Spike in Unaccompanied Child Arrivals at U.S.-Mexico Border Proves Enduring Challenge; Citizenship Question on 2020 Census in Doubt
June 27, 2019
By Muzaffar Chishti, Sarah Pierce, and Herrica Telus
With the apprehension of 11,500 Central American unaccompanied children at the U.S.-Mexico border in May alone, this fiscal year is on track to far exceed the numbers seen during fiscal 2014, when the surge in arrivals of these minors was viewed as a crisis. The care of these children, whether in initial detention at the border or later government custody, has provoked growing public outrage—in particular with reports in recent days of unsafe, filthy conditions that children, including infants, have experienced in overcrowded Border Patrol holding facilities.
The outcry is reminiscent of the Trump administration’s zero-tolerance policy that resulted in the separation of thousands of migrant children from their parents, in hopes of deterring the growing numbers of family arrivals at the U.S.-Mexico border. Even as that policy was shelved in June 2018 amid major national and international outcry, more than 700 children have been separated from their parents since then.
https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/spike-unaccompanied-child-arrivals-proves-enduring-challenge
