Not as many from Central America reaching U.S. this year

A record surge of children and families fleeing Central America and crossing the U.S. border from Mexico was well under way at this time last year.

Now, another wave has started.

Before it gets too hot, migrants once again are fleeing in large numbers from El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala — where gang violence, high murder rates and poverty remain as severe as last year, if not worse.

Yet not nearly as many are reaching the U.S. border because far more are being caught in Mexico and sent back to their home countries. So far this year, 45% fewer unaccompanied children and 30% fewer families from Central America have been apprehended at the U.S. border compared with last year.

As a result, the number of Central American migrants turning themselves in at the U.S. border — though still significant — is not expected to be nearly as large as last year.

In 2014, almost 140,000 unaccompanied children, along with children and adults traveling as families, overwhelmed the Border Patrol, creating a humanitarian crisis that rippled across the country.

"I'm confident at this point ... that we will not see the level of unaccompanied children and levels of family units that we saw last year," Border Patrol Chief Michael Fisher said Wednesday, responding to concerns about another surge raised during a Senate hearing.

Fisher's boss, U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Gil Kerlikowske, said this month that the government has stemmed the flow by flooding southern Texas with more Border Patrol agents and building new detention centers to hold more women and children that the Border Patrol has caught pending deportation hearings.

A media campaign "about how dangerous it is to make the journey north to the border" also is working, he said.

But migration analysts say it's unclear whether fewer people are actually fleeing Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala. Some community workers in those countries say worsening violence may be driving more people to leave.

"From Honduras, the numbers are bigger than last year," said Juan Sheenan of Catholic Relief Services in Tegucigalpa, the country's capital. "We are still seeing the same amount of kids and families being returned to Honduras as last year."

In San Salvador, the capital of El Salvador, the violence "has stayed the same," said director Erica Olson of Project Velasco, a family- and community-support program that works in gang-controlled neighborhoods. "The violence here in our area is worse. ... We had three people killed in a month's time right outside where we work."

They and other experts attribute a decrease in Central Americans arriving at the U.S. border to Mexican authorities' crackdown on the flow.

"So what we can say is likely happening is that the United States is receiving fewer migrants while at the same time Mexican immigration authorities are detaining substantially more," said migration researcher Ernesto Rodríguez Chávez at the private Mexico Autonomous Institute of Technology in Mexico City, who shared data with The Arizona Republic about the increased enforcement..

In March, associate director Eric Olson of the Latin America Program at the Wilson Center, a District of Columbia think tank, witnessed migrants crossing the Suchiate River illegally from Guatemala into Mexico in full view of Mexican authorities.

But also along the border, he saw Mexican authorities boarding buses looking for unauthorized migrants. He said the Mexican government recently established a series of checkpoints farther inland.

"That's something that they weren't doing before," Olson said.

Olson also toured a government detention facility in Tapachula, a city in the Mexican state of Chiapas north of the Guatemalan border. He said authorities were "sending people on a daily basis back to Central America."

Mexican authorities also have made "major efforts" to make it more difficult for migrants to catch freight trains, collectively known as la bestia, heading north, he said.

"It doesn't mean that people don't jump on down the line, but it's much diminished," Olson said.

Mexico apprehended 120,000 migrants in 2014, nearly 50% more than in fiscal 2013. Mexico is on track to apprehend even more Central Americans this year with detentions doubling during the first two months of 2015 compared with the period a year earlier.

At the southern U.S. border, the number of Central Americans crossing illegally has risen steadily since 2011. The numbers skyrocketed last fiscal year, when the number of unaccompanied children apprehended by the Border Patrol nearly doubled, to 68,541, and the number of families more than tripled to 68,445.

For fiscal 2015, which ends Sept. 30, Kerlikowske predicted that the number of Central Americans apprehended by the Border Patrol could fall to 2012 levels, when about 24,000 unaccompanied children were apprehended.

The decrease has been noticeable to law-enforcement authorities who work along the border in the Rio Grande Valley in southern Texas.

