The Republican presidential contest is in full swing and one of the key issues that have been discussed thus far is the issue of immigration. Unfortunately for supporters of comprehensive immigration reform, the hysteria and demeaning rhetoric on the campaign trail has spilled over to the Halls of Congress with anti-immigrant Members of Congress once again pushing legislation to further militarize the U.S. border and to increase enforcement actions against immigrant communities around the country. The religious community, working with immigrant rights groups, is actively working to stop anti-immigrant legislation in Congress.

Pope Francis’s arrival in Washington, DC and his address to Congress on September24 present a challenge to anti-immigrant Members as well as the Republican leadership in Congress. It is widely expected that the pope will raise the issue of immigration during his trip and call on Members of Congress to pursue policies that welcome immigrants and refugees. It is hoped that his visit will have a positive impact on the Hill.

One of the most immediate threats this September is a bill that passed the House right before August recess and is set to be taken up in September. Sponsored by Senator Grassley and Senator Vitter, it is called the “Stop Sanctuary Cities Act” (S. 1814). The Grassley/Vitter amendment seeks to coerce law enforcement agencies (LEAs) to implement DHS’s immigration detainers, even though multiple federal courts have found that such detainers present constitutional problems. Under the amendment, law enforcement officials in over 300 cities and countries that refuse to honor the detainers risk losing federal justice department (“DOJ”) and housing department (“HUD”) funding. The amendment also creates new mandatory minimum sentences that would create unprecedented overcrowding in the federal prison system, even as other leaders and lawmakers including the senators’ own colleagues on both sides of the aisle have committed to reduce incarceration levels in our nation’s prisons and jails.

A second threat exists to immigrants in budget and tax debates. There are some human needs programs and tax credits, such as the Child Tax Credit, that benefit immigrant communities. There are already a number of proposals to cut back or eliminate these benefits to immigrant communities.

Finally, our community continues to demand that the Obama administration end the practice of placing young mothers with children fleeing violence in Central America in detention facilities. Family detention victimizes young mothers and children who are not a threat and have committed no crimes. Further, there are humane alternatives for detention for this vulnerable group.

On June 3, the House of Representatives passed its fourth spending bill of 2015, the Commerce-Justice-Science (CSJ) bill. However, it was not without an anti-immigrant attack, this time by Representative Steve King (R-IA-04). His amendment, which passed 222-204, prohibits the use of any funding by the Department of Justice to continue its legal battles concerning President Obama’s November 2014 executive actions. Sadly, these efforts to continue forcing our immigrant brothers and sisters to live in constant fear of deportation have become expected in this Congress.

What exactly does this mean moving forward? On May 26, the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals denied the Department of Justice’s emergency stay request of the preliminary injunction issued by Texas federal district court judge Andrew Hanen. The aforementioned injunction halted all progress towards the implementation of Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents (DAPA) and Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA+). The next steps in the process are to appeal the injunction itself (which will happen in New Orleans in July) and to decide the merits of the case, or whether the states behind the lawsuit have standing to pursue it. Representative King’s amendment is designed to prevent the federal government from pursuing either of these steps!

Overall, this new amendment is a disgusting attempt to further marginalize and isolate parents and children who deserve the chance to fully participate in our society through an eventual pathway to citizenship. However, this amendment does not spell the end of the fight against the legal challenges to DAPA and DACA, and we look forward to a successful conclusion to these legal challenges that will allow the executive actions to move forward. We are mindful, however, that these executive actions are only a temporary fix to address parts of a broken system.

Congress should pass comprehensive immigration reform that fixes our broken immigration system and allows millions of undocumented men, women and children currently living in the U.S. an opportunity to fully participate in our society by providing a pathway to citizenship. In this way, Congress can heed our moral call to welcome the stranger and treat all people with dignity.

“Unlocking Human Dignity: A Plan to Transform the U.S. Immigrant Detention System,” a new scathing joint report from the Migration and Refugee Services/United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) and the Center for Migration Studies (CMS), speaks of the baleful effects of immigrant detention on the lives of persons who pose no threat or danger, but are treated like criminals.

The report is filled with troubling facts uncovered through onsite visits, an extensive review of past publications, and an unvarnished examination of the current system. For example, did you know that the number of persons detained annually increased from roughly 85,000 in 1995 to over 440,500 in 2013?

Now that’s a radical expansion, and the number of detention centers has expanded as well, costing taxpayers more than $2 billion annually. As the report itself indicates, those “numbers only hint at the toll that this system exacts in despair, fractured families, human rights violations, abandoned legal claims, and diminished national prestige.”

