What’s going on with all the migrant children crossing into the US by themselves?
Current Events
Since President Biden took the oath of office, migrant immigrants have been illegally crossing into the United States in record numbers. However, what’s even more startling is the number of minor migrant children who cross the border alone and without their parents.
According to statistics, more than 400,000 migrant children have crossed the border alone since 2003. Now, that number is on the rise once again with children as young as 3-years-old coming into the US looking for a better life.
Migrant immigrant camps were designed for adults and resemble prisons, where the immigrants are detained until they receive an asylum hearing or are sent back to their native homeland. However, immigration officials have been stumped with what to do about the hoards of kids they’ve been finding at the border, since the adult facilities are not set up for them.
The Biden administration recently set up a makeshift facility at the Dallas Convention Center until it finds a more permanent solution due to the surge of migrant children who have strained the immigration system.
“It does not stop,” he said. “It’s ongoing, every day, every week,” said Roberto E. Reyes-Perez, an attorney for the South Texas Pro Bono Asylum Project who’s been working to assure the children receive the necessary legal advice to navigate the US immigration system.
However, not all of the migrant children have received legal representation. This means that toddlers to teens have been brought into court before a judge without an adult (and without a command of the English language) and asked to explain why they should be given asylum.
So, exactly why are these children crossing the border alone?
In 2019, parents began sending their children alone across the border once they realized the US government was shipping families back to their countries but allowing kids traveling alone to go through.
“This comes with great sacrifice. I don’t think it’s lost on any of these parents,” Hope Border Institute Deputy Director Marisa Limón Garza said. “This is a grim choice.”
“There’s no question Donald Trump’s strategy was inhumane, brutal, and un-American,” said Democratic Rep. Vicente Gonzalez of Texas, who represents a border district. “But what we’re doing now is also a failure.”
Children who cross the border alone are initially held in Customs and Border Protection custody. They are then transferred to shelters run by the Department of Health and Human Services, before being released to sponsors in the United States.
“The vast majority of sponsors are a parent or a close family relative living in the United States,” HHS says.
Or, in other words, most of the unaccompanied minors already have a family member living in the US, which makes, as noted in a 2016 Migration Policy Institute report, “the desire to reunify strong.”
It must be real bad if a parent sends their child to another country without them. At least Trump is not around anymore when these kids come here. I trust Biden to handle everything a whole lot better.