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New Wave of Migrants: Under 21

La Prensa San Diego, News Report, Luis Alonso Pérez, Jun 22, 2006

Last week Diego Hernandez and his cousin Jose, both 16, left their hometown of Salvatierra in the Mexican state of Guanajuato. They headed north to the border city of Tijuana on their way to Los Angeles, where Diego’s older sister was waiting for him.

After walking for two nights through the mountains into the United States, the teenagers were caught by Border Patrol agents and deported back to Tijuana.

Diego and Jose are just two of the thousands of unaccompanied minors who attempt to enter the United States illegally each year and are deported to the dangerous Mexican border towns. This growing phenomenon has caught the attention of the international organizations that are concerned over the risks these young people are exposed to.

More than 22,000 unaccompanied minors were deported from the United States in 2005, according to Theresa Kilbane, program officer for UNICEF Mexico. Kilbane was among a group of human rights organizers, social researchers and immigration experts who discussed how to protect unaccompanied minors from unsafe conditions at a June 7 seminar at the Northern Frontier College, a Mexican border issues investigation center.

According to immigration experts, the riskiest factor for these minors is the deportation process. The U.S. and Mexican governments have agreed on conditions to create a dignified, orderly and safe removal process. But only two border cities currently follow these stipulations for Border patrol agents, and in some cities, minors are deported in the middle of the night.

Diego and José were deported safely to Tijuana, though not all young migrants are so lucky.

Uriel Gonzales, program coordinator at the local YMCA minor migrant shelter in Tijuana, where Diego and José are now staying, says safe deportation agreements are followed about 80 percent of the time in that city.

“But in other cities like Mexicali,” he says, “they are still deporting minors in the middle of the night, because apparently neither the American nor Mexican authorities have minor detention centers where they can be sheltered. So they are deported as soon as they are apprehended, leaving minors in a vulnerable situation.”

Some worry that increased border enforcement and the tightening of U.S. immigration laws could lead to massive deportations.

“Our past experience is that when Homeland Security has put into place all of these operations at the borders, the number of apprehensions have increased,” says Susana Ortíz-Ang, Deputy Director of the Division of Unaccompanied Children’s Services of U. S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Immigrant rights advocate and researcher Jose Moreno Mena fears an increase in the number of deported minors because the Mexican government lacks the infrastructure to take care of them.

“I believe that the Mexican government is not prepared for this situation,” he says. “It’s the humanitarian groups that are announcing the needs that are going to have to be met and some of them are already preparing for it.”

Though it may seem like a local problem, the migration of unaccompanied minors is on the agenda of countries across the world, from North African children attempting to enter Spain to Albanian kids who immigrate to Italy, says Kilbane.

“It’s the lack of economic opportunities and social security in their home countries that forces people to look for opportunities in other parts of the world, ” says Kilbane. “The United Nations, in particular UNICEF, are starting to recognize the need to create policies that are directly related to the protecting children in their countries of origin.”

For now Diego and José await an uncertain future in the youth shelter. Since their journey through the mountains and their deportation, they say they don’t have the strength or the courage to try to cross again, but they don’t want to go back home feeling defeated. The dream of one day having a job to help out their families is what keeps them going.

“The hope of coming here (Tijuana) is to so we can do something over there (in the United States),” says Diego.