The avalanche of unaccompanied foreign minors suffered by the Obama Administration in 2014 has been overcome in 2019 with a new migratory peak

In the summer of 2014, the United States suffered a migration crisis due to an unexpected increase in the number of people in the country. issue of unaccompanied foreign minors, mostly Central Americans, who arrived at its border with Mexico. What has happened since then? Although oscillating, the volume of this subject Immigration prices fell, but in 2019 a new record has been recorded, hand in hand with the "caravan crisis", which has led to the rise again in total apprehensions at the border.

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

article/ Marcelina Kropiwnicka

The United States hosts more immigrants than any other country in the world, with more than a 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, U.S. Customs and Border Control (U.S. Customs and Border Control) measures changes in illegal immigration based on the number of apprehensions made at the border; Such arrests serve as an indicator of the issue total number of attempts to enter the country illegally. As for the 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 U.S.-Mexico border was during 2000, when 1.64 million people were apprehended trying to enter the United States illegally. The numbers have declined, across the board, 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 issue of unauthorized Mexican immigrants who came to the U.S. in the last 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 Central America's 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); There has been little progress in reducing poverty in recent years. Within Latin America and the Caribbean, Honduras has the second highest percentage of the population living below the poverty line (17%), after Haiti, according to the latest data of the World Bank.

Unaccompanied Alien Minors

While fewer unaccompanied adults have attempted to cross the border without authorization over the past decade, there has instead been a surge of unaccompanied alien minors (MENAs) trying 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 FY2014 caused alarm and prompted both intense media scrutiny and the implementation of policy responses; Attention was maintained even as the phenomenon declined. The 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 eighteen years of age" 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 report immediately to U.S. border security, while others enter the country unnoticed and undocumented. Not only this, but children have no parents or legal guardians available to provide care or physical custody, which quickly overwhelms the services of local border patrols.

In 2014, many of the unaccompanied children said 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 no later than June. These false convictions and hoaxes were even more potent this past year, especially as President Trump continues to reinforce the idea of restricting migrants' access to the United States. The cartels have continued to transport a issue increasing number of Central American migrants from their countries to the United States.

Critical moments of 2014 and 2019

In 2014, during Obama's second term, total apprehensions along the border with Mexico reached 569,237 (this figure includes "inadmissible" people), a record only surpassed now. While the increase over the previous year was 13%, the increase was much more B regarding the arrests of MENAs; These rose from 38,759 in fiscal year 2013 to 68,541 in fiscal year 2014 (in the U.S. 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 from 6,747 to 18,244 in one year; those of Guatemala rose from 8,068 to 17,057, and those of El Salvador, from 5,990 to 16,404 (those of Mexico, on the other hand, fell from 17,240 to 15,634). The Greatest issue The number of apprehensions occurred in May, a month in which MENA arrests accounted for 17% of total apprehensions.

Since 2014, apprehensions of unaccompanied minors, while fluctuating, have declined by issue. But in 2019 a new record has been recorded, reaching 76,020, with a maximum in the month of May. However, that month they accounted for only 9% of the total apprehensions, because this time it has not been a MENA crisis, but has been inserted into a B peak of total apprehensions. While overall apprehensions decreased significantly during the first six months of Trump's presidency, they then rose, reaching a total of 851,508 in 2019 (with the "inadmissible" the figure reached 977,509), which is more than double the number from 2018. The issue total apprehensions increased by 72% from 2014 to 2019 (in the case of 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 U.S. had a variety of domestic policies aimed at dealing with the massive increase in immigration. However, with the overwhelming peak of 2014, Obama called for funding for a program for "the repatriation and reintegration of migrants to the countries of Central America and to address the root causes of migration from these countries." Although funding for the program has been fairly consistent over the past few years, the budget for 2018 proposed by the 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 the beginning of the construction of the wall on the border with Mexico to the implementation of new programs, but the hard line already promised by Trump in his degree program The U.S. government has proven ineffective in preventing thousands of Central American families from crossing the southwest border into the United States. With extreme gang violence running rampant and technicalities in the U.S. immigration system, migrants' motivation to leave their countries will remain.