The current detention system is a sprawling hodgepodge of facilities, consisting of state and county jails, privately-run for-profit prisons, Bureau of Prison facilities, Border Patrol holding cells, and even “service processing centers” administered by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Detained immigrants in these facilities often receive worse treatment and fewer protections than criminals serving prison sentences. Numerous reports have described the many problems that exist in a system where standards are not codified and independent oversight is lacking: poor or nonexistent health services; the misuse of segregation; physical, emotional and sexual abuse; women forced to deliver babies in restraints; frequent hunger strikes; restrictions on visitation; violence and discrimination against gay, lesbian and bisexual persons; problems related to due process, legal access and religious expression – among many others.

The situation is even worse where children are involved. A February report by “Detention Watch Network” notes that studies by the bipartisan U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, New York University’s Bellevue Program for Survivors of Torture, and Physicians for Human Rights conclude that detention is psychologically damaging and completely inappropriate for children because it aggravates isolation, depression and mental health problems associated with past trauma. Onsite visits by members of the “Detention Watch Network” have also shown that children as young as eight months wore prison uniforms, lived and slept in locked prison cells with open-air toilets, and families were subject to highly restricted movement and threatened with family separation if children cried or played too loudly.

Since 2009, Congress has mandated that DHS maintain at least 33,400 detention beds, known ever since as the “detention bed quota.” And many members of Congress interpret this mandate as requiring DHS to fill that many beds each night. The current DHS Secretary, Jeh Johnson, has testified that he interprets this language to require that DHS maintain 34,400 beds, not detain 34,400 persons every night. Yet, nothing has changed at the detention level.

Another major problem (there are so many, it is difficult to enumerate all of them) is an overreliance on for-profit, privately-run detention centers. These have burgeoned over time, just as they have in the correctional system, so that by 2015, “for-profit prison corporations administered nine of the nation’s ten largest immigrant detention centers” (USCCB/CMS report). There is a plethora of studies to demonstrate that for-profit agencies strive to maximize profits for their shareholders, spend exorbitant funds on lobbying both federal and state legislators for their own causes, and spend millions on campaigns. However, the USCCB/CMS report claims that the real culprit is DHS’s lack of oversight expertise to assess performance under the contracts and a lack of data collection needed to address any deficiencies in the system.

As a May 19 editorial in the Seattle Times forthrightly indicates, “the immigration system is distorted by partisanship, xenophobia, conflicted guidance and pressure from companies that are paid a fortune to run detention centers…”

The New York Times Editorial Board pointed out on May 15 that the immigrant detention system has become an enormous funnel for the overburdened and underfunded immigration courts, which receive a meager $300 million from Congress each year, only one-sixtieth of what Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Border Patrol (BP) receive. More than 400,000 cases were pending before immigration judges at the end of March 2015, with an average case waiting 599 days to be heard. This hardly constitutes due process for immigrants.

In addition, immigrant detention has been employed as part of a broader enforcement strategy to prevent refugees and other migrants who are fleeing violence from reaching U.S. protection. Not only is this unconscionable, but it has also been, at times, counterproductive. As Pope Benedict said in 2007, immigration and protection policies must serve the human person, not treat the human person as a means to an end.

However, the paramount concern of the USCCB/CMS report is different than any particular deficiency. Central to the issue is the fact that detention is treated as a pillar of immigration enforcement and is the major management tool in the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) toolkit. Detention, in its layout, construction, staffing plans and management strategies operates like a prison system and is based on traditional prison principles of command and control. But this so-called correctional system operates without the same level of professionalism and proficiency expected of a correctional system, which has to uphold numerous minimum standards of treatment. Yet the only purpose of detention is to ensure that noncitizens appear for court proceedings.

The USCCB/CMS report points out that the purpose of detention would be accomplished by supervised release with case management and community-based support services in most cases – and calls for the least restrictive conditions placed on others where it is required. The report highlights the fact that American Bar Association (ABA) standards and guidelines of the past few years also support using alternatives to detention to transform the immigrant detention system.

The USCCB/CMS report notes that DHS’s own 2014 data show that between fiscal years 2011 and 2013, the two programs they operate using alternatives to detention yielded an appearance rate of 99% at court hearings and 95% at final removal court hearings. These data clearly demonstrate that detention is not only hurtful to the recipients but unnecessary, and wasteful of scarce resources.

