HIP hosted a conversation with Sonia Nazario to discuss the ongoing unaccompanied minors situation taking place at the U.S.-Mexico border. With years of experience reporting on this issue and first-hand observations from her recent visit to Central America, her perspective has helped us to shed light on this humanitarian emergency.
Luis Enrique Motiño Pineda was 16 years old when he embarked on a 12,000-mile journey north, traveling atop freight trains from his country of Honduras up the length of Mexico, to reunite with his mother in the United States. It would take him eight attempts and 122 days, at immeasurable risk to his life, to complete this journey. What makes Enrique’s story so gut wrenching is not just the fact that he faced unnatural circumstances at an age when no one should face such adversity; what makes his story so tragically relevant is that it is not unique.
Enrique’s experience is documented in the 2006 national best seller Enrique’s Journey, written by Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Sonia Nazario who accompanied him on his trek. On Friday, August 1st at a Hispanics in Philanthropy-hosted event, Sonia spoke to a group of over 30 representatives from the social sector who gathered to hear about her experiences in Central America. In light of the current humanitarian crisis at the border, where the thousands of unaccompanied children who have attempted to enter the United States have been met with hostility by unprepared local and federal institutions, Sonia’s perspective is particularly poignant, and the discussions that her experiences evoke are valuable.
Sonia painted a grim picture of her experiences in Central America. She recently returned to Honduras to check on Enrique’s home town, Nueva Suyapa, and learned that there had been a dramatic shift in the reason why children are migrating to the United States. The main motivation to emigrate is no longer to reunite with loved ones. Her account makes it clear that many of the children who come from Central America today do so not only for the pursuit of happiness, but also for the preservation of their lives.
“What I saw was a level of violence directed at these kids that honestly shocked me,” Nazario remarked. The political instability in Honduras has provided a perfect climate for gangs to grow powerful, gangs like Mara Salvatrucha and 18th Street who have their roots in the streets of Los Angeles. In Nueva Suyapa, they hold a particularly tight grasp. “The gangs have long ruled this neighborhood, but a recent control by the narco-cartels has brought a new reach and viciousness in the violence there”, said Nazario. Walking through the streets, one can see rows of vacant store fronts. War taxes are imposed on nearly everyone, forcing six in ten businesses to shut down and crippling the local economy. Many houses are abandoned after having been taken over by drug traffickers. Throughout all of Honduras, 20 to 30 buses are robbed every day. Every month, 100 people below the age of 22 are killed; the country’s homicide rate is the highest in the world. For children in neighborhoods like Enrique’s, just going out into the street puts them at risk of being subject to gang violence. Many of the children who have immigrated to the U.S. have come from neighborhoods like these, and they come fleeing for their lives.
So what role can the U.S. play in addressing this situation? In Nazario’s words, we can begin by “treating these children humanely, and that means more than using that word in the title of legislation.” Nazario is alluding to The HUMANE Act, a piece of legislation currently being pushed by two Republican Senators that would extend the current screening policy for Mexican children to include all Central Americans, requiring that all children be screened by border patrol agents within hours of arriving in the United States. “Their job is to secure our borders,” says Nazario, “not to deduce information from traumatized children.”
Besides the right to be treated with basic respect, these children are also entitled to fair and timely trials, with an attorney by their side. There are several organizations, such as Kids In Need of Defense (KIND) and Legal Services for Children that work to provide pro bono legal counsel for refugee and immigrant children. Despite these efforts however, more than 70% of these children are required to present their immigration cases to a judge without any legal counsel, arguing against a government-sponsored attorney advocating for their deportation. While 40-60% of children could be entitled to some pathway of relief, many of them lose their cases due to a lack of legal representation. HIP hopes to bolster these efforts by launching an emergency campaign on its new crowdfunding site, HIPGive.org. The campaign will raise funds for organizations offering legal services and other forms of support to these children.
While we must move quickly to address this current issue at the border, our role will be much more meaningful if we also recognize and address the problem at its source. The troubling figures that Nazario shared clearly demonstrated the need for serious investments in the home countries of these migrant children. The ultimate goal is for people to feel safe in their home countries and to not feel the need to flee. Strategic investments in the security sector are key to achieving this objective. As Nazario says, we can do this “not by funding corrupt police and military, which is what we often do, but by strengthening accountability, the judiciary, and child protection, which is virtually nonexistent in Honduras.” Education is another major area of concern. One in four children ages 12 to 17 in Honduras are not in school and don’t have a job, which Nazario calls “a recipe for disaster.” Fifteen percent of Honduran communities don’t have elementary schools, and only 40% of children go on to middle school. Philanthropy can play a major role here by investing in the security and education systems of Honduras and other struggling Central American countries.
While Sonia and Enrique were leaving the danger zones of Southern Mexico and entering the south-central state of Veracruz, still atop their line of freight trains, there was a literal and figurative bend in the road. “Where there was a curve in the tracks, where the train had to slow down… I would see enormous compassion. I would see ten, twenty people who heard that whistle of the train in these little pueblitos run out of their homes clutching bundles of food in their arms, and I’d watch them all wave and smile and shout out to these migrants on top of the train.” Sonia remembers being thrown bread and tortillas; she remembers the bottles of tap water that people threw when they had no food to give. And she remembers that those with not even a bottle of water to spare would come out and give a silent prayer for the children as they passed by on the train. “I was so moved by this spectacle because these are the poorest Mexicans who do this. They live alongside the rails. They make a buck or two a day, and they can barely feed their own children, and yet they were giving to total strangers from other lands.”
We can learn from the wisdom of these people in Veracruz, who didn’t stop to think about whether or not these children were documented or had a license to ride the trains. What they saw were children who were hungry and scared, and they did what they knew was right by helping them in whatever way they could. This is a complex issue, and it’s hard to know exactly how to solve it; but we can start by telling the real stories. Instead of weaving these children into a dysfunctional political battle of which they have no part, we can change the narrative to reflect the situation’s human reality. We can start by sharing Enrique’s journey and the stories of thousands of others just like him.
-by Camila Guiza-Chavez, HIP Intern, Hispanics in Philanthropy