‘Very difficult’ decision for parents
Growing numbers of migrants sending kids into US alone
LA JOYA, Texas — Marely had traveled for 13 days, trekking with her mother from Central America to the busiest corridor for illegal U.S.-Mexico border crossings. Then, as the 12-yearold Salvadoran girl got on an inflatable raft to cross the Rio Grande in Texas in the middle of the night, she discovered her mom wasn’t coming with her.
Her mom told her that she loved her very much right before the boat got pushed into the water.
“I thought she had already gotten on, but she hadn’t,” Marely said, tears rolling down her cheeks.
But she didn’t scream or ask the smugglers to go back and get her mother.
“I knew she was on the other side. There was no going back. They told us to run, to keep going,” said Marely, who turned herself over to Border Patrol agents in La Joya, Texas.
The AP is not using the girl’s last name. It does not normally name children without permission from their parents, and the identity of her parents could not be obtained.
Growing numbers of migrant families are making the heart-wrenching decision to separate from their children and send them into America alone. Many families with kids older than 6 have been quickly expelled from the country under federal pandemic-related powers that don’t allow migrants to seek asylum. But they know that President Joe Biden’s administration is allowing unaccompanied children to stay in the U.S. while their cases are decided.
Forced out of the country, they are sending their older children, like Marely, back to cross alone. These self-separations mean children arrive in the United States confused and in distress. Many have traveled hundreds of miles with their parents without understanding why they can’t cross the last stretch together.
Once in the U.S., Marely joined two teenagers traveling without their parents and a larger group of families fleeing poverty, storm devastation and violence in their homelands. For two hours, the girl from a village south of San Salvador walked as a thunderstorm brewed overhead in the vast Texas’ Rio Grande Valley.
Marely’s mother had her memorize the full name and number for her grandmother in Washington, D.C., who told the AP she was expecting to receive her granddaughter.
As more families decide to send their children alone, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has been pressed by lawmakers about the possibility that expulsions could be a “new source of family separation.” It follows widespread outrage over former President Donald Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy that forced apart families on the border, some of whom still haven’t been reunited.
Mayorkas has defended speedy family expulsions, saying they protect both the American public and migrants. He said officials are “hearing anecdotally” of families who self-separate and added that about 40% of unaccompanied children have a parent or legal guardian in the U.S. and 50% have other relatives who can take care of them after they are released from government custody.
April was the secondbusiest month on record for unaccompanied children encountered at the border — 17,171 were stopped — following March’s all-time high of 18,960, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
Last week, Border Patrol agents found five unaccompanied migrant girls, ranging from 7 years to 11 months old, near the border town of Eagle Pass, Texas.
Agents about 250 miles south in La Joya, Texas, late Wednesday came across a Honduran girl named Emely, 8, who had been walking in the brush for six hours with a group of strangers and had lost a shoe in the mud. She was sobbing uncontrollably because she lost the number of her mother who she says was expecting her in the U.S. and didn’t know where she lived.
Emely had lost sight of a fellow migrant who had her contact information, but the mother saw an AP photograph of her arrival on the Spanish-language broadcast Univision and contacted the network.
In an encampment in the Mexican border city of Reynosa, near where Marely last saw her mother, the numbers of expelled migrant families are growing. And they are making desperate decisions.
Jose Rodriguez, 41, of San Pedro Sula, Honduras, has been staying under a tarp with a group of Hondurans, but he hasn’t been able to sleep since he sent his 8-year-old son in mid-April with a distant cousin to cross the river into Roma, Texas.
Rodriguez had tried to cross the border with his son Jordyn, but the two were expelled in early March. They had no money and no way to return home.
“As a parent, it is very difficult. I do not wish this upon anyone. There are people who ask me if I sent my son. ‘Yes,’ I tell them, ‘but don’t do it,’ ” Rodriguez said. “You need to have a lot of faith and cling to God in order not to fall apart. If you are weak, you may pass out, and if you have heart disease, you may die. It is very hard.”
His wife, who stayed behind in Honduras with their 1-year-old, initially opposed sending Jordyn to cross the border alone, but Rodriguez persuaded her.