigrant children arriving unaccompanied from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala has skyrocketed. This past Thursday, the attorney general from Texas highlighted in a letter that border agents have reported an increase of 92 percent in the number of minor immigrants attempting to cross the border without their parents.

“The influx of child immigrants has so overwhelmed the U.S. Border Patrol that federal agents are devoting time and resources to the humanitarian aspects of the influx. Therefore, we are concerned federal authorities are not available to secure the border and successfully stop cross-border criminal activity … We have grave concerns that dangerous cartel activity, including narcotics smuggling and human trafficking, will go unchecked,” wrote the attorney general.

This Thursday, in response to this alarming crisis, the U.S. government urged Central American parents to stop sending their children alone or through criminal smuggling organizations to the United States.

It seems that the Honduran president was right about what he just said on his trip to Washington, D.C. The U.S. does not understand the problem: This situation is [not] going to be resolved by asking parents to stop sending their children to the United States. The influx of minors crossing the border unaccompanied is not happening because they are being sent there, but rather because they are either escaping organized criminal violence in their countries or fear being recruited by gangs and other criminal groups. On his visit to Washington, D.C., the Honduran president said that the large influx of Central American children arriving in the U.S. are “war refugees,” and that the U.S. has to do more to address the causes of drug trafficking violence, which is causing these children to leave their countries. He also said that “the economic assistance the U.S. has allocated to fighting drug trafficking and the stabilization of Honduras, as well as its impact, is minimal.”*

“This is distressing because it illustrates, perhaps, that the inability to comprehend the causes of illegal immigration and, in great part, violence relates to how this misunderstanding of the problem creates these situations. We are suffering the consequences of what is misunderstood here — in the United States.”*

In fiscal year 2013, which ended last September, the U.S. Border Patrol reported 24,000 children crossing the border unaccompanied, and by May of this year, the number had increased to 47,000, especially in the Texas Rio Grande Valley sector. Central American leaders have been complaining at regional summits that the international aid to fight organized crime and uncertainty is too small, so let’s see if the U.S. comes to its senses now that the amount of immigrants arriving at the border includes thousands of minors. Let’s see if they get it. It is worrisome to discover that the response of the U.S. government has been for the parents to stop sending their children to the U.S. If that’s their understanding of the problem, helping them get it would be like plowing the ocean.

*Editor’s note: The original quotation, accurately translated, could not be verified.