The Children's Crusade at the U.S.-Mexico Border

"I heard there was an opportunity to come."

"I heard on the news that mothers with their babies and minors could come."

"[My baby's father?] He abandoned us. We have nothing."

Mayra, 17, Guatemalan refugee

 

"[It's nonsense that more migrants were coming because I am] a nice guy."

"They come because their circumstance is so bad."

U.S.President Joe Biden 

A young girl carries a child inside a U.S. Customs and Border Protection holding area in El Paso, Texas. Lucas Jackson/Reuters

 

Since October of 2020, roughly two-thirds of unaccompanied minors taken into custody at the border of Mexico and the U.S. have travelled from Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras. The remainder for the most part are Mexican children. Currently the number in the custody of a U.S.Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) refugee office managing a government shelter system stands at 9,200. Most of these children are in their teens, but there are hundreds under 12 years of age.

Among the unaccompanied children many hope to become reunited with family members. Many others have left their homes to escape violence and poverty, a fact well understood by immigration experts. Slumping economies caused by the COVID-19 pandemic has been the cause of many more migrants leaving their home countries. Hurricanes have recently battered Central America.

 

A young asylum seeker arrives with her family at a bus station after being released by US border patrol in Brownsville, Texas, on 25 February. Photograph: John Moore/Getty Images

 

Under the new Biden administration, a recent change in policy permits unaccompanied children into the United States even while single adults and families crossing illegally continue to be expelled. Under the previous Trump and Obama administrations in 2019 and 2014, similar spikes in migrant crossings from Mexico to the U.S. also occurred.

While the potentially dangerous trip to the border is undertaken by some children on their own, or through a smuggler, in alternate instances children travel with older siblings, grandparents or other relatives and they can be separated by Customs and Border Protection once caught at the border.

Upon being taken into custody the children are meant to be transferred out of Customs and Border Protection to shelters operated by Health and Human Services within a 72-hour period. With limited shelter space, however, border detention centres may see children remaining for longer periods, and this is what is happening at the present time, due to an influx of greater numbers.

 

Children play between tents at a makeshift migrant camp in Matamoros, Tamaulipas state, Mexico. Bloomberg

 

Originally constructed to house adult men for short periods of time, the border stations have the potential to pose COVID-19 health risks to children and staff alike, in overcrowded conditions. When they gain the shelters, children can be released to parents or other sponsors or alternately placed in foster care where asylum can be pursued or alternate ways sought to remain in the U.S. -- other than to be deported.

 

Of the approximately 200,000 unaccompanied children entering the country from fiscal year 2014 to fiscal year 2019, four percent were removed, according to U.S. Department of Homeland Security data. Several emergency shelters for children in Texas have been opened by the administration, along with plans to utilize the Dallas convention centre for up to three thousand migrant teen boys to be housed.

 

Looking to the longer term, the Biden administration is planning to establish programs permitting Central Americans to apply for refugee status in the United States from their home countries, while also making an effort to improve conditions in those countries. Allied with that effort, a program has been restarted allowing certain Central American children with parents living lawfully in the U.S. to apply for a refugee resettlement from their home countries.

 

A U.S. Border Patrol agent releases a young asylum seeker with her family at a bus station on February 25 in Brownsville, Texas. (CNN)