"They are nowhere near what they were last year," said Sgt. Dan Broyles of the Hidalgo County Constable Department. His agency patrols Anzalduas Park, which runs alongside the Rio Grande separating Mission, Texas, from Reynosa, in the Mexican border state of Tamaulipas.

Last year, Central American migrants could be seen turning themselves in to the Border Patrol, sometimes by the dozens, after being smuggled across the Rio Grande from Mexico on rafts.

"We got 33 last week — total — in comparison to 133 a day last year," Broyles said. "So it's not even close."

Still, some analysts believe that while the number of Central American migrants arriving at the border won't be as large as last year, the number will still be significant.

Adam Isacson, a security analyst at the Washington Office on Latin America, said Kerlikowske's prediction that apprehensions could drop to 2012 levels seems unrealistic.

"I didn't see how he could get that low," Isacson said. "We have the heaviest months still to go."

In a commentary published online April 10, Isacson said Kerlikowske's estimates were based on Border Patrol apprehensions for the first three months of this fiscal year. But apprehensions of unaccompanied children and families from Central America have accelerated in the past three months.

He believes the U.S. is now on track to apprehend 37,000 unaccompanied children and about 47,000 adults and children traveling as families this year, lower than fiscal 2014 but on par with 2013.

Border Patrol agents acknowledge they are starting to feel the increase of migrants reaching the U.S. border and turning themselves in.

"Every day, we eclipse the previous day's numbers of women and children," crossing in south Texas, said Chris Cabrera, vice president of the National Border Patrol Council and an agent based in McAllen, Texas.

If the numbers continue to rise through May and June, he said, "we'll be able to control it, but it won't be comfortable."

Linda Miranda Pena said her brother, Levi, has become increasingly terrified of the gangs since Mexican immigration officials caught him when he fled El Salvador in June. He was flown back to his country, where the murder rate jumped 50% in 2014 after a truce fell apart between some of the nation's most powerful criminal gangs, according to news reports.

Miranda Pena, who lives in Omaha, Neb., said Levi told her that gang members came to his school this month and beat up three classmates in the bathroom for refusing to join their gang.

She said Levi, now 17, interviewed by The Republic last year at a government-run detention center in Reynosa before he was deported, no longer feels safe even at home because gang members have come there and threatened to beat him up or kill him unless he joins them.

"It's very dangerous," she said.

In Honduras, too, the continuing gang violence is driving families to flee or send their children north, Catholic Relief Service's Sheenan said.

"The violence has not gone down," Sheenan said. "Gangs have increased their recruitment. They're telling families they want their kids to join the gangs; there's no option. They join the gang; if they don't, the family gets killed along with the kids. This has led to families using their life savings to get to the U.S."

Kevin Appleby, director of migration policy at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, is concerned that children and families fleeing violence in Central America are being denied legal access to asylum hearings.

"It's still a violation of international law if these children do not have a chance to receive protection, especially when they are fleeing violence and fleeing persecution," he said. "So it's incumbent upon the United States to work with Mexico to create a system whereby these children have an opportunity to gain asylum ... and not just to return them to danger."

Appleby also criticized an Obama administration decision to hold more adults and children in detention facilities instead of releasing them pending the outcome of deportation hearings.

Last year, thousands of Central American families were paroled after the Border Patrol caught them. They were released at bus stations in Texas and Arizona with papers instructing them to report to immigration authorities once they arrived at their destination within the United States.

The practice drew outrage from Republicans in Congress, prompting President Barack Obama's administration to expand the use of detention centers.

The Department of Homeland Security has since opened two detention centers in Texas that combined hold about 1,012 women and children. The centers are being expanded and later this year will be able to hold a combined 3,464 women and children.

The cost will be $161 per person per day at a facility in Karnes City and $313 at a facility in Dilley, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Officials have said the detention facilities will not only allow families to remain together as they go through immigration proceedings or wait to be deported, they will also help deter more migrants from coming.

But Sheenan, in Tegucigalpa, had his doubts.

"I just had a conversation with a mother whose son, 15, left on his own," he said. "She said, 'I'd rather have a glimmer of hope of him making it to the U.S., instead of watching him die in Honduras.' "