The refugee cri­sis isn’t over. I’m not talk­ing about the tens of thou­sands pour­ing into Europe over the last sev­er­al months, but about the tens of thou­sands who are still try­ing to get to the Unit­ed States from Cen­tral America.

But you’d nev­er know it from lis­ten­ing to our gov­ern­ment or our media. After the pan­ic over the ​“surge” of chil­dren at the bor­der last sum­mer, sto­ries about Cen­tral Amer­i­can refugees all but dis­ap­peared. Now, Cus­toms and Bor­der Pro­tec­tion (CBP) is crow­ing about a near­ly 50 per­cent drop in appre­hen­sions of fam­i­ly units at the South­west Bor­der over the last 12 months, com­pared to the pre­vi­ous year.

Yet, accord­ing to staff in refugee shel­ters across Mex­i­co, shel­ters are full and refugees are still stream­ing into that coun­try, hop­ing to make it to the Unit­ed States. If we’re appre­hend­ing few­er peo­ple, it is because more are being deport­ed by Mex­i­co or falling prey to gangs, drug car­tels or dan­ger­ous ter­rain on a voy­age that is becom­ing as treach­er­ous as the Mediter­ranean crossing.

And like the Syr­i­ans, they meet the UN cri­te­ria for a refugee: any­one flee­ing their home coun­try because of vio­lence and who fears per­se­cu­tion upon return. I spent sev­en weeks in Mex­i­co between late Jan­u­ary and March of this year, inter­view­ing Cen­tral Amer­i­can refugees in shel­ters stretch­ing from Oax­a­ca to Mex­i­co City. Although sev­er­al men­tioned eco­nom­ic con­cerns, almost all said it was vio­lence that drove them from their homes; vio­lence main­ly per­pe­trat­ed by the incred­i­bly bru­tal gangs Mara 18 and Mara Sal­va­trucha (MS-13). Guatemala, Hon­duras and El Sal­vador have some of the high­est mur­der rates in the world. Peo­ple told me of hav­ing to pay la renta, extor­tion mon­ey, to oper­ate a busi­ness or even to live in a par­tic­u­lar neigh­bor­hood. If they did not pay, the gang would kill their chil­dren. Gangs also forcibly recruit young men; if they refuse, they or their fam­i­lies turn up dead.

I heard so many such sto­ries that it’s dif­fi­cult to pick a quote that sums up the dan­gers, but one sticks with me: Eve­lyn Noeme Durán was a 22-year-old Guatemalan trav­el­ing alone through Mex­i­co. She walked, some­times took a bus and also rode the freight train the migrants call La Bes­tia, ​“The Beast.” On the train, a gang — she iden­ti­fied them as one of the ​“Maras” because they were tat­tooed — stole all her mon­ey and even her shoes. With­out mon­ey, she would have to cross the rest of the coun­try on foot or by cling­ing to the top of La Bes­tia (many migrants fall off and lose limbs). When I told her the trip was dan­ger­ous, she looked at me with tired eyes and said patient­ly, ​“It is as dan­ger­ous on a bus … in Guatemala as being on the train. It is only dif­fer­ent in the moun­tains here [because] there are animals.”

Why are we ignor­ing this cri­sis? Maybe it’s eas­i­er for Amer­i­cans to feel com­pas­sion for refugees who are across an ocean and stand lit­tle chance of mak­ing it to the Unit­ed States. We don’t have to wor­ry about them strain­ing our pub­lic assis­tance pro­grams or fear they’ll take our low-wage jobs. We don’t have to lis­ten to pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates call­ing immi­grants of their eth­nic­i­ty drug deal­ers and rapists.

