Migrant children: A huge humanitarian tragedy
The unprecedented journey of Central American children who flee, unaccompanied, from their countries has transformed the United States’ southern border into a window that displays the reality of human rights in that country.
That reality is sufficiently urgent and moving to demand that we put aside the diplomacy and the euphemisms and call it by its proper name: a humanitarian tragedy of enormous proportions.
You need only look at the hundreds of photographs of dozens of Central American children crowded in detention centers, under almost subhuman conditions, that have been published round the world.
They are indelible images of youngsters and mothers who risk their lives to cross the border in a desperate flight from misery and the enslaving and murderous violence perpetrated by the maras [gangs] and the drug cartels that have devastated Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador and Mexico.
They are the thousands of innocents who will continue to come, against all obstacles, because they’re not looking for an American Dream that is increasingly illusory but for something more profound and basic: saving their lives.
No matter what the politicians may say, we’re not watching another act in the theater of the absurd of the deceitful immigration reform but are seeing a terrible crisis of refugees displaced by violence.
What Obama proposes, however, is to repatriate those children, to get rid of them as soon as possible, to return them to the chaos and horror from which they have escaped almost miraculously.
To that end, he has asked Congress for “more authority” so the Secretary of Homeland Security may process their cases with greater speed and a minimum of consideration. That would allow the disaster of authorizing the Border Patrol agents, who have no qualifications, to decide the fate of the thousands of young Central American refugees.
In his haste to “solve” what he himself has described as a humanitarian crisis, Obama seeks to weaken the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, which demands that young unaccompanied refugees be given a fair chance to present their case for asylum.
His intention is to treat Central American minors the same way that unaccompanied Mexican children are treated; they can be returned immediately because their country and the U.S. share a common border.
But children who come from countries that do not share a border with the U.S. cannot be repatriated until the U.S. Department of Health determines if they are victims of human trafficking.
“The Obama administration has abandoned its responsibility and global leadership by seeking to deny vulnerable children fair and meaningful access to protection,” said quite justly Judy London, director of Immigrants’ Rights at Public Counsel, an organization that offers legal aid to low-income persons.
Obama’s words on Monday (June 30), vowing to make a series of administrative decisions on immigration, have not reassured anyone.
“At a time when every day we see torn families and children who flee from violence treated with contempt, without respect and without due legal process, it is no surprise that many in the immigrant and religious communities are skeptic about the result of the President’s announcement,” said the PICO National Network, which brings together community and religious organizations.
“We have heard many promises before, and the promises are good only if they’re fulfilled.”
That is why PICO is demanding that the White House take steps to end with the humanitarian crisis on the border, respecting the rights of protection to refugees that are international recognized.
Presente.org, a website that defends the immigrants, is circulating a petition that it will send to Jeh Johnson the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security and that deserves supporting:
“We demand that the Obama Administration immediately open all ICE detention facilities to independent humanitarian monitors, reunite children with their families in the U.S., and give them all legal representation and medical care.”
To sign the Presente.org petition, visit: here
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