THE DEPORTATION DILEMMA:
REUNITING IMMIGRANT FAMILIES
Beryl Flom, League of Women Voters of San Diego, September 2015
The April 27, 2015 issue of The New Yorker magazine had an article titled "Where Are the
Children?" by Sarah Stillman. She
described the struggle of a family from Guatemala City in reuniting in Trenton,
NJ. The parents first immigrated to the
U.S. in the mid-nineties to find better jobs so they could pay for their
children's education. Alfredo had a
relative in Trenton who helped him get construction work, but Melida could only
find minimum wage jobs. They sent money
home to the grandparents who were raising the four kids and paid for a new
house for the family. The two daughters
made it into the U.S., but the two young teen-aged boys were still in
Guatemala. Gang rivalries were
increasing and homicides were six times the global average. The boys watched four kids gunned down one
day on their way home from school.
Melida's father was brutally robbed at gunpoint.
The parents finally decided to bring the boys to Trenton
so they hired a network of recommended coyotes (smugglers) and paid them
$4,000. The parents were able to track
them by cell phone as they journeyed toward the Rio Grande into Texas, but they
lost contact with them at the border.
Finally, they received a series of phone calls demanding first $2,000 to
pay for their food and care and then $5,000 to be sent immediately or the boys
could be in serious trouble. They had
been picked up by a woman near the border in Texas and taken to a "stash
house" in Rio Grande. Alfredo and
Melida wired $2,000 that they collected from friends and relatives, but they
finally went to their pastor who took them to meet with the police in Trenton;
the police contacted Homeland Security in NJ who then contacted a special stash
investigative team for Homeland Security in the Rio Grande Valley. Within an hour, the boys had been located by
a search party. The officers asked the
woman running the house with her son to drive all the children to a parking lot
and they were transferred to "hieleras" or iceboxes used by the
Border Patrol to hold unaccompanied minors.
They went from living in a home with food, a couch to sleep on and TV to
living in a frigid cell lying on a concrete floor and frozen bologna sandwiches
for food. U.S. Customs and Border Patrol
is only allowed by law to hold children in the hieleras for 72 hours, but these
two boys were there for ten days.
Children are supposed to be transferred to the Health and Human
Services' Office of Refugee Resettlement who puts them into shelters and seeks
to reunite them with their families until they have a court hearing. (Last June, five immigrants' rights groups
across the country sued Customs and Border Patrol for child mistreatment
including sexual assault, inadequate food and water, and harsh
conditions.)
Finally, after three weeks in custody, the boys were
flown to Trenton to reunite with their family.
They bought clothes and went to school, learned English and sports, and
settled into their new life. Three months
later, one was summoned to deportation court, so the parents hired an attorney
because success of avoiding deportation is much higher with legal
representation. There is no free legal
counsel in deportation court. Luckily
for him, he was given more time to develop his case and, meanwhile in November
2014, President Obama issued an order that undocumented families could stay
together in the U.S. (In February, 2015, the judge issued a preliminary
injunction against the President's plan; the Obama Administration has appealed
that decision, but it is still in proceedings.)
As thousands of unaccompanied children and mothers with
children from the Northern Triangle (El Salvador - 33,000, Guatemala - 79,000,
and Honduras - 69,000) and Mexico
decided to leave the dangers at home and immigrate into the United States, the U.S.
government has developed a policy of working with NGO's, providing funds, and
advertising fiercely that there are many obstacles along the way and they will
probably be deported. In addition, the
Mexican government is now deporting them when they arrive there at a much
greater rate than even the U.S. is doing.
The trend has been for a larger number of younger children and girls to
be coming into the U.S., but now the numbers have slowed down
significantly. According to the
Migration Policy Institute who interviewed many children in the U.S., 25% said
they had insufficient information for seeking asylum and did not have full
hearings, as required by law. They also
found that the majority (57-66%) of adults and teens from these three Central
American countries do not have a criminal background. Only 9-15% of the adults had committed
violent crimes. As you listen to the
news and politicians making news, be informed so you can evaluate their
statements.
One question is why so many people want to flee their own
country. Popular opinion is the demand
for drugs in the U.S. and the ensuing drug wars are the cause of terror in
Central America, but actually it is much more complicated. Reasons given are:
·
high levels of social inequality and
unemployment
·
corruption in government, law enforcement, military and business - even death squads
·
civil wars and armed conflicts
·
gangs and gang violence sometimes caused by gang
members being deported from the U.S. and the southward flow of arms especially
through Florida
·
rapid growth of large cities and metropolitan
areas without basic social services and community organizations in some areas
·
organized crime
·
poor public education systems, and
·
alcohol abuse, especially among youth
Ruben Torres from the United Methodist Church in
Escondido said he came here illegally in the '70's to escape a revolution and
civil war in El Salvador. 80,000 others
came to Los Angeles at that time and formed gangs to survive because they were
not accepted in the U.S. partly because they were not Mexicans. These gang members transported their problems
back to El Salvador when they were deported and continued their violent lives. Honduras has the highest crime rate in the
world. Drug lords dispense jobs and
humanitarian assistance, but also intimidate most everyone and corrupt local
officials. Even the press is intimidated
or bought off. If a drug dealer gets
arrested, the community loses their jobs.
In 2012, the El Salvadoran government negotiated a gang truce and crime
has decreased by 40%. The President of
Honduras said in 2014 that the drug war operations by the U.S. and Columbia
pushed drug traffickers into the Northern Triangle. Mexico has now started a war on drugs after
the police killed 43 student teachers and others in central Mexico.
Similar situations are found around the world. The mass migration of refugees into Europe's
open borders is overwhelming. The
dilemma of protecting jobs and standard of living has to be balanced against
inhumane conditions in some third world countries. Drugs are not the answer to improving the
economies of poor countries. The U.S.
and some companies are beginning to fund projects to provide work for these
people. Decreasing corruption and
increasing transparency is also necessary.
We must take some responsibility for the chaos caused by the drug
cartels and help the innocent escape the violence and corruption in their home
countries.
