Border officers encountered more than 170,000 migrants at the border in March, which The New York Times reports is “the most in any month for at least 15 years and up nearly 70 percent from February.”

Among the migrants are unaccompanied children. As of Tuesday, 4,228 children were being held in border facilities that aren’t meant to hold children for long periods of time. An additional 16,045 children are in the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, the agency that oversees a shelter system that cares for unaccompanied children until they are placed with a suitable family member or sponsor. This is more than the roughly 15,000 children transferred to the agency’s custody in all of fiscal year 2020. 

Here are some of the latest developments we’re watching:

More migrant families are arriving at the border. More than 53,000 migrants traveling as families arrived in March, up from 19,250 in February, The Times reports. The Biden administration is turning away families under a Trump-era policy to shut out migrants at the border during the pandemic. But the Mexican government recently added new restrictions for accepting Central American families expelled from the U.S. “We’re entering phase two of this extraordinary migration event,” Cris Ramón, an immigration consultant based in Washington, told The Times. “At this point, the scope of the individuals who are coming means the administration is going to have to now address the challenges of not only building capacity for unaccompanied children, but they’re going to have to expand this capacity for families.”

Central American children are fleeing hunger and devastation by hurricanes and climate change. The Washington Post reports that Guatemalans are facing a severe hunger crisis: “The crisis was caused in part by failed harvests linked to climate change, a string of natural disasters and a nearly nonexistent official response. Supply-chain disruptions then led to a spike in prices. The cost of beans in Guatemala went up 19.6 percent last year, according to the World Food Program.” And a recent New York Times story paints a portrait of the devastation Hondurans are facing after two hurricanes destroyed homes and neighborhoods. Ana Hernández of San Pedro Sula explained why she fled to the United States: “I never wanted to do this. The situation is forcing me to. You get to a point where you don’t have anything to give them (the children) to eat.”

Meanwhile, the parents of 273,000 U.S. citizens could be deported. The government has long given protections to migrants fleeing crisis and natural disaster. Through what’s known as TPS – Temporary Protected Status – these migrants can work and own property. More than 200,000 Salvadorans, for example, have been granted TPS after a hurricane and earthquake devastated the country two decades ago. The Trump administration ended the protection for most countries. As The New York Times Magazine reports: “Unless Congress passes legislation that grants TPS holders permanent status or President (Joe) Biden’s administration issues new TPS designations for the six countries, the forced removal of 402,000 TPS holders could begin as soon as October. Because they are the parents of some 273,000 U.S. citizens – most of them under the age of 21 … – it could also turn into the largest family-separation operation in American history.”

Fact-based journalism is worth fighting for.

‘THE DISAPPEARED’ SERIES HONORED FOR FURTHERING OPEN GOVERNMENT

This week, we learned that our colleague Aura Bogado, along with Reveal data reporter Melissa Lewis, won Investigative Reporters and Editors’ Freedom of Information Award for the investigative series The Disappeared.

Aura spent much of last year exposing how the U.S. government has kept thousands of unaccompanied migrant children within its shelter network for far longer than previously known. She followed the case of a girl who had spent the last six years in U.S. custody, despite having family in the country that wanted to bring her home. Her family couldn’t get an explanation for why they couldn’t bring her home; the girl thought her family had abandoned her. In Aura’s more than 10 years of experience covering immigration, she had never heard of a child being detained for so long.

Aura wanted to know how many other children had been held for years in government shelters. So we sued the government to find out. She partnered with Melissa, and together they learned that the U.S. government has detained more than 25,000 migrant children for longer than 100 days over the past six years, and nearly 1,000 children have spent more than a year in refugee shelters in that time. In part two of the series, they explained the data findings and tracked down the girl in Honduras following her deportation.

The IRE judges noted: 

A masterful investigation that exposed systematic harm and laid bare the consequences by piecing together how they had played out in the case of a girl who had been misled to think her family had abandoned her. Melissa Lewis’ data analysis of records, obtained through the news outlet’s litigation, gave the public an unprecedented look at the lives of thousands of children, exposing that many had been detained for long periods. Reporter Aura Bogado’s relentless quest to find out what happened to a girl who had been swallowed up by the system is both admirable and expertly told. It isn’t easy to include first person in an investigation and Bogado’s inclusion of herself in the story is pitch-perfect.
 

3 THINGS WE’RE READING

1. How a 10-year-old boy was swept up in the midst of a humanitarian crisis at the border. (Los Angeles Times)

For three months, Christopher Garcia made the journey to the U.S. without his parents, “blending into groups of older children and adults.” But what awaited him was a system struggling to keep up with the number of unaccompanied children seeking refuge here. 

