Hundreds of toddlers sneaking into the US without parents
By Danika Fears
June 23, 2014 | 2:15am
The Border Patrol has picked up hundreds of tots, including 95 under age 1, who crossed from Mexico with people other than their parents over the past year, according to a report.
Between Oct. 1, 2013, and June 11, border authorities detained 378 kids under the age of 2, according to federal statistics obtained by the cable-TV network Fusion.
And data from last year show that Immigration and Customs Enforcement deported 27 children under the age of 2, the network said.
Until guardians can be located, the children are held in detention centers and shelters that aren’t necessarily equipped to house children that young, it said.
“We are receiving children of all ages,” Omar Zamora, a spokesperson for the Border Patrol’s Rio Grande Valley sector told Fusion’s Wed site.
Emily Butera, a senior program officer at the Women’s Refugee Commission, told the site the baby problem is only getting worse.
“We’re seeing more babies and toddlers than we had in the past.”
The tots are often sent on the dangerous trek into the United States with older siblings or paid smugglers, Fusion reports.
The average age of child migrants traveling alone is 14 years, it said.
Around 52,000 minors traveling without parents have been held at the US-Mexico border since October 2013. Many of them are fleeing Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador.
http://nypost.com/2014/06/23/hundreds-of-toddlers-are-sneaking-into-the-us-without-their-parents/
