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Mexico & Nafta - July 2014 (ISSN 1741-444X)

Mexico’s response to the migrant children

At the end of June, the Mexican and US governments outlined their respective responses to the massive increase in the number of unaccompanied minors, mostly from Central America, looking to cross Mexico into the US.

The US Customs and Border Protection agency (CBP) first detected an increase in the number of children coming from the Central America’s ‘Northern Triangle’ (Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador) back in 2011. In the past year, however, the numbers have reached record levels. According to CBP data, 52,139 unaccompanied children were apprehended trying to cross the border in the eight months to June 2014– a 99% increase over the same period of the previous fiscal year (FY, running from October). Almost 40,000 of these were from Central America. Whereas Mexican children accounted for the majority of unaccompanied minors between FYs 2009 and 2013, they were overtaken by Hondurans and Guatemalans in June 2014. Mexico’s interior ministry (Segob) recently corroborated the CBP data with its own figures. On 24 June, it reported that Mexican border patrols had so far detected 9,622 unaccompanied minors between January and June 2014, compared with the 9,724 identified during the whole of 2013.

According to an April report by the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC), most of the children who attempt to travel across Mexico to reach the US are escaping from “criminal threats inflamed by drug trafficking, polarised political systems, weak law enforcement and social hardships – such as poverty and unemployment”. The UNHRC noted that 53% of the 404 migrant children interviewed for the report discussed deprivation and lack of opportunity as one of the reasons for leaving; 21% mentioned abuse in their households; 41% feared violence by organised crime. The majority of the interviewed children (58%) would probably qualify as refugees under international laws.

The response

After both the US and Mexican authorities recognised the full scale of the problem, on 19 June President Obama phoned Mexico’s President Enrique Peña Nieto to discuss the “joint responsibility” of the two countries to guarantee the safety and security of all migrants and to explore ways in which they could work together to tackle what the US president said was an emerging humanitarian crisis.

Soon afterwards, on 27 June, the Segob announced the launch of a new ‘safe passage’ plan designed to protect migrants found in Mexico’s national territory. Under the ‘safe passage’ provisions, Mexico will share intelligence with Honduras and El Salvador to combat people trafficking gangs, and will attempt to collect biometric information from migrants in collaboration with neighbouring Guatemalan and Belizean authorities. In addition, the Segob also will conduct an information campaign to warn parents in both Mexico and Central America of the very serious risks posed by people traffickers, who promise to guide would-be migrants through Mexico and into the US, where they claim that children can easily secure US citizenship. In announcing the plan, Mercedes del Carmen Guillén Vicente, Segob’s deputy minister for population and migration, said the government’s priority was to regulate migration flows, and that “in no way will Mexico advocate walls, or the closing of its borders”, in an apparent reference to the argument often made by US Republicans that the best way to control migration flows is to physically close off US borders, rather than making changes to migration laws aimed at deterring illegal immigration (as Obama argues his proposed reform would do).

Meanwhile, on 30 June President Obama sent a letter to the US Congress requesting US$2bn in emergency supplemental funds to be used by various US government agencies to prevent the arrival and hasten the deportation of unaccompanied migrant children from Mexico and Central America. The funds are to be used to significantly increase the number of immigration judges assigned to process recent border crossers and to enforce sustained actions against human traffickers. A significant part would also be spent in developing a set of security and education initiatives in Central America, aimed at discouraging parents and children from trying to enter the US via Mexico.

US Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson and Attorney General Eric Holder have already been tasked to redirect immigration enforcement resources to the US-Mexico border, while President Obama has also solicited advice on further initiatives that could be taken by his administration without requiring congressional approval.

President Obama has also said that if the Republican-controlled US House of Representatives continues to hold up approval of the immigration reform bill approved by the Senate last year, he would consider issuing executive orders to introduce sweeping changes to the US immigration system instead of waiting for Congress to arrive at a consensus over the reform. But this would be a last resort, as it would be an extremely bold move ahead of the November mid-term elections. In addition, there is also the possibility that any changes introduced via executive order by Obama could be overturned by the next administration.

