The mass migra­tion of chil­dren from Cen­tral Amer­i­ca has been at the cen­ter of a polit­i­cal firestorm over the past few weeks. The main­stream media has run dozens of sto­ries blam­ing fam­i­lies, espe­cial­ly moth­ers, for send­ing or bring­ing their chil­dren north. The pres­i­dent him­self has lec­tured them, as though they were sim­ply bad par­ents. ​“Do not send your chil­dren to the bor­ders,” he said in a June 27 inter­view with George Stephanopou­los. ​“If they do make it, they’ll get sent back. More impor­tant­ly, they may not make it.”

The failure of Central America's economies is largely due to the North American and Central American Free Trade Agreements and their accompanying economic changes.

Mean­while, the sto­ry is being manip­u­lat­ed by the Tea Par­ty and con­ser­v­a­tive Repub­li­cans to attack Oba­ma’s exec­u­tive action defer­ring the depor­ta­tion of young peo­ple, along with any pos­si­bil­i­ty that he might expand it — the demand of many immi­grant rights advo­cates. More broad­ly, the far Right wants to shut down any immi­gra­tion reform that includes legal­iza­tion, and instead is gun­ning for harsh­er enforce­ment mea­sures. Even Marine Corps Gen. John Kel­ly, com­man­der of U.S. South­ern Com­mand, has sought to frame migra­tion as a nation­al secu­ri­ty threat, call­ing it a ​“crime-ter­ror con­ver­gence,” and describ­ing it as ​“an incred­i­bly effi­cient net­work along which any­thing hun­dreds of tons of drugs, peo­ple, ter­ror­ists, poten­tial­ly weapons of mass destruc­tion or chil­dren — can trav­el, so long as they can pay the fare.”

All of this ignores the real rea­sons fam­i­lies take the des­per­ate mea­sure of leav­ing home and try­ing to cross the bor­der. Media cov­er­age focus­es on gang vio­lence in Cen­tral Amer­i­ca, as though it was spon­ta­neous and unre­lat­ed to a his­to­ry of U.S.-promoted wars and a pol­i­cy of mass deportations.

In truth, the Unit­ed States’ med­dling for­eign pol­i­cy and a his­to­ry of the U.S.’s own harsh immi­gra­tion mea­sures are respon­si­ble for much of the pres­sure caus­ing this flow of peo­ple from Cen­tral Amer­i­ca. These eight facts, ignored by the main­stream press and the pres­i­dent, doc­u­ment that cul­pa­bil­i­ty and point out the need for change:

1. There is no ​“lax enforce­ment” on the U.S./Mexico bor­der. There are over 20,000 Bor­der Patrol Agents; that num­ber was as low as 9,800 in 2001. We have walls and a sys­tem of large, cen­tral­ized deten­tion cen­ters that did­n’t exist just 15 years ago. Now more than 350,000 peo­ple spend some time in an immi­grant deten­tion cen­ter every year. The U.S. spends more on immi­gra­tion enforce­ment than all oth­er enforce­ment activ­i­ties of the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment com­bined, includ­ing the FBI, the Drug Enforce­ment Admin­is­tra­tion and the Bureau of Alco­hol, Tobac­co, Firearms and Explo­sives. The grow­ing num­bers of peo­ple in deten­tion — young peo­ple as well as fam­i­lies and adults— is being used as a pre­text by the anti-immi­grant lob­by in Wash­ing­ton, includ­ing the Tea Par­ty and the Bor­der Patrol itself, for demand­ing increas­es in the bud­get for enforce­ment. The Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion has giv­en way before this pressure.

2. The migra­tion of chil­dren and fam­i­lies didn’t just start recent­ly. It has been going on for a long time, although the num­bers have recent­ly surged. The tide of migra­tion from Cen­tral Amer­i­ca goes back to wars that the U.S. pro­mot­ed in the 1980s, in which we armed the forces, gov­ern­ments or con­tras, who were most opposed to pro­gres­sive social change. Many hun­dreds of thou­sands of Sal­vado­rans came to the U.S. dur­ing the late 1970s and 80s, to say noth­ing of Guatemalans and Nicaraguans. Whole fam­i­lies migrat­ed, but so did parts of fam­i­lies, leav­ing loved ones behind with the hope that some day they’d be reunited.

