New York Times
By Julia Preston
July 19, 2014
HARLINGEN,
Tex. — The first time her aunt in Mexico took her out at night, the
young teenager was told they were headed to a party.
It
was no party. “It was trafficking people, drug dealers,” she recalled.
“I just saw a lot of guys. They had guns. I was in shock. I was shaking.
The more I was saying
no, the more they treated me badly.”
It
was the start of a dark ordeal for Andrea H., a Honduran then living in
a Mexican border city. Her own relatives, associates of Mexican drug
cartel bosses, forced her
into prostitution. She was 13.
After
two years she ran away, seeking safety in the United States. She tried
twice, crossing the Rio Grande, scrambling over fences and hiding in
cactus brush in black
swarms of mosquitoes. Twice she was caught by the Border Patrol.
But
when agents questioned her, Andrea did not tell them why she had fled.
Thinking back to those encounters in an interview last week, Andrea
recalled the chill she had
felt facing uniformed agents in bleak holding cells at a Border Patrol
station within earshot of other migrants she did not know — perhaps with
ties to the cartels.
“I
was just trying to protect myself, and I was not saying anything to no
one,” she said. Twice she agreed to leave voluntarily and was returned
to Mexico.
In
an unprecedented surge, more than 57,000 young migrants coming without
their parents, most from Central America, have been apprehended at the
southwest border since
October. Administration officials and lawmakers in Congress want to
stem the influx by speeding up reviews to determine whether they should
be deported.
“We
have to show that if you do not qualify for some form of humanitarian
relief under our laws, you must be sent home,” Jeh Johnson, the Homeland
Security secretary,
said at a Senate hearing this month.
But
interviews over the last week with many young migrants like Andrea who
made the journey to the border suggest the risks of accelerating initial
screenings.
Minors
questioned shortly after being caught in locations, like Border Patrol
stations, where they may feel unsafe often do not disclose dangers at
home or abuses suffered
during their journey, lawyers who are counseling them say. They are
disoriented, wary of strangers and sometimes traumatized, and they have
little understanding of the legal process.
“Many
children would be sent back to harm,” said Jonathan Ryan, executive
director of Raices, a legal-services organization in San Antonio that
has conducted in-depth
screenings of more than 1,000 unaccompanied minors in an emergency
shelter at Lackland Air Force Base. “We would have their names here, and
the morgue in Tegucigalpa will have the bodies down there,” he said,
referring to the capital of Honduras.
Mr.
Ryan and other advocates who have conducted deeper screenings of more
than 3,000 Central American minors this year in shelters in Texas found
that at least half could
present viable claims for visas.
In
the case of Andrea H., the full story of her abuse emerged long after
her brief screenings by the Border Patrol. The agents who questioned her
not only failed to discover
that she was a victim of sex trafficking but also returned her to
Mexico, missing the key fact that she is Honduran.
“I
was just afraid of everything, after all those things those guys had
been doing to my body,” she said, speaking by telephone to the offices
in this border city of the
South Texas Pro Bono Asylum Representation Project, whose lawyers
represented her in immigration court.
On
a third attempt she succeeded in crossing illegally into Texas,
eventually confiding in those lawyers and anti-trafficking
investigators. Now 18 and living in Texas,
Andrea asked that her full name not be published because she still
fears some relatives. This year, she won a special immigration status
for juveniles.
Debate
in Washington has centered on a 2008 anti-trafficking law. Obama
administration officials and some lawmakers from both parties are
seeking to extend the fast-track
screenings the law allows for unaccompanied youths from Mexico, using
them for Central Americans as well.
Policy
makers proposing to change the law say they want to strike a fair
balance, creating tougher deterrents to reduce the illegal surge while
preserving the country’s
traditions of protecting people fleeing violence, especially children.
Bills
were offered last week by two Texans, Senator John Cornyn, a
Republican, and Representative Henry Cuellar, a Democrat; by two House
Republicans, Robert W. Goodlatte
of Virginia, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, and Jason Chaffetz of
Utah; and by the senators from Arizona, John McCain and Jeff Flake,
both Republicans.
