Violence Continues to Drive Central American Migration; Municipalities Must Work Proactively to Protect Children and Families In the summer of 2014, when the media first began drawing attention to rising numbers of Central American children crossing the US-Mexico border alone, we came together to lift up the concerns of immigrant families in the DMV area. We saw the images, heard the reports, and knew that the humanitarian situation on the border would soon become the responsibility of municipal governments and civil society actors in local communities. We formed a coalition, and proclaimed the following: • This is a humanitarian crisis. These children are refugees fleeing violence in their home countries in the form of gang threats, murder, extortion, rape, and abuse. They also flee the violence of poverty, the violence of impunity, and the violence of social exclusion. In any other part of the world, this would be covered as an urgent refugee protection issue. • Protecting children is our first priority. Protecting refugee children means upholding their due process rights and respecting their best interests. Children have a right to have their voices heard. They have a right not to be imprisoned for seeking a better, safer life. • Any policies that only address the migratory flow into the United States will not resolve the issues. The exodus of children from the region points to the failure of economic policies and development programs to produce genuine opportunities for people to live dignified lives in their home countries. The federal government neglected to respond in any meaningful way. Only six children have entered the United States through an in-country refugee processing program set up over a year ago. Increased enforcement in Mexico, paid for by the United States government, has forced migrants to adjust to more perilous routes.1 Mexico is now deporting more Central American children than the United States, and it is deporting them back to even more dangerous situations, where they may be indebted to a smuggler who took them part of the way.2 The continued detention of refugee families in deplorable conditions in the US, against a federal judge’s ruling, has traumatized mothers and young children but failed to deter migration.3                                                                                                             1

WOLA (2015), Mexico’s Migration Crackdown Creates Spike in Apprehensions, Dangerous Shifts in Migration Routes. 2 Dominguez Villegas & Reitig (2015), Migrants Deported From the United States and Mexico to the Northern Triangle: A Statistical and Socioeconomic Profile. Migration Policy Institute. 3 Lee (2015), How Immigration Detention Centers Retraumatize Women and Children Fleeing From Violence. ThinkProgress. CARECEN 1460 Columbia Road, N.W. Suite C-1, Washington, D.C. 20009 Tel (202)328-9799 • Fax (202)328-7894 • www.carecendc.org

Over a year later, numbers of Central American children apprehended at the US border are increasing again.4 Customs and Border Patrol officials recently attributed the increase to their “inability to detain families and kids,” a misleading statement referring to an ongoing lawsuit which has forced the US government to comply with existing standards for detaining minors.5 This kind of rhetoric is inaccurate and needs to be challenged: children continue to flee El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras because the root causes of migration in the Northern Triangle have not changed. Not because women seeking asylum are detained for shorter periods of time upon their arrival. In El Salvador, the homicide rate is now 74% higher than it was in 2014, with over 20 murders occurring each day.6 In all three countries, militarized state responses to this widespread violence have resulted in increasing criminalization of youth who live in gang-controlled areas; youth who are already vulnerable to being coerced into joining the maras, at the risk of being extorted, tortured, or killed if they refuse.7 Women and girls report threats of sexual violence and even death based purely on familial or other presumed associations with gang members.8 Since January 2014, as many as 83 migrants who were deported to the Northern Triangle from the US were murdered upon their return.9 The 1951 Geneva Convention defines a refugee as someone who is unable or unwilling to return to his or her country of origin because of a well-founded fear of persecution. Is the threat of murder not enough? Given the urgency of their situations, it is no surprise that migrants are not deterred by flyers warning them of the dangers of the journey northward, nor by the prospect of detention at the US border. Unless the root causes of violence perpetrated by gangs, state actors, and neoliberal economic policies are addressed, these children will continue to flee. They have no choice. ~ Since 2014, municipalities (by and large) failed to provide necessary services for children fleeing violence. As a result, young people are even more vulnerable to exploitation and discrimination in U.S. communities. Without legal counsel to provide them with adequate representation in immigration court, their security and legal status are at risk. Facing economic pressures, teenagers are often forced to take jobs that are abusive, exploitative, or dangerous. Without mental health support to address complex trauma, or social services to guide families through the process of bringing a new child into their lives, youth may be recruited into existing illicit actors here in the                                                                                                             4

Markon and Partlow (2015), Unaccompanied children crossing southern border in greater numbers again, raising fears of new migrant crisis. The Washington Post. 5 Preston (2015), Number of Migrants Illegally Crossing Rio Grande Rises Sharply. The New York Times. 6 Stevens (2015), El Salvador Attorney General: Two-Thirds of Homicides Gang Related. InSight Crime. 7 de Waegh, Aber, DeLorey & Cuff (2015), Unwilling Participants: The Coercion of Youth into Violent Criminal Groups in Central America’s Northern Triangle. Jesuit Conference of Canada and the United States. 8 UNHCR (2015), Women on the Run: First-Hand Accounts of Refugees Fleeing El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras. 9 Brodzinsky & Pilkington (2015), US government deporting Central American migrants to their deaths. The Guardian. CARECEN 1460 Columbia Road, N.W. Suite C-1, Washington, D.C. 20009 Tel (202)328-9799 • Fax (202)328-7894 • www.carecendc.org

US, such as gangs or sexual trafficking rings. These unintended consequences of a policy of negligence are already playing out in many municipalities, including the DMV area. Some municipalities have been proactive about linking unaccompanied children with legal representation, social services, and mental health support, but most have been hands-off. Government, civil society, and private sector service providers need to come together to fund and coordinate holistic support for these vulnerable children and families. As we have seen, the root causes of migration have not changed. Federal authorities are expecting another crisis at the border. What will we do to respond to the crises of exclusion, marginalization, and fear in our communities? While the incendiary rhetoric condemning refugees worldwide will continue to make headlines, our position hasn’t changed: This is a humanitarian crisis. Protecting children is our first priority. Any policies that only address the migratory flow into the US will not resolve the issues. All levels of government, particularly those municipalities where high concentrations of unaccompanied children are resettled, must do their part to protect our children.

CARECEN 1460 Columbia Road, N.W. Suite C-1, Washington, D.C. 20009 Tel (202)328-9799 • Fax (202)328-7894 • www.carecendc.org