Caribbean & Central America - July 2014 (ISSN 1741-4458)

The First Lady of Honduras, Ana García de Hernández, has called out Mexico for failing to protect the flood of unaccompanied Central American minors travelling up through Mexico in a bid to cross into the US illegally in the false belief – being deliberately perpetuated in the region by unscrupulous people trafficking gangs – that as children they will be given indefinite leave to remain in the US.

Along with her Guatemalan counterpart, Rosa Leal de Pérez, García has travelled to the US to witness first-hand the plight of some of the thousands of children being held temporarily by US authorities pending their likely deportation (some 52,000 have arrived since October 2013). She has since accused Mexico of failing in its duty of care. Noting that children travelling through Mexico are harassed by major criminal organisations such as drug gang Los Zetas, García said that Mexico has a responsibility to protect them, noting that “some children have disappeared on the way”. “We do not know what is happening with those who are transiting through Mexico”, she said in early July, in an interview with Mexican daily, El Universal. “We have to ask Mexico for close cooperation to dismantle these gangs, as many of these children are used by coyotes for prostitution and organised crime activities”. Queried about Mexico's responsibility as a transit country, she stated: “Mexico plays a very important role, because many children travel through Mexico and the question is: how can they pass saying that they are on their way to the US if they have no visa nor are legally authorised by their parents? Many of them do not even have a passport. These gangs are dedicated to one of the most lucrative businesses in the world”.

Given that over 14,000 Honduran children alone entered the US illegally between October 2013 and June 2014, on official US estimates, García made the point that ‘coyotes’, as people traffickers are known, are raking in hundreds of millions of dollars in the region. “If people pay, on average, between 5,000 and 8,000 dollars, for each unaccompanied minor, Honduran families have paid over 100 million dollars”, she stressed. “Parents are spending a lot of money that they could have used to give their children a home and a better life. But these families paid to go, and when they are deported, they return indebted, disappointed and feeling defeated because they did not achieve their objective”.

Mexico’s response

Mexico’s deputy foreign affairs minister for Latin America and the Caribbean, Vanessa Rubio, rejected the Honduran complaints, noting – again in comments reported by El Universal – that migrant children transiting through the country are protected by Mexico’s national immigration institute (INM), the national system for integral family development (SNDIF) and local NGOs.

Peña Nieto heads south

On 7 July Mexico’s President Enrique Peña Nieto invited his Guatemalan peer, Otto Pérez Molina, for an emergency meeting in the border state of Chiapas to discuss the plight of child migrants. The two launched a new border scheme, ‘Plan Frontera Sur’ specifically aimed at the protection of migrants transiting Mexico en route to the US. The scheme will seek to provide institutional support for migrants and improve border crossings, while Peña Nieto also pledged additional Mexican support for development and security in the Central American sub-region. Peña Nieto’s two immediate predecessors, Vicente Fox (2000-2006) and Felipe Calderón (2006-2012), both took office pledging more cooperation with Central America, only to be distracted by domestic affairs. Peña Nieto has made more of an effort, making Guatemala the first country he visited after he assumed office in 2012 and backing up his promises by way of funds and technical assistance for the region.

Last month (27 June), Mexico’s interior ministry (Segob) launched a new ‘safe passage’ plan to protect temporary migrants on Mexican territory. Under these provisions, Mexico will share intelligence with its southern neighbours to combat people trafficking gangs, and will attempt to collect biometric information from migrants in collaboration with the Guatemalan and Belizean authorities. The Segob also pledged an information campaign to warn parents in both Mexico and Central America of the very serious risks posed by people traffickers. In announcing the plan, Mercedes del Carmen Guillén Vicente, Segob’s deputy minister for population and migration, said that the government’s priority was to regulate migration flows, and that “in no way will Mexico advocate walls, or the closing of its borders”.

Peña Nieto said that ’Plan Frontera Sur’ would provide more resources for the customs posts on the 1,000km Mexican border with Guatemala (ten) and Belize (two); build five new border security centres and provide migrants with better protection, more medical attention and social programmes. He pledged better coordination and cooperation between the relevant migration institutions, under the overarching control of the Segob. Finally, he said Mexico encouraged all the affected countries to share responsibility for the process. “Every nation must do its part”, he stated, in what sounded like an indirect message to the US, the day before the US Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson was scheduled to meet Pérez Molina in Guatemala.

Jeh Johnson on message

In advance of his trip south, Johnson reiterated on US TV his uncompromising

message: “our border is not open to illegal migration. There is a deportation proceeding that has commenced against illegal migrants — including children”. In Guatemala City on 8 July he repeated that message, warning that “there is no free passage” and complaining that criminal networks were “deceiving” parents. “We will continue working in favour of repatriation, the reintegration of these children in their countries. We will continue looking at the root causes”, Johnson said, as President Barack Obama requested US$3.7bn in additional funds from the US Congress to deal with the crisis on the US-Mexico border.

Under the president’s emergency supplemental request for fiscal year 2014 (ending 30 September), the Department of Homeland Security would be assigned over US$1.5bn in extra funds, including US$116m to pay for the transport costs of repatriating migrants back home. Other funds would go towards increasing the number of immigration judges, asylum officers and border agents, as well as to expand court capacity and add detention facilities. The Department of Health and Human Services, whose Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) cares for unaccompanied child migrants (officially, ‘Unaccompanied alien children’, or AUCs), would be assigned US$1.8bn, while the State Department would be assigned US$300m to help reintegrate Central American migrants in their home countries, examine the root causes of the crisis, and run media information campaigns emphasising that AUCs will not be allowed to remain in the US.

One key goal is to speed up turnaround times for deportations. Under existing US laws, Mexican children entering the US illegally can be immediately deported back across the border. But children from Central American countries, which do not share a land border with the US, must instead be held, and handed over within 72 hours to the ORR, which finds them accommodation pending deportation proceedings. That takes time. As of March 2014 there was a backlog of 366,758 deportation cases in the US court system. The children caught in this system can hope for some kind of amnesty or simply fail to show up in court when summoned and join the 11m or so undocumented migrants already in the US.

Johnson’s visit coincided with the launch of an official program in Guatemala entitled ‘Quédate’(‘Stay’) aimed at informing local families, teachers and students about the dangers of attempting the trip north. Like his Honduran peer, President Pérez Molina has been critical of the US over its long promised but undelivered immigration reform, and has appealed for Guatemalan migrants to be granted Temporary Protected Status (TPS) until such reform is approved.

• Hondurans seeking a better life

“On a daily basis, 90 unaccompanied children and 240 family units [typically mothers and children] enter [illegally] into the US”, First Lady Ana García de Hernández noted in an official statement issued by the Honduran presidency on 4 July. García was clear that “98% of the unaccompanied children…are looking for their mother or father in the US”. If accurate, that will severely complicate the efforts of the US authorities to deport them. According to the US’s Office of Refugee Resettlement in fiscal year 2013, 73% of AUCs were male and 27% female, while 14% were under the age of 14.

• Honduran children preyed upon by State institutions

In early July, the Honduran council of ministers announced the creation of a new ‘national migration institute’ aimed at “guaranteeing a proper migration policy”. The new institute will take over from the official general directorate of migration (Dirección General de Migración y Extranjería), which – shockingly - is under investigation for corruption linked to people trafficking (such as the irregular provision of travel documents to minors).