Crisis factors

The US response appears designed to address some of the endogenous issues that have contributed to the present situation. The most relevant of these is the inadequacy of the legal procedures for handling underage migrants. The 2008 William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, which stipulates that unaccompanied illegal migrant minors from neighbouring countries seized by US Border Patrol (USBP) cannot automatically be deported but should instead be deferred to an immigration office to evaluate whether they may qualify for refugee status, was introduced at a time when the majority of illegal migrants crossing the border were Mexican nationals. But now, the act is looking inadequate.

As per the William Wilberforce Act, the USPB has 72 hours to transfer non-Mexican illegal migrant children to either known family members residing in the US or to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) for safekeeping, while they wait for their status to be determined. But during a 25 June congressional hearing, the administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), Craig Fugate, admitted that the 72-hour limit was impossible to meet in the current circumstances. “We wanted to get these kids as quickly as we could from a detention facility to a bed…we have increased capacity but the number of children has increased as well and we have not reached the 72-hour mark”, Fugate said. The current housing system managed by HHS provides for a total of just 9,000 beds, with heavily subsidised NGOs such as Southwest Key supplying additional housing.

The overload of Central American children was met with dismay by USBP agents, who do not possess proper training or facilities to handle the situation. Meanwhile Art del Cueto, a USBP union vice-president, accused the Mexican authorities of inaction in the face of the crisis, and stated: “These children who are here in the US crossed over from Mexico, so what responsibility is Mexico assuming?”

Mexico’s role

But south of the Rio Grande, the notion is that the US inability to pass a comprehensive immigration reform is one of the main contributing factors. At a regional meeting in Guatemala on 21 June, the presidents of Guatemala and El Salvador expressed this criticism in person to US Vice-President Joe Biden, and suggested that the crisis would not be resolved until the US reforms its immigration laws. The view was backed by Mexico’s interior minister, Miguel Ángel Osorio Chong.

The attention of the Mexican media is now keenly focused on the issue. The leading Mexican daily, El Universal, sent its reporters to investigate the conditions of some of the detained minors and to detail what it referred to as the “business” of service providers for the unaccompanied migrant children in the US.

Mexican children still constitute a sizeable proportion of the minors detained by USBP officers. According to the UNHRC, many are likely to have been recruited by people traffickers to be used as guides for other migrants.

Finally, the UNHRC also notes that the number of asylum seekers in Mexico itself from Central America has more than doubled over the last five years. If this trend continues, Mexico might have to deal with its own migrant crisis.

Several Mexican government officials, including Foreign Minister José Antonio Meade Kuribreña (see sidebar), have called for closer collaboration between the US and Mexico on the issue. Judging from what both governments have announced so far, it seems that most of the cooperation will be limited to information campaigns aimed at debunking rumours of easy access to the US spread by human traffickers in Central America. But a wider agenda, including a proposal to set up a joint migration control, as suggested during the XIX regional migration conference held in Managua, Nicaragua on 27-30 June, may also become necessary.

  • Obama addresses parents

During a 26 June interview with the US TV channel ABC News, President Obama asked the parents of Central American children not to send their children to the US border. “Our message absolutely is don’t send your children unaccompanied”, Obama said, adding, “If they do make it [to the border], they’ll get sent back. More importantly they may not make it… we don’t even know how many of these kids don’t make it, and many have been waylaid into sex trafficking or killed”.

  • Meade

Mexico’s Foreign Minister José Antonio Meade toured parts of the Mexico-US border area on 24 June. During his visit to a border patrol centre in McAllen, Texas, Meade said that the Mexican consular network would redouble its efforts to inform the migrant community in the US of the dangers of sending unaccompanied children across international borders. Stating that the Mexican government was acting to “protect the rights of this vulnerable population”, Meade stressed that the issue also requires a “bilateral, regional-wide and multilateral effort”.

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