The 52,000 unaccompanied children who have shown up at the border are fleeing gang violence and have valid claims to asylum.
The gratuitous cruelty of the U.S. right to these children isn’t much of a surprise.
More shocking is the response of the Obama administration, which is scarcely more hospitable. As the United Nations and others have said, the situation on the border, where 52,000 unaccompanied children have arrived from Mexico and Central America since October, is more a refugee crisis than an immigration one.
But rather than acknowledge this, the White House has suggested that it wants to strip some of these children of rights they have under the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, a 2008 law signed by George W. Bush. According to The New York Times, Obama is considering seeking “flexibility” in the law’s requirements, which gives lone child migrants from countries other than Mexico and Canada the right to an immigration hearing and, in the interim, release into the “least restrictive setting that is in the best interest of the child.”
The administration must acknowledge that many of the children—who largely hail from gang-ridden Honduras, the country with the world’s highest murder rate, and neighboring El Salvador and Guatemala—have valid claims to asylum. “The UN said that in their judgment, we should call this a refugee matter, and I think they’re right,” Democratic Representative Zoe Lofgren of California. Indeed, she argues, calling the underlying problem gang warfare minimizes it: “These are armed warlords competing for governance of the countries.”
Treating this as a refugee crisis does not mean simply opening the borders, which could empower the smuggling rings that profit by bringing children to the United States. It means providing safety for the kids who are already here and working with the UN to create centers in their home countries where those whose lives are in danger can apply for asylum in the United States or other nations.
“To me, it’s recognizing reality,” Lofgren says. “You can say it’s not a refugee crisis, but it is, and we have tools in our toolbox, including UNHCR, to deal with a refugee crisis.”
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