Although the Obama administration’s reforms since 2009 have been humane and made notable differences in the lives of many detainees, too many of these reforms have been incremental in nature and avoided the major issue of detention per se. The high costs and human rights abuses will continue without the fundamental change that the USCCB/CMS report advances.

It is important to support the recommendations of the USCCB/CMS report, especially the replacement of detention with an expansion of all types of less restrictive alternatives to ensure appearances, as well as increasing the funding for immigration courts by an order of magnitude. In the meantime, we support curtailing and rigorously monitoring all for-profit facilities. Our biblical tradition recognizes the right to migrate in response to war, human rights abuses and extreme poverty. As the bishops’ introduction letter to the USCCB/CMS report indicates, migrants fall within every marginal group who deserve assistance – those who are hungry, thirsty, stranger, naked, ill and imprisoned.

NETWORK believes there are several short-term, low-cost strategies that Congress can take immediately to alleviate the humanitarian problem of migrant children from the Central American “Northern Triangle” countries on our southern border. Two key strategies are to stop certain programs that have exacerbated the situation.

The first is outlined in a paper by the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) and the Jesuit Conference. It was provided at a human rights hearing in late October 2014 and highlights how the U.S. supports and assists Mexico, Honduras and Guatemala by training, equipping and funding their law enforcement and military units. These are the units that are instrumental in confining and deporting people, often children and asylum-seekers, who should be protected and whose rights are being abrogated.

The Inter-American Court for Human Rights has frequently emphasized that migratory policies should guarantee refugees’ rights to humane treatment, personal liberty, due process and effective judicial remedies, none of which are being respected – especially those of potential asylees, according to numerous civil society organizations in these countries. Instead, the U.S. praises and supports these governments that are indirectly assisting the U.S. in restricting these migrants from entering its territory.

The WOLA and Jesuit Conference document outlines in detail the equipment, training and capacity-building that the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law enforcement (INL), the U.S. Border Patrol, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other U.S. migration control and law enforcement entities have provided to law enforcement and special forces’ units of Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico. While the enhanced assistance is purportedly for drug interdiction and human trafficking, these units routinely intercept people fleeing to escape targeted violence, persecution and torture and force them back to situations from which they are attempting to escape without any of the safeguards for humanitarian protection.

According to the WOLA and Jesuit Conference report, Mexico is routinely deporting children and families who would merit international protection. The report took them to task for not adopting a comprehensive public policy on asylum geared to preventing and punishing the acts of violence and discrimination to which migrants in Mexico are subjected. Even Counselor of the Department of State, Ambassador Thomas Shannon affirmed in his testimony before the Senate Appropriations Committee on July 10 that one of the key purposes of the Mexican policy is to repatriate Central Americans before they reach the U.S. border.

The situation along the Honduran-Guatemala border is fraught with the same peril as that along the Guatemalan-Mexico border because the strategic priority is to “stem-the-flow” of migrants without any concern for the implications of cutting off access to asylum for those displaced by violence, organized crime or the unwillingness of the government to address the needs of those targeted for abuse and persecution.

In Mexico, even routine screenings to determine if individuals have well-founded fears of persecution or violence against them are not part of the intake process when Central American children and adults are interdicted by Mexican migration authorities. Yet, when civil society organizations, researchers and religious groups working in non-profits in these countries have interviewed returned migrants, they have discovered that many of those interviewed left their countries due to credible claims for international protection.

It is exceedingly important that Congress investigate our policies of assistance and support to Mexican, Guatemalan and Honduran law enforcement and military forces to determine if the U.S. is contributing to the interception, detention and deportation of Central American migrants who should be screened for asylum and international protection, thus depriving them of their human rights. The Inter-American Human Rights System has made clear that no people, especially no children, should have their access restricted to territories where they might receive asylum. Clear prohibitions must be placed on funds for the aforesaid purposes. And such an investigation, while not wholly cost-free, would be relatively low-cost. This is the first strategy supported by NETWORK that requires the U.S. to end its military assistance to these countries if a congressional investigation concludes that asylees’ potential rights are being ignored.

A second related policy that could and should be implemented in the short-term and that meets the criterion of low-cost is closing the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (formerly known as the School of the Americas). The Institute, funded by U.S. taxpayer dollars, used the facility to train Latin American dictators and their militaries in various terrorist techniques, including varying levels of intimidation and torture methods. Even after President Clinton revamped the school and changed its curriculum in the 1990s to be certain that human rights and democracy were central to all studies, it remains a highly controversial program.

