DIGGING DEEPER
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution provided some of the earliest coverage on the flood of unaccompanied children from Central America crossing the nation’s southwest border. From the consequences for the state to one youth’s odyssey, find our coverage at www.myajc.com.
A steep decline in apprehensions of unaccompanied immigrant children and teens on the southwest border should mean fewer will be relocated to Georgia and other states in the coming months, a top Obama administration official told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Monday.
“Fewer should be going anywhere,” said U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner R. Gil Kerlikowske, who was in Atlanta to speak at the Airports Council International North America annual conference.
Kerlikowske attributed the drop in arrests to several factors, including climbing summer temperatures and the Obama administration’s enforcement efforts. At the same time, he warned more could come as temperatures fall in the Rio Grande Valley.
“Fortunately, we are in a much better position now,” said Kerlikowske, who was sworn into office this year to oversee an agency with 60,000 employees and a $12.4 billion budget. “We redeployed several hundred Border Patrol agents to the Rio Grande Valley.”
He also pointed to several facilities the government has opened to hold the children in Texas. “Even though they are not utilized as much right now,” he said, “very quickly they could be spun up to detain people.”
The U.S. Homeland Security Department released statistics Monday showing apprehensions of unaccompanied juveniles peaked this year in June at 10,622. The total plummeted to 5,501 in July before falling again to 3,141 last month.
Many of these children have said they are fleeing poverty and gang violence in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. A 2008 law targeting human trafficking prohibits the government from immediately deporting them. Instead, the government is sheltering them here while they go through deportation proceedings. The children may also seek relief from deportation in federal immigration courts in Atlanta and across the country.
Between January and July, federal authorities transferred 1,412 of the children to the care of sponsors in Georgia, reigniting the contentious debate over immigration in the state. The surge of children became a flash point in the gubernatorial race between Gov. Nathan Deal and state Sen. Jason Carter in July after Deal sent a scathing letter about the issue to President Barack Obama.
Kerlikowske said possible solutions include an overhaul of the nation’s immigration system coupled with efforts to fight crime and poverty in Central America.
The commissioner also pushed back against the Obama administration’s Republican critics, who have cited the thousands of apprehensions of juveniles as a sign of weak border security. Nearly all the children coming across the U.S.-Mexico border are immediately turning themselves into the authorities, Kerlikowske said. And some of their paid guides — called “coyotes” — are dialing 911 to alert U.S. Border Patrol agents that the children are heading their way.
“As soon as they come across — either wading in the Rio Grande or walking or going up the Hidalgo Bridge — they turn themselves in and ask for us to take care of them at that point,” Kerlikowske said. “It’s not that they are being smuggled in the back of trucks or running through kind of difficult terrain.
“They have been told, ‘Turn yourself into the person in green.’ Sometimes the human smuggler on the other side of the border will call 911,” he continued. “And (they) say, ‘Oh, at such and such a location are three people or five people.’ ”
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