Teens Attempt to Immigrate to the United States
José Montelbaun had to work for more than a day on a construction site to buy his sneakers. But he wasn't going to be wearing them on the 160-mile trek from Tecun Uman, a town in northern Guatemala on the Mexico border, to Arriaga. The trip to Arriaga, the point in southern Mexico where Jose hoped to hop a train and ride it through Mexico on his way north to the United States, was just too dangerous.
The Suchiate River is just one of the obstacles facing José on his journey northward.
First, he would have to cross the Suchiate, a muddy river separating Guatemala and Mexico. Then there was the endless walk along hidden paths to Arriaga — known as a lawless land crawling with gangs, bandits and corrupt law-enforcement types waiting to pounce on migrants like Jose.
And so, the 17-year-old Honduran abandoned his sneakers, a rare find, but one that would have certainly gotten him mugged, and donned rubber flip-flops two sizes too small.
The journey, and the countless calculations made to keep out of harm's way, is common for Central American minors who risk their lives for better ones in the United States.
Backlogs on family visas are piling up as tighter security on the U.S. border makes it more difficult for undocumented immigrants living in the United States to go back for their children. Because of this, thousands of minors make the risky journey north alone, or with smugglers who routinely abandon and abuse them.
Searching for Understanding
CRS is increasingly concerned about the dangers faced in transit by these minors migrating alone. Of particular concern is their treatment when detained and deported, and the possibility that they may become victims of human trafficking. While the dangers are clear, there is little research in Latin America that looks at the way detention and deportation policies could exacerbate their vulnerability.
To document the nature and extent of human rights violations against minors in the process of being deported, CRS created a monitoring project that tracks Central American migrants as they journey — sometimes for weeks — from Mexico back to their countries of origin.
"These young migrants are those that didn't make it to the United States," says Betsy Wier, the project's manager. "Despite the risks involved, migration for youth has become a rite of passage if one is to support their family and improve their economic situation. Unaccompanied minors are vulnerable to robbery, extortion, abuse and human trafficking in addition to physical exhaustion, hunger, thirst and injuries."
Titled "Child Trafficking Prevention: Monitoring the Detention and Return of Central American Unaccompanied Minors," the nine-month project, ending in October, is a regional effort that includes CRS Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador.
CRS and partners working in each of the four countries are conducting 400 interviews with unaccompanied minors (ages 12 to 17) in key locations — from deportation centers to border crossings and shelters — and are consulting with immigration officials, child welfare organizations, consulate staff and government ministers to gauge the level of care and protection minors receive.
Just how many Central American minors are detained in Mexico is unknown, but CRS estimates they make up about 15 percent of the total Central American migrant population. According to that formula, there were 37,730 Guatemalan, Honduran, and Salvadoran minors detained in Mexico last year.
Their reasons for migrating vary. Many make the journey to reunite with family members already living in the United States.
"The disintegration of the family, that's what all of this is about," says Scalabrinian Father Ademar Barilli, director of Casa del Migrante in Tecun Uman, a CRS-sponsored shelter that provides lodging and legal assistance to migrants on the move. The shelter was a short-term home for approximately 16,000 migrants last year.
Limited Resources
For José, who also stopped at the Casa Del Migrante on his way to Arriaga, the decision to migrate was purely economic. The eldest of seven children and with only a second-grade education, Montelbaun needed work that could support a large family and his single mother.
"There's nothing here. If you buy food, you can't buy clothes, and if you buy clothes, you can't buy food," says José, who made it as far as Nogales, Mexico, two years ago before being deported back to Honduras, where he had been earning less than $4 a day by working construction.
Like José, most minors do not make it to the United States.
Most are detained in Mexico and some, depending on where they're detained, spend weeks, even months, being shuffled from one detention center to another as they are deported home.
Many young people stay in centers like La Casa de Nuestras Raices as they are being sent back home after attempts to migrate north.
Along the way, they can stop in places such as La Casa de Nuestras Raices, a government-run reception center in Quetzaltenango for Guatemalan minors being returned home. The center, which is a year old, has the capacity to hold 60 people, but routinely receives busloads of 100 minors or more.
Although the center's staff is committed to helping child migrants, the care they can provide is limited by their resources.
Built in the style of a juvenile detention center, the facility has no natural light, no windows that open, no outdoor recreation area and just two bathrooms, one for girls and one for boys.
"The adolescents come from one closed area [the detention center in Tapachula, Mexico] to another," says the center's director, Ivonne Rivera.
Ivonne is unable to provide medical or psychological attention for children that need it, and is left to her own devices to find medicine for the most common of ailments, such as upset stomachs and headaches.
Results To Date
Halfway through the monitoring project, with 250 interviews conducted, CRS and its partners have found the following:
- Few clear procedures are in place to protect children in detention or during the deportation process.
- The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador have all ratified, stipulates minors should be held separately from adults. But unaccompanied minors are detained anywhere from a few hours to several days mixed with adults, in immigration suboffices in Mexico.
- In detention, minors have a right to visit with their consulate representative, but most unaccompanied minors never speak with their consulate before leaving Mexico. This issue raises concern, particularly in cases of human trafficking and other abuses that should be reported to child welfare institutions by their consulate representative in order to conduct an investigation.
- In some southern Mexico border areas, immigration officials will often ignore official procedures altogether. Instead of detaining foreign minors, they will force them to cross back over the border into Guatemala, a practice that creates a population of minors in a state of limbo, unable to cross the border and without the means to return to their homes.
- The repatriation and family reunification processes are not always functioning. Officials sometimes fail to verify to the degree necessary the guardianship of the minor they are releasing.
With the final report due out this fall, CRS and its partners hope to make recommendations for government civil society organizations in order to better protect and care for unaccompanied minors in the region.