3. The recent increase in the num­bers of child migrants is not just a response to gang vio­lence, although this is the most-cit­ed cause in U.S. media cov­er­age. Migra­tion is as much or more a con­se­quence of the increas­ing eco­nom­ic cri­sis for rur­al peo­ple in Cen­tral Amer­i­ca and Mex­i­co, as well as the fail­ure of those economies to pro­duce jobs. Peo­ple are leav­ing because they can’t sur­vive where they are.

4. The fail­ure of Cen­tral Amer­i­ca’s economies is large­ly due to the North Amer­i­can and Cen­tral Amer­i­can Free Trade Agree­ments and their accom­pa­ny­ing eco­nom­ic changes, includ­ing pri­va­ti­za­tion of busi­ness­es, the dis­place­ment of com­mu­ni­ties by for­eign min­ing projects and cuts in the social bud­get. The treaties allowed huge U.S. cor­po­ra­tions to dump corn and oth­er agri­cul­tur­al prod­ucts in Mex­i­co and Cen­tral Amer­i­ca, forc­ing rur­al fam­i­lies off their lands when they could not compete.

5. When gov­ern­ments or peo­ple have resist­ed NAF­TA and CAF­TA, the Unit­ed States has threat­ened reprisal. Right-wing Con­gress­man Tom Tan­cre­do (R‑Colo.) put for­ward a mea­sure to cut off the flow of remit­tances (mon­ey sent back to Sal­vado­ran fam­i­lies from fam­i­ly mem­bers work­ing in the U.S.) if the left­wing par­ty, the FMLN, won the 2004 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion. His bill did not pass, but the U.S. Embassy in San Sal­vador admit­ted that it had inter­vened. In 2009, the Hon­duran army over­threw Pres­i­dent Manuel Zelaya after he raised the min­i­mum wage, gave sub­si­dies to small farm­ers, cut inter­est rates and insti­tut­ed free edu­ca­tion. The Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion gave a de fac­to approval to the coup régime that fol­lowed. If social and polit­i­cal change had tak­en place in Hon­duras, we would see far few­er Hon­durans try­ing to come to the U.S.

6. Gang vio­lence in Cen­tral Amer­i­ca has a U.S. ori­gin. Over the past two decades, young peo­ple from Cen­tral Amer­i­ca have arrived in L.A. and big U.S. cities, where many were recruit­ed into gangs, a sto­ry elo­quent­ly told by pho­tog­ra­ph­er Don­na DeCe­sare in the recent book Unsettled/​Desasociego: Chil­dren in the World of Gangs. The Mara­trucha Sal­vadoreña gang, which today’s news­pa­per sto­ries hold respon­si­ble for the vio­lence dri­ving peo­ple from El Sal­vador, was orga­nized in Los Ange­les, not in Cen­tral Amer­i­ca. U.S. law enforce­ment and immi­gra­tion author­i­ties respond­ed to the rise of gang activ­i­ty here with a huge pro­gram of depor­ta­tions. The U.S. has been deport­ing approx­i­mate­ly 400,000 peo­ple per year since 2009.

7. More­over, U.S. for­eign pol­i­cy in Cen­tral Amer­i­ca has active­ly led to the growth of gang vio­lence there. In El Sal­vador, Guatemala and Hon­duras, U.S. law enforce­ment assis­tance pres­sured local law enforce­ment to adopt a mano dura, or hard­line, approach to gang mem­bers, lead­ing to the incar­cer­a­tion of many young peo­ple deport­ed from the U.S. almost as soon as they arrived. Pris­ons became schools for gang recruit­ment. Even in El Sal­vador — where the left­wing FMLN gov­ern­ment at least has a com­mit­ment to a pol­i­cy of jobs and eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment to take young peo­ple off the street and to pro­vide an alter­na­tive to migra­tion — con­ser­v­a­tive police and mil­i­tary forces con­tin­ue to sup­port heavy enforce­ment. In Guatemala and Hon­duras, the U.S. is sup­port­ing very rightwing gov­ern­ments that only use a harsh enforce­ment approach. Hyp­o­crit­i­cal­ly, while pun­ish­ing depor­tees and con­demn­ing migra­tion, these two gov­ern­ments actu­al­ly use the migra­tion of peo­ple to the U.S. as a source of remit­tances to keep their economies afloat.

