DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen (Screenshot)

(CNSNews.com) – DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said Wednesday that the three Central American countries of Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador that make up the Northern Triangle want illegal immigrant children in the U.S. to be returned to their home countries.



“What we hear from the Northern Triangle governments – they have said this publicly. I am sure that they will tell you when you visit them – is they want their children back. Our laws uniquely allow us to send Mexican children back home after they have gone through a process, do not have a legal right to stay, but under the law, we cannot send children from other countries back, except for Mexico and Canada,” she told the House Homeland Security Committee.

“So the Northern Triangle governments have said to us – they will say to you – ‘please send us our children back. We want them reunited with our families and communities here. We don’t want the smugglers to be able to convince parents to send their children on this perilous journey where they are absolutely victims of violence and abused,’” Nielsen said.



Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas) asked the secretary, “Can you tell us the latest on this Central American security initiative and how we can stop these families from making—paying $6,000--- you must be very desperate to say, here, coyote, I’m gonna give you this $6,000 to take my child up north. Very desperate situation. What can we do to stop that desperation?”



“I would just in the time that I have, let me just give you a couple examples, and I can also refer back to a question that Congresswoman Jackson Lee asked me. The number of unaccompanied children is part of the humanitarian crisis. These are children whose parents decided to send them alone on a very, very dangerous journey at the hands of most often smugglers and coyotes or traffickers into the United States,” Nielsen said.

The secretary said that because some illegal immigrant girls are sexually assaulted on the journey to the U.S.-Mexico border, every girl over the age of 10 is given a pregnancy test.



“As you know, sir, very unfortunately, because of the increase in violence, at ICE when we have families with children, we have to give every girl a pregnancy test over 10. This is not a safe journey, so I ask again that we change the law, we treat all children the same, and we afford them the opportunity to go back home if they have no legal right to be in the United States,” she said.



“The other part of this that I think we need to do is we need to keep families together. Families need to be able to be kept together, go through the process. If they have a legal right to stay, we will welcome them here. If they don’t have a legal right to stay, the most humanitarian thing to do is to remove them efficiently and effectively. Both of those changes we need from Congress,” Nielsen added.