U.S. ads tell Central American migrants to stay home
U.S. ads tell Central American migrants to stay home
Gil Kerlikowske - Central America
Bob Ortega, The Republic | azcentral.com
9:17 p.m. MST January 27, 2015
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(Photo: Mark Henle/The Republic)
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
- CBP and State Department launch "Don't Go North" ad campaign in Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador
- Migration of unaccompanied children down 38 percent; families 12 percent since October, CBP says
- CBP Commissioner Kerlikowske says agency better prepared for any surge this year
In hopes of avoiding another spring flood of unaccompanied children and families at the southern U.S. border, U.S. officials said they have relaunched an advertising campaign across Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.
That campaign, conducted primarily through social and print media, takes aim at families who may be considering fleeing north or sending their children with smugglers.
So far this fiscal year, crossings by Central Americans continue to drop steadily from fiscal 2014's record numbers.
"We have developed an outreach plan with the State Department and the three Central American countries, with a two-part message: One, it's very dangerous to come. Two, if you do come, you will not be given sanctuary. You'll be detained and you will not be allowed to stay," Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Gil Kerlikowske said during an exclusive interview with The Arizona Republic this week.
The U.S. government ran a similar campaign last summer, when tens of thousands ofchildren and families were traveling north to escape gang violence and crushing poverty.
Kerlikowske said the new ad campaign will run through April, covering what is generally the busiest period for crossings.
Last year, "we saw almost all of these 68,000 unaccompanied children within a few months, parts of February, March, April, May. But by June, it really began to trail off," said Kerlikowske, who was in Phoenix as part of the Department of Homeland Security's role in safeguarding Sunday's Super Bowl.
The "Don't Go North" campaign is part of a broader strategy, involving the governments of Mexico and the Central American countries, to discourage migration.
U.S. officials have announced a system to allow a small number of children and families from Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras to apply for asylum directly from their home countries.
Those countries have among the highest murder rates in the world, and President Barack Obama has promised tens of millions of dollars in assistance to help the countries tackle corruption, improve economic opportunities and reduce the influence of gangs.
On Monday, Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez said a military crackdown on gangs helped cut the murder rate in his country by 23 percent last year, to 66 people per 100,000. But even that improvement left Honduras on par with El Salvador, where, on a single day earlier this month, 22 people were murdered. Both countries' murder rates remain among the highest in the world.
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And strategies to keep people from leaving have relied on sticks more than on carrots.
Human-rights and immigrant-rights organizations have strenuously criticized the Obama administration's announced policy, repeated by Kerlikowske, of aggressively deporting people back to Central America.
As The Arizona Republic has reported, many migrants say they were not given a proper chance to make asylum claims; and they can face significant dangers once they are deported back.
Mexico, for its part, has aided the U.S. effort by deploying police and immigration officers at key boarding points in the south of the country. That has made it more difficult for families and children to ride the freight trains, collectively known as "La Bestia," that for years have provided one of the main routes north to the border.
Mexico also continues to operate immigration checkpoints on major north-south highways. It deported more than 114,000 Hondurans, Guatemalans and Salvadorans back to their countries last year, a 47 percent increase, according to Guatemala's national migration office. All land routes from Mexico to Honduras and El Salvador transit Guatemala.
Of the Central American countries, Honduras has taken the most aggressive approach to reducing migration since last summer's surge, deploying troops to turn people back before they could cross into Guatemala.
That may have been part of the reason that, from October through December of last year, only 506 unaccompanied Honduran children were apprehended at the U.S. border — one-third the number of Salvadorans and less than a fifth the number of Guatemalans.
Overall, from October through December, the number of unaccompanied children apprehended at the southern U.S. border fell 38 percent compared with a year earlier, to 8,010, according to Customs and Border Protection.
The number of "family units," as the agency refers to children and other family members apprehended together, fell 12 percent, to 7,468. Nearly two-thirds of the children and families crossed in Texas' Rio Grande Valley.
For all of fiscal 2014, which ended Sept. 30, there were just under 137,000 unaccompanied children and family members apprehended at the southern U.S. border, more than doubling the total from the previous fiscal year.
Last spring and summer, the Border Patrol's Rio Grande Valley Sector was overwhelmed, lacking adequate facilities and resources to handle the influx of children and families.
Kerlikowske said that the CBP is better prepared for any potential surge this year.
Despite the fact that apprehension numbers are down sharply so far this year, "that could change pretty quickly, of course," he said.
Asked whether he thinks the policies put in place by the CBP, the State Department and the governments of Mexico and the three Central American countries will prevent or reduce any new surge, Kerlikowske replied:
"I think it could. There are a lot of things going on. So, Mexico is doing a tremendous job, and their immigration commissioner (Ardelio) Vargas ... is doing a tremendous job of reducing the number of people that are on the train, La Bestia."
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