“This is a problem of immense enormity and terrible hurt,” Hal Rogers said. Child migrants a neglected challenge

As Congress dithers over immigration reform, the children of Central America aren’t waiting.

The past few years have seen a steady rise in the number of teenagers and younger boys and girls crossing the Southwest border unaccompanied by their parents or adult relatives. Many are fleeing drug and gang-related violence in nations like Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador. But many also have family in the United States, and sometimes walk across the long land bridges with phone numbers in hand.


In Washington-speak, these are Unaccompanied Alien Children or UACs. And their numbers could approach 66,000 this year — more than four times the level of just two years ago.

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In the spring of 2012 and again last January, Congress stepped in to provide extra money to care for and resettle these migrant children. But as the numbers continue to grow this spring, it’s become a humanitarian and legal crisis — the full costs of which no one talks about much in today’s political climate.

“This is a problem of immense enormity and terrible hurt,” said House Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers on Wednesday evening as his panel took the first steps toward approving a $39.2 billion budget for the Department of Homeland Security. And the Kentucky Republican chastised the White House for showing “no leadership at all” in its budget for the coming year.

Indeed, President Barack Obama surprised many by asking for no increase in UAC funding in his March plan for new 2015 fiscal year that begins Oct. 1. Frustrated Democrats accuse the White House of lowballing the costs to make room for the president’s initiatives under the strict spending caps negotiated last December for 2015.

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Having been caught short last winter, Senate Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) demanded a white paper from the administration on the crisis and forced an April 22 meeting of top staff from the White House budget office and four major line departments: State, Justice, Homeland Security and Health and Human Services.

It was then that the administration acknowledged that the flow of migrant children could double again next year to 127,000 and the costs for HHS may approach $2 billion — twice the $868 million in the president’s UAC request.

No budget amendment has yet followed.

“A $1.1 billion gap that needs to be addressed based on the tremendous humanitarian need,” said Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) at a May Senate hearing — weeks after the April meeting. In the same forum, Mikulski, a former social worker, didn’t hide her exasperation with HHS witnesses.

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“We don’t want to warehouse them. We try to put them in foster care,” she said of the children. “Our failure to appropriate could exacerbate the humanitarian crisis. I need numbers.”

“Tell me what you need, and don’t stick us with the bill at the end. I feel you are not telling me what you need. I really don’t feel that HHS is telling me what you need.”

Ironically, it fell to House Republicans — who have most resisted immigration reform — to take the first step Wednesday evening.

Their 94-page Homeland bill is again heavily border-centric: mandating a minimum number of detention beds, adding money for border protection even as it rejects $570 million in new aviation fees to help pay for transportation security.

But one number that stands out is a nearly $77 million, tenfold increase in what the administration requested for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to cover the costs of transporting the children to HHS resettlement facilities.

That increase reflects the new estimate of 127,000 — also cited by Rogers in his remarks. “It’s quite a flood, it’s overwhelming,” said Rep. John Carter (R-Texas), who chairs the panel. And in an op-ed last month, Carter blamed the White House for creating what he called then “an invitational posture for illegal immigrants.”

“This posture has created a gravitational pull so strong,” Carter wrote, “that illegal immigrants are willing to put their own children in harm’s way in order to take advantage of the president’s determination to evade the law.”

Elizabeth Kennedy, a doctoral candidate at San Diego State University, paints a different picture.

She has studied the crisis from both sides of the U.S. border, including a stint now as a Fulbright fellow in El Salvador. All the Salvadoran children must cross Mexico at some point to get to the U.S. — and many are intercepted and turned back by Mexican authorities. Kennedy has collected over 400 interviews by going to the migrant return center and talking with waiting family members and their children once they arrive.

“Most of the children I meet at the bus return center will try again, and some will reach the United States,” she said. “I’m in contact with 20 who have done so since I got here in October. I’m sure others have arrived and have elected not to stay in contact with me.”

“Over 90 percent of child migrants here have a family member in the U.S,” Kennedy said. “Despite these numbers, less than a third mention family reunification as a reason for emigrating. More often than not, their neighborhood has become so dangerous or they have been so seriously threatened, that to stay is to wait for their own death or great harm to their family. Their neighborhoods are full of gangs. Their schools are full of gangs. They do not want to join for moral and political reasons and thus see no future.”

“In only one of 400-plus interviews did a child migrant ask about the DREAM Act and immigration reform. … Fifteen had heard that the U.S. system treated children differently than adults and wanted to know how. In all 15 cases, the child had received a threat to join the gang or be killed, and some had then been beat or raped when they refused to join.”

“Thus, there is only limited knowledge of the way the U.S. system works for children. U.S. legislation is not driving this emigration. A humanitarian crisis is. We need to accept that when large amounts of people leave a country, this is indicative of untenable problems in that country. … Until the root causes are addressed, it’s going to continue.”

‘The reality is that violence — homicide, rape, kidnapping, extortion, disappearance — is at near an all-time high,” Kennedy said of her time in El Salvador. “And it has a disproportionate impact on young people.”

The Central America Regional Security Initiative or CARSI has been the chief framework through which the U.S. has sought to strengthen law enforcement and the judicial systems in these same countries. And no single motive explains all the migration.

Within Central America’s so-called northern triangle, drug trafficking and gang violence appear to be more of a driving factor in Honduras and El Salvador. Meanwhile, many of the teenagers fleeing Guatemala are most frustrated by what they see as a dead-end economy.

Nonetheless, the level of U.S. funding for all of CARSI adds up to just $642 million since 2008, according to State Department records. That’s less than $130 million annually — a fraction of the cost faced by HHS in handling the fleeing children.

In the lingo of border enforcement, these child migrants are OTM — Other Than Mexican. And one upshot of the crisis now is that Mexico and the U.S. find themselves more aligned in countering those crossing their borders.

“The Mexicans are genuinely interested in stopping that invasion of their borders on the southern side,” Rogers said. And he found a willing partner in Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas), whose Rio Grande district is among those most affected.

“Right now we’re playing defense on the 1-yard line,” Cuellar said at Wednesday’s meeting, “I’d rather play defense on the 20-yard line. … If we just spent a little bit on money on the southern border of Mexico, I just think a lot of this will be looked at very differently.”