Central American Migrants Travel North, Hoping to Find Homes in U.S.
Central American Migrants Travel North, Hoping to Find Homes in U.S.
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Central American migrants hang out around the northbound freight train they had been traveling on, after it suffered a minor derailment in a remote wooded area outside Reforma de Pineda, Mexico, June 20.Rebecca Blackwell—AP
Unaccompanied child immigrants from Central America have poured across the southern U.S. border in recent months. Mostly spurred by violence and poor economic conditions in Central America, the migrants also believe changes in U.S. immigration policy will allow them to stay.
They aren’t completely wrong. Because border facilities are so overwhelmed, authorities often release children into the care of relatives already in the U.S. and allow mothers with children to enter the country with a notice to appear in immigration court. Detentions of unaccompanied minors at the U.S. border have more than tripled since 2011, the Associated Press reports.
Government officials have hotly debated what to do with the increasing number of Central American migrants, but no easy solution has been found.
Central American migrants use trash bags and cardboard to protect themselves from the rain as they wait atop a stuck freight train, outside Reforma de Pineda, Chiapas state, Mexico, June 20, 2014.Rebecca Blackwell—APGuatemalan migrant Gladys Chinoy, 14, right, waits with more than 500 other migrants, many traveling with small children, beside the stuck freight train on which they were traveling, outside Reforma de Pineda, Mexico, June 20.Rebecca Blackwell—APCentral American migrants scramble to climb onto a moving freight train, as it pulls into the station in Arriaga, Mexico, June 19.Rebecca Blackwell—APMigrants huddle on the roof of a northbound freight train as it pulls out of the station in Arriaga, Mexico, June 19.Rebecca Blackwell—APCentral American migrants, including two 17-year-old Guatemalans, left, who were traveling with a smuggler, use pay phones to call their families as they wait for the arrival of a freight train to carry them north, in Arriaga, Mexico, June 18.Rebecca Blackwell—APCynthia Lemus, 12, waits with her family and other Central American migrants, for the arrival of a northbound freight train, in Arriaga, Mexico, June 19.Rebecca Blackwell—APMigrants' bags and shoes line the edge of the room in the men's section of a shelter providing temporary refuge to Central Americans traveling north toward the U.S., in Arriaga, Mexico, June 18.Rebecca Blackwell—APDaniel Reyes, 3, from Salvador lies beside his mother, Christina Castellon, in the women's section of a shelter providing temporary refuge to Central American migrants on their way north, in Arriaga, Mexico, June 18.Rebecca Blackwell—APCynthia Lemus, 12, peers through the gate separating the women's and men's section at a shelter providing temporary refuge for Central American migrants, as they wait for the arrival of a freight train to carry them north, in Arriaga, Mexico, June 19.Rebecca Blackwell—APA young girl traveling with Central American migrants plays on the freight train they had been riding, after it suffered a minor derailment in a remote wooded area outside Reforma de Pineda, Mexico, June 20.Rebecca Blackwell—APCentral American migrants hang out around the northbound freight train they had been traveling on, after it suffered a minor derailment in a remote wooded area outside Reforma de Pineda, Mexico, June 20.Rebecca Blackwell—APA Central American migrant carrying a small child waits alongside a stuck northbound freight train, outside Reforma de Pineda, Mexico, June 20.Rebecca Blackwell—AP
