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mia

(8,356 posts)
Tue Jun 17, 2014, 10:53 AM Jun 2014

Surge in unaccompanied minors across Mexican border is felt in Miami

...Children have arrived in the United States without their parents for decades, but over the past two years the flow has become a veritable flood of youths — mostly from Central America — crossing the border in groups and sometimes with the help of adult migrant-smugglers. Their numbers are so large that earlier this month President Barack Obama called the situation a humanitarian crisis....

A report issued in November by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops said that while the number of unaccompanied children detained by immigration authorities averaged about 6,600 in fiscal years 2004 through 2011, the number of children apprehended jumped to more than 13,000 in fiscal year 2012 and to more than 24,000 in fiscal year 2013, with the number rising even more this year....

While critics of the Obama administration claim the children are coming to get a green card if and when Congress enacts immigration reform, Little and Abarca said that is not the case....

“A lot of the children come here because they suffer domestic violence, abuse, neglect and abandonment back home,” said Abarca. “Many don’t have a mother or father caring for them. They are severely mistreated. A lot of the girls report being raped back home, being raped on the way here. For them, it’s a matter of life or death.”


Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2014/06/14/4178360/surge-in-undocumented-minors-at.html#storylink=cpy
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