(im)migration

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UN Pushes For Fleeing Central Americans To Be Treated As Refugees | VIDEO

 

SAN JOSE, Costa Rica (AP) — United Nations officials are pushing for many of the Central Americans fleeing to the U.S. to be treated as refugees displaced by armed conflict, a designation meant to increase pressure on the United States and Mexico…

 

The easiest way to have good records of who is entering and exiting the United States is to have easy ways of legal immigration. – Chris Wilson, Mexico Institute of the Woodrow Wilson International Center @Chris_E_Wilson

 

Click through for more and VIDEO

 

Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

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Children from Central America – Origins of Crisis

 

Over the last year, an unprecedented number of unaccompanied immigrant children, mostly from Central America, have attempted to cross the border into the United States. Antonio Gonzalez, president of the William C. Velasquez Institute,explains the roots of the migration surge and the politics behind it.

 

Source: www.tavissmileyradio.com

 

An in depth explanation of the origins of the crisis that has lead children to flee to the U.S.

 

Eleven minutes of audio.

 

One point Gonzalez had wrong is that the crisis started back in 2009, years longer than the one year that he suggested.

 

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Georgia Immigrant Detainees ‘Riot’ Over Maggot-Filled Food – COLORLINES

  More than two dozen detainees at a notorious immigration detention center in Georgia staged a hunger strike and protest last week over inedible food, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (AJC) reported. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) called the protest at Stewart Detention Center a “riot” that required that detainees be “segregated for disciplinary purposes,” according to the AJC. The ACLU and Georgia Detention Watch filed a complaint raising alarm about a hunger strike that detainees began on or around June 12, during which hundreds of detainees threw their food away. Detainees have complained that their food is often filled with maggots, or that the same water used to boil eggs is reused to brew coffee. Detainees who work in food preparation have also complained of a roach infestation in the facility’s kitchen. Detainees were frequently served rotten food.   Click through to read more.   Source: colorlines.com   Serving rotten food is another way to dehumanize. The U.S. needs to be better than this.

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Feds made humanitarian crisis worse

 

Immigration officials were caught in an untenable position. And then they made it worse.
Unaccompanied minors from Central America, as well as mothers with young children, have been crossing the Rio Grande into south Texas in vast numbers this year. Increasing gang violence in their home countries incredibly makes the long trek across Mexico a safer alternative. Some seek to reunite with parents who already crossed the border. Human smugglers promise a land of milk and honey.

They’re not heading for California, Arizona or west Texas. Those sectors of the border have been fortified. Even desperation cannot push a child into a deadly desert. Instead, they’ve targeted the most lightly guarded section of the border, where a nearly dry river is easily crossed into south Texas.

Once over, they are quickly caught, apparently part of the plan.

The Border Patrol and Immigrations and Customs Enforcement are trapped. Then, because secrecy is engrained in the culture of their parent Department of Homeland Security, they do a poor job of getting out of the trap.

Immigration officials can’t send these children back across the border. They can’t fly them back to Central America once they make a credible claim of fear of violence. They don’t have adequate facilities in south Texas to process the children. They need help.

But instead of acknowledging their problem, instead of reaching out to state leaders in Arizona and California, they surprised them.


The mayor of Nogales, AZ is speaking out about the hundreds of unaccompanied kids at a giant Border Patrol warehouse in Southern AZ. The mayor said the kids are in good care.

 

In Arizona, it started when families were dropped at bus stations, apparently after being processed at Arizona immigration facilities with greater capacity than those in Texas. Most, it turned out, were bound for other states.

But no one here knew this. A state that bore the brunt of the last surge in illegal immigration feared the worst. It was unconscionable that the Border Patrol and ICE said nothing.

Next came the children, bused into a warehouse of a building in Nogales. Again, the buses showed up out of nowhere, with no warning and no explanation. Hundreds of children were dumped into a building with insufficient beds and showers. If nothing else said crisis, that did.

But again, no explanation. Just that stony silence until reporters started pressing for answers. In the meantime, the vacuum of information invited politicians to puff up their outrage. SB 1070 was born in an atmosphere like this.

Silence and surprises do not serve ICE or the Border Patrol. They do not serve the people of the United States. And they do little for the children bewildered by all they are encountering.

 

Click through to read more.

 

Source: www.azcentral.com

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President Obama: “urgent humanitarian situation” #MigrantChildren

 

Two female detainees sleep in a holding cell, as the children are separated by age group and gender, as hundreds of mostly Central American immigrant children are being processed and held at the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Nogales Placement Center on Wednesday, June 18, 2014, in Nogales, Ariz.

CPB provided media tours Wednesday of two locations in Brownsville, Texas, and Nogales, that have been central to processing the more than 47,000 unaccompanied children who have entered the country illegally since Oct. 1.

 

They are sent to shelters for several weeks as the government tries to reunite them with family in the U.S. The network of some 100 shelters around the country has been over capacity for months and is now caring for more than 7,600 children.

 

Source: www.chron.com

 

It seems Central America is in a major crisis right now.

I listen to the news every day and haven’t heard what has lead to this sudden urgency in migration. I mostly hear about the chaos in Iraq on the news.

 

Does anyone know what is happening in Central America that would cause parents to send their kids alone. Have thousands of parents been kidnapped or murdered?

 

One would think that the U.S. would have an interest in stabilizing Central America. Maybe I haven’t heard about stabilization efforts because I’m not tuned into the right media channels?

 

@getgln