The question remains whether the more rigorous human rights training program at the Institute is actually taught or only given lip-service. The school has been criticized for years after its reorganization due to human rights abuses performed by its former students. Just two of many instances of human rights abuses include the murder of six Jesuits, their housekeeper and her daughter in which a UN panel concluded that 19 of the 27 killers in November 1989 were graduates of the school. In 2009, a coup in Honduras against the democratically-elected president was also carried out by graduates of the school.

A third strategy NETWORK supports during this current lame-duck Congress, is to review carefully and comprehensively the reform plans developed by the Central American countries of the Northern Triangle. Congress should ensure that the countries’ strategies reflect clear priorities, such as improved healthcare systems, and how these priorities are to be funded. Most importantly, all groups in society, including wealthy landowners and business people, must agree to pay their share of taxes to help finance the reform efforts undertaken by these countries. The plans cannot rest upon the assumption that the U.S. or other outside sources will pay the full freight.

In a September 26 paper, WOLA developed 12 excellent principles for assessing the plans of these countries. They include that these “governments must show institutional commitment to full implementation” and a “focus on institutional reforms that will improve the daily life” of their citizens, as well as several others worthy of consideration. One of their cautions is very sensible – to “avoid any plan that is too narrowly targeted on only one element of the problem.” Our friends in these countries have emphasized the significance of this latter element.

Another short-term, low-cost strategy supported by NETWORK during this lame-duck session of Congress relates to proper care for unaccompanied children from the Central American Northern Triangle countries once they have been transferred from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR)/Department of Children’s Services (DCS) in the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) after 72 hours. While being held in the “least restrictive setting,” the children will require protection, appropriate medical assistance, and all-round care for their well-being until their transfer to a parent, legal guardian, adult relative or individual designated by the parent or, alternatively, to a foster parent who has been carefully vetted. Such care will require additional funding for HHS due to the influx of these children at our southern borders.

In addition, highlighted by numerous witnesses, delays in transport or a lack of immigration detention capacity has led to children being held for much longer than 72 hours by the Border Patrol before transfer to ORR/DCS. We strongly believe this is unacceptable and contravenes the directives of the Inter-American Court for Human rights regarding children’s and juveniles’ rights, not to speak of their basic dignity as human beings.

It should be noted that currently the child migrant crisis has dropped out of most news reports, even as the children themselves have moved into the less visible venues of the nation’s immigration courts. The American Immigration Council (AIC) announced on October 14 that more than 85% of the 10,041 minors whose cases were begun between July 18 and the end of September showed up in court for their first hearing before a judge. AIC pointed out that an even higher percentage would appear if they could be assured that an attorney would assist them.

Yet issues relating to the child migrant crisis are far from over. The above-described short-term, low-cost strategies can begin to deal with the problems and there are long-term, higher-cost policies that are needed that must await the 114th Congress. This blog is the first of two that will focus on this issue.

On July 14, Pope Francis sent a message about the tens of thousands of Central American and Mexican children arriving at U.S. borders. He said, “This humanitarian emergency requires, as a first urgent measure, [that] these children be welcomed and protected.”

He is right. Children fleeing violence and hunger should not be met by irrationally fear-driven protesters waving signs in their faces or news that legislators want to deny them some of their current legal rights. And yet that is what happening in our country, to our shame.

A few days before the pope sent out his message, I went to the Texas-Mexican border to offer my legal services to the children and young mothers who were pouring in to the detention centers and shelters there. On my first day I visited respite tents where I saw exhausted young mothers holding babies. They seemed to be more passed out than sleeping, and one young girl slept with a baby still nursing at her breast. All of the young mothers were very thin, and one had terrible bruising around her arms, as if she had been beaten.

The children I saw had dirty shoes with holes in them – and no shoelaces, just like prisoners.

I learned that Catholic Sisters and other volunteers used to provide them with food they were familiar with like beans and rice. They quickly learned, however, that the young mothers and children were so dehydrated and malnourished that they vomited immediately afterwards. They were advised by doctors to serve them soup and crackers, and maybe a half sandwich.

The moms and kids were able to shower and given a change of clothes. Those with bus tickets to family members were awakened at 4:30 AM and taken to the bus stop with care packages of water, fresh fruit and yogurt bits.

One of the scary parts of this last part leg of their journeys is that many travel on alone. One young woman headed to New York was told by a man on the bus that her real destination was Boston. When she got off with him, he kidnapped her and got her family’s phone number. He then demanded $1,500 for her return.

