Why 90,000 Children Flooding Our Border Is Not an Immigration Story

*The best piece of information that I’ve read, so far, about the humanitarian crisis on the U.S. border. The wave of unaccompanied child immigrants is expected to reach 90,ooo by the end of the year. Media and politicians are misreading and misreporting the crisis. This is not about immigration. VL

By Brian Resnick, National Journal

The numbers are astounding.

Just a few weeks ago, the United States was projecting 60,000 unaccompanied minors would attempt to illegally cross the U.S.-Mexico border by the end of the year. That projection is now 90,000, and it may be surpassed.

Virtual cities of children are picking up and fleeing El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala—some of the most dangerous places in this hemisphere. In Washington, the story has stoked the longstanding debate over border policy. But U.S. immigration policy is just a small part of this story. Yes, the U.S. immigration system is nowbottlenecked with the influx, prompting emergency response from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. But changing U.S. border policy won’t stem the root of the exodus.

“The normal migration patterns in this region have changed,” Leslie Velez, senior protection officer at the U.N. High Commission for Refugees, explains. These people aren’t coming here for economic opportunity. They are fleeing for their lives.

Earlier this year, the United Nations High Commissioner on Refugees surveyed 404 children from Mexico and Central America who arrived in the United States illegally, and asked a simple question: Why did you leave? The report found “that no less than 58 percent of the 404 children interviewed were forcibly displaced” to a degree that warranted international protection, meaning that if the U.S. refused these children, it could be in breach of U.N. conventions.

Velez was one of the authors of that report, interviewing undocumented immigrant children across the U.S. immigration system for two hours each. They told Velez and her team stories of extreme violence, and fear of being caught up in gangs. Forty-eight percent of the children “shared experiences of how they had been personally affected by the augmented violence” at the hands of “organized armed criminal actors, including drug cartels and gangs, or by state actors.”

Recently, I spoke with Velez over the phone to learn more about the forces motivating children to make the journey north. Below is an edited transcript of our conversation.

Click HERE to read the full story.

[Photo courtesy office of Rep. Henry Cuellar]

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