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 News Around the Republic of Mexico | December 2006 
Childen Cross US Border Solo as Security Rises
 Tim Gaynor - Reuters
| | Since January, Mexican authorities say some 6,800 youngsters have been repatriated to northern Sonora state after crossing into southern Arizona, a rise of 20 percent over the same period last year. |
Nogales, Mexico - Slipping into the United States, eight-year-old Adrian Ramirez began a three-day trek across the cactus-studded wastes with just a small bag of tortillas and one large hope keeping him going.
"I wanted to spend Christmas with my father in New York, but they caught us," he said, perching on a chair at a center for child migrants in this bustling city on the Arizona border.
Picked up and swiftly repatriated by the U.S. Border Patrol, the Triqui Indian from Mexico's poor Oaxaca state is one of a growing number of children trying to cross the border into the United States without their parents.
Since January, Mexican authorities say some 6,800 youngsters have been repatriated to northern Sonora state after crossing into southern Arizona, a rise of 20 percent over the same period last year.
They say most are seeking to join moms and dads who already live stateside but who are increasingly reluctant to head back to Mexico to pick up their children because of tighter security along the 2,000-mile (3,200-km) line.
"The parents know that they can't come back because of increased security," said Humberto Valdes, of Mexico's family welfare agency in the northern state of Sonora.
"Now they are sending for their children to come and join them ... and they obviously don't know the risks they are exposing them to."
THRIVING TRADE
Adrian set out with a 16-year-old cousin on an improvised journey through deserts where security has been increasingly tightened in recent months, after President George W. Bush ordered 6,000 National Guard troops to the border in June.
The majority are taken north by professional guides or "coyotes," in a booming child smuggling trade where parents pay hefty fees of $3,000 to $5,000 to be reunited with their children -- twice the amount charged for adults -- welfare workers say.
"They treat them like merchandise, and it's very profitable," Valdes told Reuters.
For the children, many of whom have a limited sense of the world they are moving through, the journey to U.S. cities sometimes thousands of miles away, is a frightening and bewildering experience.
"I don't know the name of the city my mother lives in the United States, and I didn't know the men who came to my grandmother's house to collect me," said Blanca Isela Tejada, a tiny 13 year old from Sonora.
"The worst thing was the scorpions," she said, shuddering at the memory of a two-day trek with over the desert that ended in repatriation by the Border Patrol.
Other youngsters in the care of the Camino a Casa, or Path Home, welfare project in Nogales, recall standing in line at the port of entry in the city with fake or stolen documents given them by coyotes.
"They gave me the crossing card of a girl who looked like me, but I got very nervous," said Lupita Valencia, 14, from central Colima state, who had been sent for by her parents who live in Seattle.
"The inspectors realized I wasn't the card holder and sent me back" she added.
DANGEROUS JOURNEY
More than 400 people died crossing over the border last year, most of heat exhaustion or drowning. While no figures were available for children perishing on the journey, Mexican and U.S. officials say the hazards are great.
In California, U.S. Customs and Border Protection inspectors have found youngsters crammed into airless hideaways cut into car gas tanks they call "coffin compartments," and have charged coyotes with endangerment.
In Arizona, where desert temperatures soar to above 120 F (50 C) in summer and dip to below freezing in winter, U.S. Border Patrol agents have found children as young as a few months left out in the wilds by their guides.
"We have had a case of a baby left in the brush by a fleeing coyote ... and of a four-year-old child left to fend for himself in a canyon after a group was arrested," said Gus Soto, a spokesman with the U.S. Border Patrol in Nogales, Arizona.
"At the first sign of law enforcement, the coyotes simply abandon children out there to fend for themselves."
Welfare workers in Nogales say youngsters also face other dangers while in the hands of coyotes, including sexual abuse.
One recent case involved a 14-year-old girl told by a smuggler that sex was all part of the package for taking her north to join her parents.
But with border security on the rise as ever more technology, fencing and agents are deployed to the international line, authorities fear the situation is here to stay.
"It's lamentable," said Valdes. "But every indication is that the phenomenon is growing." |
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