They Are Children
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| ASSOCIATED PRESS |
Children are "fleeing for their lives," according to journalist Sonia Navario, who has investigated the root causes, circumstances, and plight of vulnerable migrants who have been traveling -- often by themselves at enormous risk -- to the United States and other countries throughout the Americas from the Central American countries of Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador.
In the case of Cristian, an 11 year-old boy from Honduras that Navario interviewed in Honduras, his father was murdered in March by gangs, he witnessed the murder of three people who defied the narco-cartels that control much of the countryside, and a girl his age "resisted being robbed of $5. She was clubbed over the head and dragged off by two men who cut a hole in her throat, stuffed her panties in it, and left her body in a ravine across the street from Cristian's house."
In the case of Andrea, she was 13 years old when she was raped and forced into prostitution by the drug cartels in Honduras. Two years later, she managed to escape and fled to the United States for the United States two years and is now seeking humanitarian relief.
Cristian and Andrea are just two of the thousands of children in Central America who are fleeing their Central American homes and neighborhoods from such extreme violence. In fact, Honduras' homicide rate of 90.4 per 100,000 is the highest in the world - by a wide margin. The prevalence of drug cartels and gang violence and penetration in the country puts its murder rate at almost double the next most dangerous countries in the world, which include Guatemala and El Salvador.
In response, some of our political leaders have said they simply cannot imagine sending their children on an extremely dangerous journey to the United States and question the choices these families and children are making to come here.
But, that is precisely the point. Politicians cannot imagine it because these children are fleeing violence, rape, and fear that are unfathomable to us. These children are not leaving their home countries to make a perilous journey across hostile territory to the United States simply in search of a better job. They are children. And, as Sonia Navario says, many of them are "fleeing for their lives."
Compounding the Crisis and Making Things Far Worse
Current law is that children from Central America are afforded protections in theThey Are Children | Bruce Lesley: