Researchers Say Guatemalan Minors Return from Mexico Shelters 'in Very Bad Shape' Katya Cengel - Al Jazeera | |
go to original October 7, 2015 |
Guatemalan minors returned from the U.S. and Mexico between January and June 2015. (Instituto Nacional de Estadística Guatemala)
According to official numbers provided by Guatemala's National Institute of Statistics, 5,394 Guatemalan children were returned from Mexico during the first six months of 2015 compared with 78 Guatemalan children returned from the U.S. While the numbers vary depending on who is reporting them, the trend is consistent. According to Raquel Vielman de Alcazar, the head of Guatemala’s Secretariat of Social Welfare, 53 children have been returned from the U.S. this year, compared with 4,453 from Mexico.
Child migrants from Central America’s Northern Triangle — El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala — made headlines in 2014 when more than 50,000 were apprehended in the U.S. After that summer’s surge, Mexico, at the United States’ urging, sent thousands of federal police to the border with Guatemala, increased border and highway checkpoints and cracked down on migrants riding the northbound freight train known as the Beast.
Now the children are being picked up everywhere in Mexico — “from hotels, from taxis, from buses” — said Yuseli Santiago, a psychologist at the Quetzaltenango shelter. Daniella, an administrator there, said, “The [Mexican federal police] are all over, even in the rivers.”
According to the latest U.S. Customs and Border Protection numbers, 26,685 unaccompanied children have been apprehended at the United States’ southwestern border since Oct. 1, 2014, the beginning of fiscal year 2015. That is a drop of more than 50 percent from the same period the previous year. What happens when these children enter the U.S. is well documented. The fate of those who are apprehended in Mexico is less publicized.
Read the rest at Al Jazeera
Related: Guatemala Leads Americas in Condoning Violence Against Unfaithful Wives (Vanderbilt)
Editor's note: This is the last of a three-part series on Guatemalan migrant children who are returned to their country after unsuccessfully trying to reach the United States. Part one focuses on the guilt and shame migrant children carry with them, and part two on the disproportionate impact of migration on Guatemala's indigenous communities.
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