8. Kids look­ing for fam­i­lies here are look­ing for those who were already dis­placed by war and eco­nom­ic cri­sis. The sep­a­ra­tion of fam­i­lies is a cause of much of the cur­rent migra­tion of young peo­ple. Young peo­ple flee­ing the vio­lence are react­ing to the con­se­quences of poli­cies for which the U.S. gov­ern­ment is large­ly respon­si­ble, in the only way open to them.

Two and three years ago we were hear­ing from the Pew His­pan­ic Trust and oth­er sources that migra­tion had ​“lev­eled off.” No one is both­er­ing to claim that any­more. Migra­tion has­n’t stopped because the forces caus­ing it are more pow­er­ful than ever.

More enforce­ment will not deal with the caus­es of the migra­tion from Cen­tral Amer­i­ca. In fact, the depor­ta­tion of more peo­ple back to their coun­tries of ori­gin will increase job­less­ness and eco­nom­ic des­per­a­tion — the main fac­tors caus­ing peo­ple to leave. Vio­lence, which feeds on that des­per­a­tion, will increase as well.

Pres­i­dent Oba­ma has pro­posed rais­ing the enforce­ment bud­get by $3.7 bil­lion to address the recent influx of unac­com­pa­nied Latin Amer­i­can minors. He has called for sus­pend­ing a law passed in 2008 that requires minors to be trans­ferred out of deten­tion to cen­ters where they can locate fam­i­ly mem­bers to care for them, and to instead deport them more rapid­ly. Both ideas will cause more pain, vio­late basic rights and moral prin­ci­ples, and fail com­plete­ly to stop migration.

Yes­ter­day, at the New York Times, Carl Hulse wrote that the law trans­fer­ring minors out of deten­tion cen­ters ​“is at the root of the poten­tial­ly calami­tous flow of unac­com­pa­nied minors to the nation’s south­ern bor­der.” This report and oth­ers like it not only ignore his­to­ry and paint a false pic­ture of the rea­sons for migra­tion, but also pro­vide the ratio­nale for increased enforcement.

Sim­i­lar­ly, New Jer­sey Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­a­tor Bob Menen­dez has declared ​“we must attack this prob­lem from a for­eign pol­i­cy per­spec­tive, a human­i­tar­i­an per­spec­tive, a crim­i­nal per­spec­tive, immi­gra­tion per­spec­tive, and a nation­al secu­ri­ty per­spec­tive.” He calls for more fund­ing for the U.S. mil­i­tary’s South­ern Com­mand and the State Depart­men­t’s Cen­tral Amer­i­can Secu­ri­ty Ini­tia­tive, among oth­er rec­om­men­da­tions. Giv­ing mil­lions of dol­lars to some of the most vio­lent and rightwing mil­i­taries in the West­ern hemi­sphere, how­ev­er, is a step back towards the mil­i­tary inter­ven­tion pol­i­cy that set the wave of migra­tion into motion to begin with.

Instead, we need to help fam­i­lies reunite, treat immi­grants with respect, and change the poli­cies the U.S. has imple­ment­ed in Cen­tral Amer­i­ca, Mex­i­co and else­where that have led to mas­sive migra­tion. The two most effec­tive mea­sures would be end­ing the admin­is­tra­tion’s mass deten­tion and depor­ta­tion pro­gram, and end­ing the free trade eco­nom­ic and inter­ven­tion­ist mil­i­tary poli­cies that are caus­ing such des­per­a­tion in the coun­tries these chil­dren and fam­i­lies are fleeing.