The flood of unaccompanied alien minors suffered by the Obama Administration in 2014 has been surpassed in a 2019 with a new migration peak

In the summer of 2014, the United States suffered an immigration crisis due to an unexpected increase in the issue of unaccompanied foreign minors, mostly Central American, arriving at its border with Mexico. What has happened since then? Although oscillating, the volume of this subject of immigration dropped, but 2019 has seen a new record, hand in hand with the ˝caravan crisis˝, which has led to a rise again in total apprehensions at the border.

▲ U.S. border agents search unaccompanied minors at the Texas-Mexico border in 2014 [Hector Silva, USCBP-Wikimedia Commons].

article / Marcelina Kropiwnicka [English version].

The United States hosts more immigrants than any other country in the world, with more than one million people arriving each year, either as legal permanent residents, asylum seekers and refugees, or in other immigration categories. While there is no exact figure for how many people cross the border illegally, US Customs and Border Control authorities measure changes in illegal immigration based on the number of apprehensions made at the border; such apprehensions serve as an indicator of the issue total number of attempts to enter the country illegally. As for data, it can be concluded that there have been notable changes in the demographics of illegal migration at the border with Mexico (southwest border, in official U.S. terms) in recent years.

The peak of apprehensions at the border with Mexico was during 2000, when 1.64 million people were apprehended attempting to enter the United States illegally. The numbers have generally declined since then. In recent years there have been more apprehensions of non-Mexicans than Mexicans at the border with the neighboring country, reflecting a decrease in the issue of unauthorized Mexican immigrants arriving in the United States over the past decade. The increase, in fact, was largely due to those fleeing violence, gang activity and poverty in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, a region known as the Central American Northern Triangle.

The nations included in the Northern Triangle are among the poorest in Latin America - a high percentage of the population still lives on less than $2 a day (the international poverty line is $1.90) - and there has been little progress in recent years in reducing poverty. Within Latin America and the Caribbean, Honduras has the second highest percentage of population living below the poverty line (17%), after Haiti, according to the latest World Bank data .

Unaccompanied foreign minors

While in the last decade there have been fewer adults, unaccompanied by family, attempting to cross the border without authorization, there has instead been a surge of unaccompanied alien minors (UACM) attempting to enter the United States from Mexico. The migration of minors without accompanying adults is not new; what is new now is its volume and the need to implement policies in response to this problem. The increase in apprehensions of MENAs in FY 2014 caused alarm and prompted both intense media scrutiny and the implementation of policy responses; attention was sustained even as the phenomenon declined. Numbers dropped again to just under 40,000 apprehensions of minors the following year.

The international community defines an unaccompanied migrant minor as a person, "who is under the age of eighteen" and who is "separated from both parents and is not being cared for by an adult who by law or custom has the responsibility to do so." Many of these unaccompanied minors immediately present themselves to U.S. border security, while others enter the country unnoticed and undocumented. Not only this, but the children have no parents or legal guardians available to provide care or physical custody, which quickly overwhelms local border patrol services.

In 2014 many of the unaccompanied children claimed that they were under the false impression that the Obama Administration was granting "permits" to children who had relatives in the U.S., as long as they arrived by June at the latest. These false convincements and propagated hoaxes were even more potent this past year, especially as President Trump continues to reinforce the idea of restricting migrants' access to the US. The cartels have continued to transport an ever-increasing issue of Central American migrants from their countries to the United States.

Critical moments in 2014 and 2019

In 2014, during Obama's second term, total apprehensions along the border with Mexico reached 569,237 (this figure includes "non-admissible" individuals), a record only surpassed now. While the increase over the previous year was 13%, the increase was much more B in terms of apprehensions of MENAs; these went from 38,759 in fiscal year 2013 to 68,541 in fiscal year 2014 (in the US the fiscal year runs from October of one year to September of the next), an increase of almost 80%, more than four times those recorded in fiscal year 2011. In the case of minors from Honduras, the figure rose in one year from 6,747 to 18,244; those from Guatemala rose from 8,068 to 17,057, and those from El Salvador, from 5,990 to 16,404 (those from Mexico, on the other hand, fell from 17,240 to 15,634). The highest issue of apprehensions occurred in May, a month in which arrests of MENAs accounted for 17% of the total number of apprehensions.

Since 2014, apprehensions of unaccompanied minors, although fluctuating, declined at issue. But 2019 saw a new record high, reaching 76,020, with a peak in the month of May. However, they accounted for only 9% of total apprehensions that month, as this time it was not properly a crisis of MENAs, but rather inserted into a B peak in total apprehensions. While overall apprehensions dropped significantly during the first six months of Trump's presidency, they then spiked, reaching a 2019 total of 851,508 (with "non-admissibles" the figure reached 977,509), more than doubling over 2018. The issue of total apprehensions increased by 72% from 2014 to 2019 (for MENAs the increase was 11%).

Apprehensions of unaccompanied alien minors at the U.S.-Mexico border, between 2012 and 2019 (figure 1), and comparison of 2014 and 2019 by month (figure 2). source US Customs and Border Patrol.

Reaction

The United States had various domestic policies aimed at addressing the massive increase in immigration. However, with the overwhelming spike in 2014, Obama requested funding for a program to "repatriate and reintegrate migrants to Central American countries and to address the root causes of migration from these countries." While funding for the program was fairly consistent in recent years, the budget for 2018 proposed by President Trump reduced the financial aid to these countries by approximately 30%.

The Trump Administration has made progress in implementing its diary on immigration, from beginning construction of the wall on the border with Mexico to launching new programs, but the hard line already promised by Trump in his degree program to the White House has proven ineffective in stopping thousands of Central American families from crossing the southwest border into the United States. With extreme gang violence being rampant and technicalities in the U.S. immigration system, the motivation for migrants to leave their countries will remain.