‘Flee or die’: violence drives Central America’s child migrants to US border

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http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/09/central-america-child-migrants-us-border-crisis

Obama heads to Texas as the mirage of an open door on the southern border triggers a political storm in Washington

Jo Tuckman in San Pedro Sula
The Guardian, Wednesday 9 July 2014 11.28 EDT

A group of immigrants from Honduras and El Salvador who crossed the US-Mexico border illegally are stopped in Texas. Photograph: Eric Gay/AP


Two weeks ago, Karla arrived at the Texas border with her two very young children, her mother, and three siblings under the age of 15.

It had taken the family a month to make the 1,500 mile journey from their home in northern Honduras, travelling by bus through Guatemala and Mexico. They had sold everything they owned to pay a network of people smugglers who bribed the way clear through checkpoints along the route.

Karla headed north, partly because she had heard the US had begun allowing children to enter legally. This is what the smugglers were saying, and the family knew others who had safely made it across the frontier.

But the main motive for the journey was fear: Karla wanted to get beyond the reach of her father and his contacts in the street gangs which have helped turn Honduras into the country with the highest murder rate in the world.


Karla says her father was seeking revenge after he was convicted of raping her as a child and sent to prison. He had already hired a gunman to kill her older brother who fled illegally to the US.

When the gruelling journey eventually brought them to the banks of the Rio Bravo, Karla thought the family’s nightmare was finally over. But after putting themselves in the care of a US customs agent, a new one began.

Instead of being taken to a detention centre in Texas for processing, they were sent straight back to Mexican immigration control to be sent home.

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http://www.chron.com/news/texas/article/UN-pushes-for-migrants-to-be-called-refugees-5607969.php

UN pushes for migrants to be called refugees

By ALBERTO ARCE and MICHAEL WEISSENSTEIN, Associated Press | July 8, 2014 | Updated: July 8, 2014 9:32pm

SAN JOSE, Costa Rica (AP) — United Nations officials are pushing for many of the Central Americans fleeing to the U.S. to be treated as refugees displaced by armed conflict, a designation meant to increase pressure on the United States and Mexico to accept tens of thousands of people currently ineligible for asylum.

Officials with the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees say they hope to see movement toward a regional agreement on that status Thursday when migration and interior department representatives from the U.S., Mexico, and Central America meet in Nicaragua. The group will discuss updating a 30-year-old declaration regarding the obligations that nations have to aid refugees.

While such a resolution would lack any legal weight, the agency said it believes "the U.S. and Mexico should recognize that this is a refugee situation, which implies that they shouldn't be automatically sent to their home countries but rather receive international protection."

Most of the people widely considered to be refugees by the international community are fleeing more traditional political or ethnic conflicts like those in Syria or the Sudan. Central Americans would be among the first modern migrants considered refugees because they are fleeing violence and extortion at the hands of criminal gangs.

Central America's Northern Triangle of Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras has become one of the most violent regions on earth in recent years, with swathes of all three countries under the control of drug traffickers and street gangs who rob, rape and extort ordinary citizens with impunity.

Honduras, a primary transit point for U.S.-bound cocaine, has the world's highest homicide rate for a nation that is not at war. Hondurans who are used to hiding indoors at night have been terrorized anew in recent months by a wave of attacks against churches, schools and buses.

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1. k

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Another returnee, Martha, 22, said the experience of a few weeks in a Mexican holding centre with her three much younger siblings was not something she wanted to relive. “They treated us like dogs and the little ones were getting very upset at being cooped up,” she said, adding that she decided against applying for asylum in Mexico after officials told her it would mean another six months in detention.

But while she was happy to have regained her freedom, she was nervous about what to do with it.

Her family, from the mountainous state of Olancho, had for eight years depended on remittances sent by their mother, who was working illegally in Houston. Their problems began, she said, when she refused the advances of a local drug trafficker. Soon after, the family home was sprayed with bullets, and the whole family fled to the capital, Tegucigalpa. When the dealer tracked her down once again, she led her siblings north in the hopes of joining their mother. They got to Chiapas before being detained by Mexican officials.

Back in Honduras, Martha wanted to call her mother to discuss what to do next, but she said a Mexican guard had stolen her phone. “The only thing I can think of doing is to try again.”

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4. One third of the world's murders happen in South and Central America

the violence there is beyond belief.