What’s Keeping the US Awake: A Frenzied and Dramatic Avalanche of Undocumented Children

Between January and May, 47,000 minors coming from Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala and Mexico have crossed the border unaccompanied. That’s twice as many as in 2013.

Three months ago, 14-year-old Bryan left his coffee growing town of Quebrada María, Honduras, as well as his parents and five brothers. With only the equivalent of $10, he left for the United States. The small, tan and big-eyed boy has two missions: the first, helping his family; the second, buying a pair of glasses, since everything is blurry to him and his head hurts constantly.

If Bryan fails, he’ll join the ranks of 47,000 Central American and Mexican youths who, escaping poverty and violence, were detained while crossing the American border between January and May of 2014, a number twice as big as the one registered during the entirety of 2013, triggering a migration crisis never before seen in the U.S.

One of Bryan’s older brothers, who had already taken the trip, took it upon himself to accompany him. However, as soon as they arrived at the frontier city of Tonalá, Chiapas, he showed his outlaw face — he is a “marero.” “He was real mean to me, he met with the ‘junkies,’” Bryan explained. “I begged for money and he stole it to buy drugs and beat me up.”

Hurt and with no money, Bryan ran away from his brother and decided to continue on his own by train — La Bestia they call it – but due to his myopia, he belatedly realized the danger he was in. “I got on the train and saw there were tattooed ‘mareros’ and I was scared. I wanted to tell people, ‘get off, they’ll hurt you! They mug people and throw them off the train!'” The train started moving. A jolt ran through Bryan and he jumped from the moving train. He then wandered around until he reached a park. He approached a truck driver and obtained something impossible: he took him on a three-day trip to the city of Reynosa, Tamaulipa. This is the story Bryan narrates at Senda de Vida, the modest Christian shelter for Reynosa migrants.

Luis, on the other hand, is from Catemaco, Veracruz and is 17 years old. In three months, he tried entering the United States twice to meet with his father, who lives in Los Angeles. For the first trip, his father gave $1,300 to a trafficker, or “coyote,” who in the end abandoned Luis and 36 others in the desert of Coahuila. They wandered for 15 days with no water and merely 10 cans of tuna. The boy managed to reach the road and survived.

On the second try, he managed to cross the Bravo River with help from another “coyote,” but border patrol arrested him and sent him to a migrant detention center in Texas.

He was put in a cell with other minors. “It was full of people,” he said. The numbers from the U.S. border patrol show that from 2009 up to this date, 159,000 minors without adult companions were deported. Of those 159,000, 53 percent — that is to say, 84,397 — were Mexican.

Due to its proximity, Mexico is the country to where most deportations are made.

In that stretch of time, according to the Pew Research Center, Central American nations saw a dramatic growth on the rate of children traveling alone: Honduras, 1,272 percent; Guatemala, 930 percent; and El Salvador, 707 percent.

Michelle Brané, of the Women’s Refugee Commission based in Washington, D.C., told us that from 2003 to 2011, there have been an average of 7,000 unaccompanied minors arriving in the country; in 2012 that number grew to 13,000, but in 2013 it jumped to 47,000.

She says that the American government is overwhelmed because by 2014, “due to the recent entry, it’s estimated that the amount of unaccompanied children will be around 90,000 and for 2015, we expect over 100,000.”

Katarine, a frail and frightful eight-year-old Honduran girl, is in the Center for Attention to Frontier Minors (by its initials in Spanish, CAMEF) of the Tamaulipecan government located at Reynosa.

She holds a torn little piece of paper with her father’s telephone number, who is in “the States” and who “had sent for her.” The father paid a “coyote” to bring him his child, but the woman left her in Reynosa.

Katarine explains her story with an almost inaudible voice: “The woman caught a taxi and left.”

CAMEF channels the Central American minors detained by Mexican immigration officers and minors deported from the United States. CAMEF’s director, José Guadalupe Villegas, explains that in less than a year, the number of minors there grew around 250 percent.

Right now the center houses 22 minors who, 95 percent of the time, tried to meet their mother or father in the United States. Villegas explains that, even though the general motive may be economic, a growing number of children run away from their homes due to violence.

José is 15, Salvadoran and escaped his country three months ago because he was threatened by gangbangers. He said in detail, “They came into the school and when I came out, five guys with weapons were waiting for me. They surrounded me and said that if I have legs I better run.” His mother lives in Virginia and works in a restaurant. His family paid a “coyote” $3,500 to take him to the United States.

During the trip, they kept him in a storehouse along with 25 other people for three days, and were detained at Reynosa. The boy wears a pair of noteworthy Nike shoes. They’re two sizes larger than his own but he traded his with Luis, the Mexican boy who already tried to cross the American border twice. “I’m going back up again,” he says. “If the gangs find me, they’ll kill me.” His new friend Luis, who is about to be returned to Catemaco, shares the sentiment. He said, “I know it’s very risky. I’m aware, but I want to help my family.” We can tell this human river could break borders.