|
 A charter flight on Monday from New Mexico to San Pedro Sula, the
city with the highest murder rate in the world, transported 17
Honduran women, as well as 12 girls and nine boys between the ages
of 18 months and 15 years.
White House spokesman Josh Earnest said the return of the Hondurans
should be a clear signal to those thinking about crossing the border
illegally that "they're entitled to due process but they will not be
welcome to this country with open arms."
The return of the Hondurans was the most high-profile example of
President Barack Obama's struggle to gain control of an influx of
child migrants from Central America that is overwhelming immigration
resources and leading to scattered protests from people angry at the
government for housing some border-crossers in communities around
the country.
Organizations working with illegal migrants and Honduran youths said
the U.S. flight was largely symbolic and would have little impact on
Honduran children trying to escape a country racked by gang violence
and the world's highest murder rate.
 "This is a problem about the country, about the conditions in the
country," said Gerardo Rivera, a researcher for Casa Alianza, a
youth organization in Honduras. "What they're looking for is to flee
from dangerous situations, flee from poverty, flee from a lack of
opportunities."
Ana Garcia de Hernandez, the first lady of Honduras, called on the
United States to provide "comprehensive support, not just small
steps" to help the struggling nation tackle drug cartels she said
were fuelling the exodus north. "The children, the young and their
mothers are leaving areas where's more violence due to drug
traffickers using our country as a transit point toward the United
States," she said.
The number deported on Monday was a drop in the ocean next to the
wave of migrants flooding across the U.S.-Mexico border. More than
57,000 unaccompanied minors from Central America have been caught
since October, twice as many as a year earlier.
U.S. immigration officials said more people would be sent back to
Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador in the coming days but declined
to give any details about the pace of deportations.
Obama is attempting to balance competing interests: reassure
Americans that the migrants, many of them unaccompanied children who
have streamed into Texas across Mexico's border by the thousands,
will be sent home, while making clear to immigration advocates that
the children will be given due process of law.
 ARIZONA PROTEST
The White House's Earnest said Obama did not personally approve the
return of the Hondurans on Monday. It was a decision made by the
Homeland Security Department, implementing a policy the president
had set out, he said.
The flood of unaccompanied migrants have added a toxic mix to a
raging debate over whether to approve comprehensive immigration
reform to cover some 11 million undocumented people in the United
States. Reform is one of Obama's priorities, but it has no chance
until after November congressional elections.
Waving U.S. flags and playing patriotic music, dozens of protesters
demonstrated in southern Arizona on Tuesday against the arrival of
undocumented immigrants for processing at a center near the border
before being returned to their homelands.
In a scene reminiscent of protests in California, about 65
demonstrators gathered at a fork in the road near the small town of
Oracle to complain that Washington's response to the Central America
migrant surge was putting their communities at risk.
In an example of the complicated politics involving the child
migrants, Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley, a Democrat, asked the
White House not to send the children to a site in northern Maryland,
according to a source familiar with the situation. That came after
O'Malley complained publicly about Obama's plans to deport the
children.
The source said O'Malley called White House domestic policy adviser
Cecilia Munoz last Friday night, opposing a plan to house some of
the children at a former Army Reserve center in Westminster,
Maryland.
[to top of second column] |
IMMIGRATION BILLS
The return of the Hondurans could help reassure Republicans that
Obama is serious about controlling the frontier as he tries to
persuade Congress to approve an emergency request for $3.7 billon to
bolster border security and speed up deportations.
The proposal has had a cool reception on Capitol Hill so far, with
Republicans blaming Obama for the crisis and wanting more emphasis
on border enforcement before giving him any money.
House Republicans who think Obama's $3.7 billion request is too high
are working to pare it down to a level that one Republican source
said was likely to be about $2 billion.
House Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers said
appropriators were "combing through the numbers now trying to
determine what kind of money is needed immediately both in terms of
policy and cost, and what can wait."
Two senators from the Southwestern border state of Arizona were
working on legislation that could help bring together lawmakers
arguing over the emergency funds.
Republican Senators John McCain and Jeff Flake were preparing a bill
that, like another measure sponsored by two Texas lawmakers,
Republican Senator John Cornyn and Democratic Representative Henry
Cuellar, would make it easier to deport unaccompanied minors from El
Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.
But McCain and Flake also would increase the number of refugee visas
for those three countries. The idea is to discourage children from
making the dangerous trip to the United States as illegal immigrants
and instead encourage them to apply for entry into the United States
in a safer, more orderly way.
Under a 2008 anti-trafficking law, children from Central America
cannot be turned away at the border but must be given a hearing to
determine if they qualify for humanitarian relief.
Many of Obama's Democratic allies oppose changing the law, fearing
it would deny them the right to have their cases heard by an
immigration judge and if sent home, could put them in danger from
the criminal gangs that they had fled.
"The backbone and commitment to justice of the strongest and most
generous nation in the world is trembling at the presence of 50,000
children and responding by taking away legal rights from vulnerable
children. It is shameful," Democratic Representative Luis Gutierrez
said.
But Representative Matt Salmon, a member of the Republican border
security working group that visited Honduras and Guatemala over the
weekend, said the best way to end the border crisis was to
accelerate the return of unaccompanied minors.
"If we don't send that message through our actions not our rhetoric,
we will continue to have wave after wave after wave" of illegal
immigrant children, Salmon said.
(Additional reporting by Susan Cornwell, Jeff Mason, Julia Edwards,
Richard Cowan and Patricia Zengerle in Washington, Gustavo Palencia
in Tegucigalpa and Joanna Zuckerman Bernstein in Mexico City;
Editing by Ross Colvin and Ken Wills)
[© 2014 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.] Copyright 2014 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
 |
