For Thousands of Migrant Children, Hell Is Between Guatemala and the U.S. Latin American Herald Tribune
go to original November 9, 2014

GUATEMALA CITY – “The first day was hard. I was 11 years old. They took me to a big house and gave me a room to myself. When I looked at the walls I saw obscene drawings and phrases pleading for help,” said Noemi, a Guatemalan forced into prostitution as a child in a town in the southern part of the country.

The painfully cruel memory did not stop Noemi, who preferred not to reveal her last name, from repeating the tragedy with her own daughter, whom she exploited sexually at the age of 12, then sold into prostitution two years later in the United States.

The child, now a 20-year-old woman, was rescued six months ago from a brothel in Chicago, after which her mother lost track of her. She repented selling her and reported her missing to Guatemalan authorities, who found her in the northern United States.

“Despite the professional care she receives, she is not recovering from the trauma of so much physical and emotional abuse,” Clara Reyes of the National Council of Guatemalan Migrant Care, or Conamigua, told Efe in a statement.

A total of 68,541 minors from Mexico and Central America were detained between October 2013 and September 2014 by U.S. authorities while trying to cross the border illegally, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

The number is almost 50 percent more than in the previous fiscal year, and out of the total number, 14,000 were Guatemalans.

Authorities have no statistics about how many minors making that trek fell into the hands of people traffickers, sexual exploiters and drug rings in Mexico.

Read the rest at Latin American Herald Tribune

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