When it comes to the Syr­i­ans, we seem to rec­og­nize that refugees deserve asy­lum: We demand that Euro­pean coun­tries take more refugees, and we’re even pledg­ing to do our part. In Sep­tem­ber, the White House announced the Unit­ed States would take in at least 10,000 Syr­i­ans over the next year, while U.S. Sen­a­tor Dick Durbin recent­ly said that num­ber should be 100,000. Durbin vis­it­ed refugee camps in Europe and called the refugee cri­sis, ​“the most sig­nif­i­cant human­i­tar­i­an chal­lenge of our time.” He added, ​“There is great suf­fer­ing and exploita­tion of refugees…You have to imag­ine how des­per­ate peo­ple would be to send a 15 year old boy with his 8 year old sis­ter alone.” Then there’s that gut-wrench­ing pho­to of the drowned Syr­i­an child, lying face down by the water’s edge.

The fact is, we have a human­i­tar­i­an cri­sis right here. CBP may announce that few­er refugees are reach­ing our bor­der, but it’s not because few­er are try­ing; it’s because more are being stopped in Mex­i­co. A New York Times arti­cle pub­lished last June — a rare excep­tion to the near-silence of the U.S. press — report­ed that Mex­i­co deport­ed almost 93,000 Cen­tral Amer­i­cans in the first sev­en months of fis­cal year 2015; 23,000 more than the Unit­ed States did. And the Migra­tion Pol­i­cy Insti­tute report­ed in Sep­tem­ber that Mex­i­co is on tar­get to deport 70 per­cent more Cen­tral Amer­i­cans this year than last, while U.S. depor­ta­tions are expect­ed to be halved. Not only is Mex­i­co doing our dirty work by deport­ing Cen­tral Amer­i­cans, we’re pay­ing for it: Accord­ing to an Octo­ber 10 New York Times arti­cle, we gave Mex­i­co tens of mil­lions of dol­lars in fis­cal year 2015 to pre­vent these refugees from reach­ing our border.

It’s stun­ning that CBP is ignor­ing the fact that, by its own admis­sion, the Cen­tral Amer­i­cans it wants to deport are flee­ing vio­lence that has not ceased — which would make them legit­i­mate refugees. CBP recent­ly announced that ​“con­di­tions relat­ed to the econ­o­my and vio­lence in El Sal­vador, Hon­duras and Guatemala have not improved.” Yet in the same announce­ment, the agency calls peo­ple ​“ille­gal­ly cross­ing the bor­der” from these coun­tries ​“a top pri­or­i­ty for removal.”

When refugees do make it across the bor­der, they are locked up like crim­i­nals. Many of the women and chil­dren in ​“fam­i­ly” deten­tion cen­ters were held for months, even after estab­lish­ing that they feared return­ing to their home coun­tries. Recent­ly, under a fed­er­al judge’s order, they have been released more quick­ly—with­in three to five weeks. But almost all of the women released are fit­ted with an ankle bracelet (which advo­cates call ​“shack­les”) — the same device used to track pris­on­ers released on parole.

In Mex­i­co, I inter­viewed and pho­tographed hun­dreds of refugees on their jour­ney north: José Luís, a fright­ened 11-year-old Hon­duran rid­ing alone on La Bes­tia; men who’d lost limbs to that train; Noël, a 16-year-old Sal­vado­ran walk­ing alone to the Unit­ed States. In Ixte­pec, I vis­it­ed a small ceme­tery that held the remains of 15 unknown migrants; in Chahuites, I saw dis­card­ed women’s cloth­ing lying in a place near the train tracks where, locals told me, refugee women were dragged to be raped by local thugs. I’ve heard sto­ries like those Durbin heard from refugees in Europe. I know, as much as I know any­thing, that peo­ple who are so des­per­ate that they’ll lit­er­al­ly risk their lives to reach the Unit­ed States won’t be stopped by Mex­i­can immi­gra­tion agents drag­ging them off trains and using Tasers on them; by Mex­i­can police forcibly remov­ing them from bus­es; or by the threat of local gangs rob­bing, kid­nap­ping, maim­ing or killing them. And they cer­tain­ly won’t be stopped at the U.S. bor­der by more walls, fences and agents. As long as con­di­tions in Cen­tral Amer­i­ca don’t improve, refugees will keep flee­ing north. And by law, we should be tak­ing them in. Why are we ignor­ing the cri­sis that is hap­pen­ing right on our doorstep?