I met “Maria,” a little seven-year-old from Honduras, who told me that her trip north began on a train that had derailed. She was then taken to a boat to continue the journey. She didn’t know anyone on the train or boat. I can’t even imagine her fear – and marvel at her courage. I also can’t help thinking that most of the privileged people we know would not willingly experience such fear.

I am deeply frustrated that so many people refuse to believe that these children and young mothers take part in these dangerous journeys because they face greater terrors at home. Little Maria is from Honduras where crime against girls and women is violent, escalating and rarely prosecuted.

It frankly sickens me that some in Washington want to weaken legal protections for unaccompanied children afforded by the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008. The desire to process these children more quickly, without fully understanding their stories, and then deport them to places where they will face violence and hunger is immoral and inhumane. Every child deserves legal counsel. Every child’s case should be considered carefully by a judge.

Those of us working with the children sometimes ask them to draw their hopes. Many draw simple scenes of themselves with their Mamas or families. I plan to take those pictures with me when I talk to some members of Congress in a few days. These are children who simply want to be safe with their families. Can this be too much to ask of the wealthiest nation on earth? How can we turn our backs on them?!

One sign of hope is that there has been an outpouring of love and concern for these children and young mothers from many faith communities and individuals. This story doesn’t appear enough in the media.

When one mother was not allowed to have one of her three children stay with her because she couldn’t afford an extra bed, I told her story and was overwhelmed by the number of people willing to give her the money to buy one. It seemed like a scene out of “It’s a Wonderful Life.”

It is like that around here. You just ask people for something that may help these young women and children and they generously respond. The protesters and adults who would stop a busload of children we see on the news do not dim the light of Christ that is beaming so bright in Harlingen, Brownsville and McAllen, Texas. When we treat each other as human beings with inherent dignity, it really is a wonderful life.

In his July 14 message, Pope Francis repeated something he had said earlier: “A change of attitude toward migrants and refugees is needed on the part of everyone, moving away from attitudes of defensiveness and fear, indifference and marginalization – all typical of a throwaway culture – towards attitudes based on a culture of encounter, the only cultures capable of building a better, more just and fraternal world.”

Demonstrators, those who respond with fear and prejudice and many congressional leaders need to hear heed this message. We cannot turn our backs on children in need.

Lacy is a lawyer who, until last year, worked as a lobbyist at NETWORK, A National Catholic Social Justice Lobby. She is also part of NETWORK’s Nuns on the Bus campaign for justice.

Originally published in The Hill.

The surge of undocumented children crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, most from the Central American countries of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, has created a full-blown immigration crisis. More than 52,000 youngsters have poured across these borders since last fall. While the number of children apprehended at the border averaged 6,800 annually between 2004 and 2011, the total jumped to over 13,000 children in 2012 and over 24,000 in 2013. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) estimates that well over 60,000 unaccompanied minors could enter the U.S. in 2014, and that is a conservative estimate.

In the short term, it doesn’t really matter why they have fled their native land. These kids are here and must be cared for humanely, treated with dignity and allowed the benefits of justice – and most importantly, protected from any further harm. This is a humanitarian crisis.

In the meantime, we can try to determine whether they have been driven to undertake this harrowing journey by lawlessness, drug violence and sex trafficking in their home state or whether they have been encouraged to risk the trip by rumors of U.S. acceptance or by the prospect of overburdened immigration courts which may allow them to be admitted into this country while they await a hearing, which may take months or even years.

Groups as diverse as the United Nations and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), whose delegations have traveled to the lands in question and interviewed these kids, have pointed out that no one explanatory variable accounts for the total reasons given by the children for leaving their homeland. But in addition to the absence of economic opportunity, entrenched poverty, lack of quality education (even access to education generally) and the desire to reconnect with family members living in the U.S., one overriding factor played a decisive role in the past few years: generalized violence (coercion, extortion, gang activity, kidnapping, threats, forcible recruitment into criminal activity, smuggling and trafficking in humans, drugs and weapons) at both the state and local levels has threatened security and created a culture of fear and hopelessness.

Mauricio from Honduras, age 17, gives us a first-hand account from someone who has left his country to seek greater economic opportunity: “If they really do want to know how hard life is down there, they should go see it. There are kids who don’t make it past five [years old] because they die of hunger. Their parents can’t work because there are no jobs. Just give us a chance. Let us better ourselves so we can be something better than what we are today.”