Under
the current statute, minors from Mexico must be interviewed by border
agents within 48 hours after they are apprehended. If a Mexican minor
does not express fear
of returning home, agents can obtain his or her consent to leave
voluntarily. Since October, more than 12,600 unaccompanied Mexicans were
apprehended along the southwest border, and most were swiftly
returned. For minors from other countries, the law requires
their transfer within 72 hours to detention shelters run by the
Department of Health and Human Services. Refugee officials work to find
parents or other adults in this country who can care for them while they
go through deportation proceedings. They receive
basic guidance on their legal rights, and in some shelters volunteer
lawyers interview them to assess their legal prospects.
Minors
can be eligible for a special juvenile status if they have been abused
or abandoned by family; for asylum if they face life-threatening
persecution; and for visas
as victims or witnesses of serious crimes or human trafficking.
Homeland
Security officials said 87 percent of those cases opened in the last
five years are unresolved. Last year, about 1,800 unaccompanied Central
American minors were
deported, the officials said.
Just
over the border in Reynosa, Mexico, a clean and orderly shelter run by
the Mexican child-welfare agency is filled with unaccompanied young
migrants, including some
from Central America who had been detained by the Mexican police before
they reached the Rio Grande.
They
were girls wearing low-cut tops and boys in black T-shirts with tattoos
and buzz cuts. On a day when the shelter offered free telephone calls
to their parents, many
burst into tears.
“I
feel sad because when you speak with your mother, you realize how far
away she is and you can’t hug her,” said Alberto Rosales, 17, a
Salvadoran with a spiky haircut
and tears rolling down his face. His mother was at home in El Salvador.
The
youths told stories of hopeless poverty and criminal gang violence that
they say drove them to leave, and family living in the United States
who urged them to come.
Most of them probably would not have qualified to stay in the United
States if they had made it.
A
few said they had faced direct threats. Mr. Rosales said he had left
home after a street gang moved into his neighborhood and gave him a
choice: Join, leave or die.
His mother paid smugglers to guide him to join three brothers living in
the United States, including one American citizen.
The
children spoke almost casually of dangers they had seen on the road. A
14-year-old Salvadoran boy, José Jonás Ramírez, said he had been
kidnapped from a bus station
in Guatemala and held for three weeks while his captors pressed him to
hand over the money he intended to pay smugglers. They released him
after taking everything he had, including his shoes.
A
13-year-old Salvadoran girl said she and her sister had been taken off a
bus by gunmen in a Mexican town and forced to kneel in a muddy field
while gunmen pushed rifles
into their backs. The girl, Laura Melissa Morales Orellana, said the
men had debated whether to rape them but finally only robbed them. She
said she had been abandoned by both parents when she was a baby. Her
story might have qualified her for protection in
the United States.
But the youths were not thinking about legal papers. José Ramírez said his mother had moved to the United States when he was 3.
“I just want to see my mother,” he said. “That is my dream.”
In Texas, one young man who made an illegal crossing unaccompanied remembered his first days in the United States.
Kevyn
Merida, 22, said he had fled from his home in Guatemala after Mexican
drug traffickers, seeking to expand into his country, tried to enlist
him as a courier. Two
close friends of his were murdered by traffickers. Mr. Merida was also
fleeing severe abuse at home. He came in 2009, one of the first in the
wave of unaccompanied minors.
Mr.
Merida said he told nothing of his history to the Border Patrol officer
who caught him less than an hour after he rafted across the Rio Grande.
“You can’t talk to them,” he said last week. “They are just trying to throw you back again.”
But
after a week in a health department detention shelter in Harlingen, he
said, he watched a presentation about his legal rights and later met a
lawyer from Mr. Ryan’s
organization. “I felt comfortable talking to them,” he said. “I changed
my mind and decided to tell the truth.”
Mr.
Merida went to immigration court and was granted a green card. He
graduated from high school and is getting ready to join the Marines.
“It is a happiness I can’t describe in words,” he said.
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
No comments:
Post a Comment