The kicker: This year, the family’s fortunes worsened after hurricanes damaged their home, knocking trees onto the roof. So, Christopher said, he left his parents and two younger sisters and headed to join his great-aunt, a U.S. citizen, in the mountains of western North Carolina. He carried her phone number with him, written on the back of his Honduran birth certificate. As he made his way north toward Texas, he managed to memorize the phone number, just in case he lost his paperwork or was robbed. Last week, a Mexican smuggler on the south side of the Rio Grande took Christopher to an abandoned house where he slept on the floor with other migrants for three days. He waited, shivering, without a coat, food or running water. The smuggler returned late Wednesday of last week and led Christopher’s group of 700 migrants to the river, where he said he heard gunfire – he didn’t see who was shooting. They crossed on rafts to Texas’ Rio Grande Valley about midnight.

2. For many unaccompanied children traveling to the U.S. border, their journeys end in Mexico. (The New York Times) 

Hundreds of migrant children headed to the U.S. never make it because they are detained by Mexican authorities and placed in shelters there, often for months, until they’re deported back to their home countries. 

The kicker: The scene in Ciudad Juárez, across the Rio Grande from El Paso, Texas, tells only one part of a story playing out all along the border’s nearly 2,000 miles. Elizabeth, the 13-year-old from Villanueva, in Honduras, said that when the Mexican authorities detained her in early March, she thought of her mother in Maryland, and how disappointed she would be. When she called from the shelter, her mother was ecstatic at first, thinking she had crossed, Elizabeth said; then, on hearing the news, her mother burst into tears. “I told her not to cry,” Elizabeth said. “We would see each other again.” 

3. Immigration attorneys raise concerns about TikTok ads promising an easy pathway to immigration paperwork in the U.S. (Mother Jones)

Unlicensed legal consultants, known as notarios, are finding new ways to attract clients by making false promises in flashy TikTok ads. 

The kicker: The silver bullet these ads are hawking is a class of humanitarian visas and benefits for immigrant survivors of domestic violence, as well as certain other crimes and human trafficking in the United States. These generous protections can lead to a work authorization and make it possible to obtain a green card without leaving the country (“arreglar sin salir”), either because penalties for unlawful presence don’t apply or because they can be more easily waived. But many of the TikTok videos by lawyers with tens of thousands of followers fail to name the visas or explain basic requirements, such as having experienced “battery or extreme cruelty” at the hands of a spouse, child or parent or “substantial mental or physical abuse.” Euphemisms and veiled references to abuse – “experiencing marital problems” and “being disrespected by a toxic partner” – abound, alongside decontextualized questions such as “are you separated from your citizen or permanent resident spouse?” and “does your child have problems with addiction?”

NEWS BREAK: THE PETS THEY LEAVE BEHIND

From the BuzzFeed News story:

Erisema was sent back by U.S. border officers to Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, in 2019, left alone in a city known for its kidnapping and violence against asylum-seekers like her. The then-20-year-old, who asked to only be identified by her first name, spent most of her days off holed up inside an apartment, scared of venturing out more than she had to.

But then another asylum-seeker gave her a puppy as a gift, a dog she named Kandi. For nearly two years, Erisema said, Kandi became her main companion. On the long days when Erisema sat in her living room, feeling abandoned, Kandi would climb on top of her. When Erisema cried in bed, Kandi would jump up to cuddle with her.

“You feel so alone and your pets help take you out of that loneliness with the love they give you,” Erisema told BuzzFeed News. “They’re your companion, they give you emotional support when you don’t have anyone.” 

But then in March, Erisema learned that under a new policy she would be allowed into the U.S. while her asylum case made its way through immigration court. That meant she’d have to leave Kandi behind – or so she thought. A new volunteer group, Mascotas Para Migrantes (Pets for Migrants), has been working with immigrants and asylum-seekers like her to help get their small dogs and cats into the U.S. as well. The program, organized by immigration attorney Taylor Levy and communications worker Jordyn Rozensky, is new, but already the UN’s refugee agency is telling pet owners at the border to seek out Mascotas Para Migrantes.

“One of the central themes for asylum-seekers is this common experience of loss. They had to leave behind their homes, relatives, community, favorite foods, all sense of normalcy,” Levy told BuzzFeed News. “For them, especially after surviving so much trauma, pets are this lifeline of normalcy and emotional support.”
 

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– Laura C. Morel