If one were to probe a little deeper into Mauricio’s story, we might find, as a delegation from the United Nation’s High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR) did (in a story related below), that Mauricio also has other reasons for making the dangerous trek to the U.S. and it may have to do with the culture of violence and crime in his country. In all these Central American countries there has been a breakdown of the family unit where one or both parents have left for the U.S., leaving children behind with relatives, often grandparents. Criminal elements prey on what remains of the family, especially as they receive remittances from the U.S. and are deemed rich. Young persons who resist joining gangs are intimidated and threatened with violence or even death.

The “Human Rights Watch” report for 2014 criticizes the three Central American countries — Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador — for rampant crime and impunity for human rights abuses; for failing to bring the perpetrators of killings to justice; for police corruption and abuses, among many other human rights problems. In these countries police have long been accused of operating more like assassins than law enforcement officers. This report largely substantiates the stories told by the children.

While the diminished coffee industry in Guatemala, political instability and a breakdown of the rule of law in Honduras, and the lack of remittances to families in El Salvador from Salvadorans in the U.S. due to the global recession all played their part, overwhelming violence in these societies seemed to exert the most control over decisions by the children themselves or those who had authority over them to leave the country despite all the poor odds that escape would be successful.

Central American countries in the past few years have witnessed an intensification of gang activity as gangs and their loosely-affiliated imitators have become more sophisticated in terms of their operations and execution. They have established an increasingly strong criminal presence threatening children if they refuse to become members and demanding payment of money from families and businesses to ensure that these groups are “protected” from violence.

One girl from Honduras said she was scared to take public transportation because Honduran gangs were burning buses full of people if the driver wouldn’t pay “protection money.” She said gangs regularly burn down jails and houses. Another girl had to flee because of the rampant killings. She described how she went out of her house one morning and found a chopped-up body lying on her doorstep. According to another young girl, girls as young as 9 were being gang-raped by various gang members. If she gave birth she would then be left to care for the child, until that child was old enough to join the gang. A boys’ focus group declared that they see death every day either by the government or by criminal gangs.

Fernando, age 17, a former client of Catholic Relief Services’ Youth Builders program in El Salvador, said he was aware of gang life before he even went to high school. He described the gangs’ ubiquitous presence in the community, especially on school property — selling drugs, throwing rocks at school buses, beating kids on the school bus with belts as part of the gang initiation, beating kids with a knife and removing the insignia from their school uniforms. The girls fared worse — drugged at high school parties, then gang-raped. He depicted a school atmosphere in which the teachers and administrators were completely unable to protect the students, at least 50% of whom were armed. He was beaten nearly every day on the school bus — maybe because he did well in school, and finally, he became marginally involved in gang activity. Although he maintains he “never became a rank and file gang member,” nevertheless he helped gang members patrol the school buses and drank with them. Ultimately, he was motivated to leave gang life when he had a child, saying, “I don’t want my child to grow up like that.” Fernando then turned to Catholic Relief Services for help.

A young woman, Josephina, age 16, from El Salvador, gives another perspective on intimidation and threats of a gang. Josephina initially told the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) that her main reason for coming to the U.S. was to join her stepfather with whom she had a warm relationship. However, during the course of her interview, she began to talk about the threats she received from the head of the gang that controlled her neighborhood if she did not become his girlfriend. Josephina knew another girl in her community who had become the girlfriend of a gang member and had been forced to have sex with all the gang members. Since she didn’t want any part of that kind of activity, Josephina no longer felt safe. She stopped going to school and that is when her family made arrangements for her to travel to the U.S.

A variation of Josephina’s story is that of Maritza, age 15, also from El Salvador. She told the UNHCR: “I am here because the gang threatened me. One of them ‘liked’ me. Another gang member told my uncle that he should get me out of there because the guy who liked me was going to do me harm. In El Salvador they take young girls, rape them and throw them in plastic bags. My uncle told me it wasn’t safe for me to stay there. They told him on April 3, and I left on April 7… I also wanted to come because I was excited to see my mother. But I was also sad about leaving my grandmother… I wasn’t sure I wanted to come. I decided for sure only when the gang threatened me.”

Luis and Mario, both 17, from Guatemala are two of the lucky migrants who are now day laborers working in Berkeley, California. “My parents didn’t want me to go, especially my mom,” says Luis. “She knows how dangerous the trek is.” But he didn’t want to be forced into a gang like so many of his friends. Mario agrees. “The gangs rob, kidnap and kill,” he says. “If you refuse to join, it could mean death. The only way out is to leave.” Both boys were locked up in a hotel room for 10 days by smugglers whom they met near the U.S. border. Their relatives were forced to pay more than a thousand dollars in ransom for their freedom. But they were not released before being beaten.

