“The police are overwhelmingly corrupt, as is the judicial system and prosecutors,” said Dana Frank, a history professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who has written widely on human rights and U.S. Experts on the region say this helps explain why an estimated 8,000 children flee the country unaccompanied each year. An estimated 270 Honduran children were killed within the first three months of 2014 according to Casa Alianza, a nonprofit that works with children across Latin America. The police do nothing.”Ī country of just 8 million, Honduras boasts the world’s highest per capita homicide rate, with 90.4 homicides per 100,000 people, according to U.N. Adults and children, old people, to get money. “There’s a lot of crime, a lot of narcotraffickers ,” she said. There’s just one last attempt to survive, and try to have some quality of life.” “There’s not any calculated attempt to game the system. “I’ve had parents, and even some of the children tell me, ‘There is no childhood here,’” said Elizabeth Kennedy, a Fulbright scholar who is currently researching the causes of child migration in Central America. Cesar said he “barely left the house” despite living far out in the countryside. The violence has spread from urban centers like Guatemala City to rural villages. Both boys and girls talked of forced recruitment by street gangs and transnational drug cartels, and some had witnessed murders of family members, friends and classmates. Many young girls reported being victims of sexual violence, including rape and assault by gang members. Many kids cited the dissolution of family networks, or a desire to reunite with family in the U.S., but violence was a recurrent theme. The study noted only one instance in 404 interviews in which a child specifically mentioned the possibility of benefitting from U.S. īut in a 2011 report prepared by researchers at the U.N.’s refugee agency, the unaccompanied minors gave their own menu of reasons for leaving Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador. Jeff Flake, R.-Arizona.įollow NBC News Investigations on Twitter and Facebook. "To reject out of hand the notion that perception of lax enforcement is not a motivator is naive at best and destructive at worst," said Sen. “law” giving a “free pass” to unaccompanied children and mothers with children. According to the memo, detainees said they migrated because of a “new” U.S. An internal report from Customs and Border Protection, recently made public by Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee, cited interviews with 230 immigrants detained at the border in May. Others say rumors and lax enforcement are driving the growing numbers. “They cannot go back to their homeland for fear of death, persecution.” “This crisis to us is like the refugee crisis from Europe after WWII,” said Nancy Langer, interim vice president for mission advancement at Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, an advocacy group that works with migrants. Widespread poverty, and increasingly unstable states are also fueling migration from the region, some say. law doesn’t allow unaccompanied minors from Central America to be deported immediately.Įarlier this month, the White House called the influx a humanitarian crisis fueled by increasing violence and instability in countries like El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala, which have some of the highest murder rates in the world. Many are now crowded into holding areas along the border, since U.S. More than 47,000 “unaccompanied minors” - kids traveling alone or with other youths - have been apprehended along the Southwestern border since October, and the number is projected to rise to 10,000 a month by fall. The numbers jumped in 2011 and have doubled every year since. Just four years ago, about 6,000 unaccompanied kids crossed the border annually. border that is now overwhelming the federal government. He joined a wave of Central American children crossing the U.S. “You arrive at a point where you can take no more.” “I wanted to escape all of that,” he said.
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