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We have been as shocked as anyone by the soaring numbers of unaccompanied children and young teenagers illegally crossing the border from Mexico over the last few years.
Obama administration officials said June 2 that 47,017 children traveling without parents or a legal guardian had been caught at the southwestern border since Oct. 1, representing a 92 percent increase over the same period in the previous year, with most coming from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, which have dramatic gang violence problems.
Many of the youths are fleeing that violence; others are trying to reunite with a parent or parents in the United States.
The problem has become so serious that President Barack Obama has asked the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to deal with the “urgent humanitarian situation” as a crisis, providing shelter, medical care and transportation.
And the numbers alone don’t tell the whole story.
Megan McKenna, an official of the advocacy group Kids in Need of Defense, said at a forum June 3 at the Center for Migration Studies, founded by the Scalabrinian Fathers in Manhattan, that the unprecedented surge includes younger children and a higher percentage of girls than in the past.
Many of the children are younger than 13 and girls comprise 40 percent of the total, she said. Indeed, a federal official touring a Border Patrol station in Texas said that one of the children he saw there was only 3 years old.
To cope, U.S. officials recently set up two emergency shelters near the southwestern border for 1,800 young people, transferring them from makeshift facilities at Border Patrol stations. Last Friday, the administration also announced a program to provide lawyers to children facing deportation.
But with just $2 million in grants to hire 100 lawyers and paralegals, the challenge remains formidable.
While most of the young people who enter the country without parents or an older relative will eventually be returned to their homeland, each case must be handled individually and more are pouring in every day.
The Church in the United States is acutely aware of the complex circumstances of immigration in general and of this mushrooming problem of unaccompanied minors.
Auxiliary Bishop Eusebio Elizondo of Seattle, chairman of the U.S. Bishops’ Committee on Migration, called the involvement of FEMA a “good first step” in addressing the crisis. He added, however, that the problem of extremely vulnerable children must be addressed at its roots: particularly the violence in the children’s home countries, so that they can be secure where they live.
As it is now, these children are vulnerable not just to gang violence but also to human traffickers and unscrupulous smugglers.
And as Bishop Elizondo pointed out in his statements in recent days, this is more than simply an immigration issue and it should not be politicized or give cause for negative rhetoric.
“It is truly a humanitarian crisis, which requires a comprehensive response and cooperation between the branches of the U.S. government,” the bishop said. “Young lives are at stake.”
Yes, they are. And we must marshal every resource available as a nation, as a Church and as individuals to help them.