Anthony, age 13, disappeared from his gang-ridden neighborhood in one of Honduras’s dangerous cities, so his younger brother Kenneth, age 7, hopped on his bike to search for him, starting his hunt at a notorious gang hang-out. They were both found within days of each other, both dead; Anthony and a friend had been shot in the head; Kenneth had been tortured and beaten with sticks and rocks. They were among seven children murdered in the city in April 2014 alone, part of a surge in gang violence that is strangling the countries of Central America.

The UNHCR found that 72% of Salvadoran children were forcibly displaced because of severe harm that required a closer review for international protection needs, representing the largest group of the Central American countries. 57% of Honduran children and 38% of Guatemalan children raised potential international protection concerns, both for violence in society. In Honduras, two additional children spoke about the rampant violence in that country. According to one 16-year-old boy: “You feel afraid where you live in a place where there is nothing but violence. It’s very dangerous there. The gangs are everywhere. You become accustomed to hearing gunshots. You wonder if something will happen to you if you go out to the store, whether someone will shoot you or tell you that you have to join the gangs.” A girl who was only 12 years old spoke of gang members targeting girls her age in her community: “In the village where I lived there were a ton of gang members. All they did was bad things, kidnapping people. My mother and grandmother were afraid that something would happen to me. That’s why my mother sent me here. They rape girls and get them pregnant. The gang got five girls pregnant, and there were other girls who disappeared and their families never heard from them again.”

The UNHCR found that 58% of the children they interviewed in 2013 expressed fear of serious harm due to threats from gangs that raised international protection concerns, even when they gave other reasons for migrating to the U.S. In contrast, the UNHCR 2006 study of migrant children from the same areas found that only 13% of the children interviewed described these harmful situations.

In the same UNHCR study, almost 70% of children talked about at least one specific incident, such as having been beaten, robbed or threatened by gangs. More than half of the children who discussed gang violence issues, talked about the rampant threat of harm by armed criminal groups in their communities, including inter-gang conflict and the extent of the control gangs exercise in different neighborhoods. Let’s listen to Alphonso, age 17, from El Salvador: “The problem was that where I studied there were lots of M-18 gang members, and where I lived was under the control of the other gang, the MS-13. The M-18 thought I belonged to the MS-13. They had killed the two police officers who protected our school. They waited for me outside the school… The gang told me that if I returned to school, I wouldn’t make it home alive. The gang had killed two kids I went to school with, and I thought I might be the next one… I know someone whom the gangs threatened this way. He didn’t take their treats seriously. They killed him in the park… If I hadn’t had these problems, I wouldn’t have come here.”

Lest the reader think that the only form of violence from which children in Central America were fleeing was criminal gang violence, it should be noted that some children were fleeing violent abuse in the home from an immediate family member or relative. However, these cases were a very small percentage of the total. It should also be noted that in even a smaller percentage of cases (less than 3%) did any children mention a U.S. policy of leniency toward children.

Youngsters who manage to flee the violence of their homeland are then exposed to extreme danger and criminal mistreatment along the migration journey by drug traffickers, human traffickers, even weak law enforcement personnel. Children are raped, beaten and frequently abandoned along the way. Dani, age 16 when she started her journey northward, learned quickly how human trafficking often operates. She reported that she left her two little children with her mother. She had been promised a job in the U.S. at a cantina by one of her cousins and she would live with her as well. While she anticipated a straightforward waitressing job, she discovered that she was also expected to please the male clientele with sexual activity. Fortunately, Dani was able to apply for a humanitarian visa and return to her country.

Before we examine the several legislative proposals currently being prepared in Congress, some partisan, others bipartisan, as well as the recent funding request of the president, we need to hear the unfiltered voices of the youngsters at the border before we, in our wisdom, decide what is best for their welfare and that of our country.

The reasons these children have given for leaving their countries are complex and interrelated and can be understood only when examined from a child-sensitive perspective. It is important also to note that there is no one dominant place of origin within any of these countries from which the youngsters come. The problems described in the various narratives are pervasive throughout each country. What all these compelling stories (and so many more not conveyed) demonstrate unequivocally is that the majority of these displaced kids faced grave dangers and hardship in their countries of origin. Fleeing violence and insecurity, they arrive here only to be confronted with a broken immigration system that exhibits little concern for their wellbeing

From OnFaith

Having lived and worked in Washington, D.C. for years, I thought I’d seen all imaginable forms of government dysfunction — from partisan gridlock to government shutdowns. But even I am shocked when I see elected officials use children as fodder for political gamesmanship. Now, unfortunately, I’ve seen it all.

