Increasingly, Youths Are Crossing US-Mexico Border Alone and Undocumented Julie Shaw - Philly.com
go to original December 22, 2013

Migrant children deported into Reynosa, Mexico. (Eugenio del Bosque)

Esteban rode on top of seven cargo trains, narrowly escaped death at the hands of a Mexican gang leader and was robbed on his years-long journey from Honduras to Philadelphia.

He left home at age 12 with an older friend, fleeing an abusive stepfather. At 15, he waded across the knee-deep Rio Grande into Texas. Like many youths, he came to the U.S. because it offers "more opportunities," he said.

And like a staggering number of minors under 18, Esteban - not his real name - entered without papers and without a parent or adult guardian.

In the last two years, the number of unaccompanied children who have made the dangerous journey alone, and who have ended up in federal custody, has nearly quadrupled.

In fiscal year 2011, the Department of Homeland Security detained 6,560 unaccompanied youths, then put them in the care of the Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR). In fiscal year 2013, which ended Sept. 30, that number soared to 24,668.

Most of these minors came from the Central American countries of Guatemala (37 percent), Honduras (30 percent) and El Salvador (26 percent). In the most recent fiscal year, only 3 percent came from Mexico.

The shocking surge in the number of children trekking into the country alone and without papers comes at a time when the total number of immigrants detained after entering the country illegally is at a 40-year low.

Read the rest at Philly.com

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