Number of children, families caught crossing border rising again

HOUSTON – The number of unaccompanied children and families caught illegally crossing the southern border is again on the rise.

According to the Department of Homeland Security, Border Patrol sectors from Laredo to San Diego are reporting increases. The federal government shows the vast majority of those caught are from El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala.

According to DHS, the number of family units caught crossing the border rose 105 percent from October 2015 through June 2016 in comparison with those time periods in 2014 and 2015. Border Patrol sectors also reported a 62 percent rise in the number of unaccompanied children. The steepest increases were seen in the El Paso and Yuma Border Patrol sectors.

Channel 2 Investigates rode with Border Patrol agents in an area south of McAllen to see this increase firsthand. In a matter of hours, agents caught four groups of immigrants coming across the Rio Grande. All were from Central America.

[READ: Unaccompanied children released to sponsors by county | Number of family units and unaccompanied children apprehended by Border Patrol]

The immigrants KPRC 2 News saw ranged in age from 2 to 22 years old. Many of the teenagers seen crossed the border without their parents. One of those caught just after crossing the river was a 17-year-old girl who was five months pregnant.

Most of the women said they came to the U.S. because they wanted better schooling for their children.

“(I) trust in God, he won’t desert me. I trust this country will support children,” a woman from El Salvador told us.

Others we spoke with said they were fleeing violence or a lack of jobs in their home countries.


File: BP Southwest Border Family Units and UAC Apps - June_20160728

“They comment that if they come here that they'll be released,” supervisory Border Patrol Agent Marlene Castro said. “They never specify. It's just something they say that they heard.”

“Are the (smugglers) still pushing that lie?” asked Channel 2 Investigator Robert Arnold.

“Absolutely,” Castro said. “They're going to tell them anything to take their money.”

Castro recalled two recent cases where smugglers abandoned children they were paid to take into the U.S. Castro said one smuggler just handed a 2-year-old girl over to a stranger.

“The smuggler handed her to an alien who knew nothing about her.

He said, 'Here, take her,'” Castro said.

Border Patrol agents were able to contact her family because the little girl’s personal information was written in marker on the front of her onesie. Castro said there was another case of a smuggler abandoning a child by the river.

“He just left the child on the river bank; a 2-year-old boy,” said Castro.

While the numbers seen along the southern border have not yet reached the levels seen in 2014, the steep increases are troubling to federal officials. Congress has spent $750,000,000 over the past year to help improve conditions in Central America in the hopes it would decrease the number of immigrants sneaking into the U.S.

The federal government also recently announced an expansion of a program that allows Central American citizens to apply for refugee protection in their home countries. The U.S. partnered with Costa Rica to allow the most vulnerable Central American citizens to be transferred to that country while the federal government processes their cases.

DHS reported 9,500 applications for its Central American Minors program. This program allows parents who are in the U.S. legally to apply for refugee status for their children who are still in Honduras, Guatemala or El Salvador.

“They are running for their lives,” Wendy Young, president of Kids In Need of Defense (KIND), said. “A lot of the children we work with have seen family members murdered. This is really a refugee movement, this is not a voluntary immigration movement.”

KIND provides free legal services to unaccompanied children locked in the immigration process. According to a database maintained by Syracuse University, the average wait time for immigrants from countries other than Mexico to have their cases heard in immigration court is more than 600 days.

Young said the recent government initiatives are a positive step to help those trying to flee the violence and poverty in their homes countries, but added it will take time to see what impact these programs will have on the number of Central American immigrants making the journey north.

“These are conditions that don't get resolved overnight,” Young said.


About the Author:

Award winning investigative journalist who joined KPRC 2 in July 2000. Husband and father of the Master of Disaster and Chaos Gremlin. “I don’t drink coffee to wake up, I wake up to drink coffee.”