Delayed consequences spur kids to enter U.S.

WASHINGTON -- Thousands of alien children fleeing poverty and violence in Central America to cross alone into the United States can live in American cities, attend public schools and possibly work here for years without consequences.

The chief reasons are an overburdened system of immigration courts and a 2002 law intended to protect children's welfare, an Associated Press investigation finds.

Driving the increases in these illegal aliens is the recognition throughout Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador that children who make the dangerous trip can effectively remain in the U.S. for years before facing even a moderate risk of deportation.

The Obama administration estimates it will catch 90,000 children trying to illegally cross the Mexican border without their parents by the end of the current budget year in September. Last year, the government returned fewer than 2,000 children to their native countries.

"They almost never go home," said Gary Mead, who until last year was director of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement office responsible for finding and removing aliens living in the country. "It's not a process that ultimately ends in easy resolutions or clear-cut resolutions."

The government has asked the military to open temporary shelters in Texas, Oklahoma and California.

The Border Patrol had said it will fly nearly 300 Central Americans to California for processing, an official said, as the government seeks to ease the workload on agents at the nation's busiest corridor for illegal crossings.

There were to be two flights today with 140 passengers each, said Paul Beeson, chief of the Border Patrol's San Diego sector.

The two flights were expected to continue every three days, Beeson said Saturday, but it's unclear for how long. They were mostly for families with young children but also carry adults.

The Border Patrol canceled the flights Sunday but said they could be reinstated later.

U.S. officials, including the Homeland Security secretary, the White House domestic policy council director and the Customs and Border Protection commissioner have described alien families' concerns about education, jobs and personal safety as driving the rise in border crossings.

Only recently have officials acknowledged that perceptions that these children may be allowed to stay or that Congress soon may relax U.S. immigration laws -- which seems unlikely -- may also be responsible.

"That misinformation is causing some people who are in a rather desperate situation to risk their lives to come to the United States border expecting that they'll be able to stay in this country. That is simply not true," White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Friday.

"It's important for viewers or those consumers of information in Central America to understand that showing up at the border illegally is not a ticket into this," he said.

"Right now I'm small, but I've heard they're giving minors the opportunity to work in the U.S.," said Brayan Duvan Soler Redondo, a 14-year-old Honduran boy who has spent the past two weeks alone in a shelter in Reynosa, Mexico.

For those detained by Mexican authorities before they reach the United States, many will be deported. Some of these children await removal at the Attention Center for Border Minors, a government-run shelter in Reynosa, where as many as 400 children arrive each month.

"The majority of their parents are already in the United States. That's the main reason the children are coming," said Jose Guadalupe Villegas Garcia, the organization's director, who said he thinks U.S. immigration rules have gone lax. "This was something President Obama ordered."

Elmer Antunez Barahona, 17, left Honduras last year to reunite with his mother, who had traveled to find work in the United States when he was 4. He was apprehended in Texas' Rio Grande Valley, one of more than 26,000 juveniles apprehended at the border in the 2013 budget year. His lawyer, Victor Cuco, said he spent about a month in government custody before being reunited with his mother in Virginia last summer.

The Border Patrol has apprehended more than 52,000 children traveling on their own since the start of the 2014 budget year in October.

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott requested $30 million from the Department of Homeland Security on Thursday to send more law enforcement officers to the border, because children have "so overwhelmed the U.S. Border Patrol that federal agents are devoting time and resources to the humanitarian aspects of the influx, and are not available to secure the border and successfully stop criminal activity," his office said in a statement.

Like Antunez and thousands of others, most spend about one month in the custody of the Office of Refugee and Resettlement under the Health and Human Services Department, before they are reunited with parents or other relatives in the United States. There is no requirement that their parents or those other relatives were legally allowed into the United States.

All the young immigrants who cross the border illegally are subject to deportation -- eventually. But it's not a quick process.

The immigration court system was backlogged with as many as 30,000 pending cases before the most recent surge.

Court delays that already persist for years will grow even longer as the beleaguered system absorbs the new cases. That will make the risk of speedy deportation even less likely and further fuel perceptions that crossing the U.S. border carries few immediate consequences.

Antunez lived in the U.S. for nearly nine months before his first court hearing in March. When he appeared again last week in an immigration court in Arlington, Va., Antunez was ordered to come back again next year after his lawyer told Judge John Bryant that his client will ask the government for asylum.

It was the same for many of the teenagers who stood in court for their first hearings. The judge told them, come back next year and try to find a lawyer in the meantime.

Final decisions by immigration judges can take years, but that supposes aliens dutifully attend their assigned hearings. Many won't. As many as one-quarter of the aliens ordered to show up in court in recent years have failed to appear, according to the Executive Office for Immigration Review, the Justice Department agency that runs immigration courts.

"The longer the process goes, the less likely it is that people will return," said Doris Meissner, a former head of the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

Advocates so far have successfully urged President Barack Obama not to immediately deport many young aliens and those whose only offense is living in the country illegally.

Instead, the government has more narrowly targeted people who return to the U.S. after they were deported, people who threaten U.S. national security and public safety, and adults who can be subject to expedited deportation that takes just hours or days.

The president has made several administrative changes to immigration enforcement, including a program to allow some young aliens who came to the country before 2007 to avoid deportation and obtain a work permit for two years.

Children crossing the border "would not be entitled to a path to citizenship as a result of entering the country now," Customs and Border Commissioner Gil Kerlikowske said.

Republican lawmakers have criticized Obama's immigration policies and blamed the administration for what Obama has described as a humanitarian issue at the border.

"Once these minors come to the U.S., they are eligible for a wide array of benefits and it will be years before their case is ever heard in court," said Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., chairman of the House Judiciary Committee.

"Without immediate consequences for this illegal immigration, it will only encourage more illegal immigration and more dangerous journeys by children in order to take advantage of the administration's failure to enforce our immigration laws," he said.

Adults caught crossing the Mexican border illegally are generally removed from the U.S. within hours or days of their arrest. But a federal law dating to President George W. Bush's administration requires that unaccompanied children must be turned over to HHS within three days. From there, many are reunited with parents or other relatives already in the United States or other sponsors before the lengthy court process beings.

Also Sunday, the mass graves of suspected unidentified aliens buried haphazardly in a South Texas cemetery and uncovered this month by anthropologists should be secured by state police until a criminal investigation can be carried out, a Texas lawmaker said.

State Rep. Terry Canales said he had asked the Department of Public Safety to secure the cemetery in Falfurrias after revelations of human remains buried in garbage bags and multiple remains put in a single body bag without proper records. Department of Public Safety spokesman Tom Vinger said Sunday in an email that, "the Texas Rangers plan to meet with local officials Monday to determine the proper course of action."

"There's no question in one way or another that this is illegal, whether it violates the actual penal code or it if constitutes fraud," Canales said.

The remains were buried by the Funeraria del Angel Howard-Williams, which has offices in Falfurrias and Hebbronville, Baker said Friday. Both Brooks and Jim Hogg counties contracted with the funeral home to bury unidentified remains there.

Canales said he had also submitted a public records request to the Brooks County auditor on Saturday for records that would show how many bodies the county had paid the funeral home to bury.

"No matter how you slice it there is definitely, I think, a crime committed," he said. "However the real crime is against the families and the desecration of their bodies. I don't care what country you're from, I believe you should be buried with dignity and respect."

Information for this article was contributed by Alicia A. Caldwell, Elliot Spagat, Amy Taxin and Christopher Sherman of The Associated Press and by Joshua Partlow, Nick Miroff and David Nakamura of The Washington Post.

A Section on 06/23/2014

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