No fewer than three committees in the House of Representatives are holding hearings on the unfolding humanitarian crisis at America’s doorstep — the surge of young children coming to our country from Central America, in particular from Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador. By year’s end, we expect 60,000 unaccompanied minors to come knocking on our nation’s door.

Clearly, reasons for this crisis are complex, including untrue rumors about U.S. border policies being spread in Central America and families seeking to be reunited. Many, many of these children, however, are arriving because they are desperately fleeing violence in their homelands. Protecting them is our moral obligation.

Rather than simply turn them away, sending them into further danger, Congress should examine why they are fleeing and devise compassionate, effective ways to address the crisis here and in their home countries.

Current congressional hearings, however, are not intended to shed light, but rather to justify building bigger walls and higher hurdles — creating a virtual fortress America — and to foster a fiction that America has no responsibility for the well-being of these children. But we are better than that.

Some public officials, in an attempt to hide the faces of these young children, have labeled them “unaccompanied alien minors.” Why? Because the term alien is intended to dehumanize. As long as they are “aliens,” I suppose the logic goes, lawmakers can lull themselves into believing that these vulnerable and traumatized children aren’t their responsibility.

Those seeking to score political points would also have us ignore the facts that Honduras is called the “murder capital of the world,” that El Salvador and Guatemala are close behind at fourth and fifth places, and that the U.N. High Commission on Refugees and other organizations, including the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, have been tracking this growing problem for years.

I find it deeply disturbing when immigration reform opponents in Congress use the current crisis to scare their colleagues into believing that efforts to reform our broken immigration system are somehow responsible and that passing reform will cause the crisis to escalate. Five-year-old children are not seeking employment in the U.S.; instead, their parents are so desperate about their children’s safety that they put their children on incredibly dangerous journeys — ripe with the possibility of human trafficking and sexual violence — in order to reach safe ground in Belize, Costa Rica, Panama, Nicaragua, Canada, and yes, the United States. These children are running for their lives.

Many Catholic Sisters and humanitarian organizations are reaching out to help. We should all be grateful for that and offer whatever we can to aid their efforts. And we should insist that Congress effectively fund the Health and Human Services Office of Refugee Resettlement and similar programs.

But charity alone will not resolve the crisis. Action is needed, and all of us must insist that our elected officials act in the children’s best interests. That means working with other governments to address the reasons these children are fleeing, including economic conditions that lead to gangs and drug cartels. It means not exposing the children to further danger or suffering when they reach our borders. And it also means passing comprehensive immigration reform, which, ultimately, will be far more helpful than piecemeal efforts to address one problem at a time.

Pope Francis has asked leaders to engage in “sincere and effective dialogue aimed at healing the deepest roots — and not simply the appearances — of the evils in our world. Politics,” he states, “remains a lofty vocation and one of the highest forms of charity, inasmuch as it seeks the common good.”

The common good cannot be achieved by dehumanizing these children or their parents, nor can it be achieved through political grandstanding. This is a humanitarian crisis and politicians must respond humanely and in a way that protects the dignity and well-being of the children. The pact we make with our next generation must be based on love and care. This is a sacred and holy duty owed because we are all brothers and sisters in our shared humanity.

Sister Simone Campbell is an attorney and the executive director of NETWORK, A National Catholic Social Justice Lobby in Washington, DC. She is also the author of “A Nun on the Bus: How All of Us Can Create, Hope, Change, and Community.”

http://www.faithstreet.com/onfaith/2014/06/23/the-wellbeing-of-a-child-is-a-sacred-trust/32656 

Faith leaders met this week on Capitol Hill with Cesar Gonzalez, Chief of Staff for Representative Diaz-Balart, a Republican member from Florida who is a leading advocate for immigration reform. Immigration reform is the priority of the office, Cesar told us, and Rep. Diaz-Balart is meeting with ever member of the Republican House Caucus to try and build a consensus bill to reform our broken system.

Their office is also working with key Democratic members because they know that they need Democratic support to pass a bill. We told him how important his work is to end the deportation practices currently tearing families apart. We also stressed the need to provide a path to citizenship for the millions of undocumented immigrants living in America.

We sincerely thank Representative Diaz-Balart, Cesar and their whole office for the work they are doing and we pray for their success. Time is short; if a bill doesn’t move by the time Congress goes home for their August recess, it will not move this year. Please pray for immigration reform now.