Chronicle of a Crisis Foretold

The story broke in the headlines as if it were news. President Barack Obama reported at the beginning of June that more than 42,000 unaccompanied children had been detained at the border while attempting to illegally enter the country. Most are from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. He called the exodus a “humanitarian crisis” and called for special measures.

Everyone is pointing fingers. Republicans blame Obama’s immigration policies. The federal government says that organized crime spread rumors that minors could enter the United States with no consequences. Central American governments blame drug consumption in the United States and the violence generated by drug trafficking. Pro-immigrant activists claim that it is because there was no immigration reform.

To understand the root of the problem one must understand the reasons so many minors undertake the torturous trip to the north. In eight days, my production team and I covered more than 5,700 miles. We traveled to the immigrants’ home countries as well as to both sides of the border, McAllen (in Texas) and Reynosa (in Tamaulipas, Mexico).

In Guatemala, two-thirds of the rural population live on less than a dollar a day. However, one can also see traces of poverty in the capital city. There we met Esvin, a man who works recycling garbage. In one day of work he can earn 100 quetzals, or about $12. It’s sufficient, he says, to feed his family. If it were truly possible for his two teenage daughters to go to the United States and stay there, he wouldn’t hesitate to send them.

In El Salvador, a truce between the major gangs in 2012 considerably reduced the number of homicides, but there is little left of this agreement and the death rate is growing. A gang member, who asked to remain anonymous for security reasons, told me that young people join the gangs because of the lack of work and study opportunities. But defenders of human rights paint a different picture. They say the gangs harass young people, forcing them to join their ranks or pay the consequences, often with their lives. Many of the minors have confirmed this: They are not emigrating; they are fleeing out of fear.

In Honduras, considered the most dangerous country in the world, poverty and latent danger in the streets caused by fights between gangs combine with the growing presence of drug cartels. Being young in Honduras is dangerous. According to the National Observatory on Violence*, more than half of homicide victims in the country are younger than 30 years old. Young Hondurans have two options: leave, or stay and risk death. It was the danger that her three sons faced that brought one Honduran mother to flee north. I met her in a shelter in Reynosa. “They wanted my son for a hit man,” she told me tearfully.

This was a crisis waiting to happen. The United States knew for years that the exodus of Central American minors was growing. Since 2011, the number of unaccompanied minors arriving at the southwest border from Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras has multiplied to extraordinary levels. It isn’t happening because of political declarations or the Machiavellian plans of unscrupulous coyotes. It’s happening because of the negligible importance that has been given to the life of a poor, threatened child with no opportunities, who is traveling alone.

The statistics are alarming. It’s worrying that detention centers for undocumented immigrants in border towns are unsuitable for minors. In fact, they aren’t suitable for anyone. It is inhumane to keep an innocent child detained who has just had the traumatic experience of crossing the border, an experience that an adult could hardly bear.

Humanitarian crisis? Yes. Surprise? No. Did the United States know about it beforehand? Yes. Did it take any measures to prevent it? No. Was it wrong to wait for 42,000 minors to arrive to announce the crisis? Yes. But is the United States responsible for the crisis? No. Will it continue? Maybe, if nothing changes.

*Editor’s note: Data cited may be from either the National Observatory on Violence Against Women or the National Observatory on Violence and Gender.