Cindy Monge was like many children in detention centers today when she crossed the border from Guatemala by herself.
“When I was 11 years old, I came here alone,” said the 19-year old girl. “I was detained when I first came here, and I know how it feels. It’s very scary, it’s very dangerous.”
Because of the surge of unaccompanied minors crossing the southwest United States border nowadays, particularly from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, many of the 57,000 children on the U.S.-Mexico border today have no way to leave detention centers like Monge did. They have been held for months, or even years, without knowing where their future lies.
In 2014 so far, the number of unaccompanied Guatemalan children crossing U.S. border is more than ten times what it was in 2009. The surge in immigrant children has grown even more sharply for Honduran immigrants in the last five years, changing from 968 in 2009 to 17,582 in 2014.
Monge said the motivation of unaccompanied alien children remain the same over time despite the surge: “We want to be re-united with our families.” Monge stayed with her grandparents until she was 11 as her parents came separately to the United States, hoping to find work to support the family. “When my mother was pregnant, she fell off the stairs, so she had a brain surgery.” Monge said. “And I was born because of that, with only like 6 months, and weighing 3 lbs… There was no way to pay for family’s medical care at home.”
Lived her life without seeing her parents for more than seven years, Monge decided to come to the U.S. by herself and reunite with her family. “I just remember I went on a bus for five days. It was scary, because you don’t know who the people next to you are,” Monge said. “I had no sleep at all. All I had was peppermint candy, and a bottle of water.”
There was no precedent in Guatemala that Monge knew of when she went on her trip across Mexico into California. Eight years later, children from the three central American countries including Guatemala take up a significant portion of the unaccompanied minors that are crossing U.S.- Mexico border.
On July 8, President Obama asked Congress to consider an emergency supplemental request for 3.7 million to address the urgent humanitarian situation on the southwest border. But Congress has not yet passed anything before the summer recess started.
Marc Rosenblum, deputy director of Migration Policy Institute, said judicial crisis is what the immigration enforcement system should be focusing on. “We don’t have enough judges,” Rosenblum said.
Although the supplementary budget includes a big increase in immigration judges’ funding, Rosenblum said it’s still not keeping pace with the rest of the enforcement system.
“The enforcement has really outpaced the judicial processing capacity,” Rosenblum said. “And even in the new budget request, it requests 1.1 billion for ICE (Immigration and Custom Enforcement), and 64 million for immigration judges. I think you can make a case that we should be investing even more there, because that is where the bottleneck is.”
Eight years ago, Monge was a witness of the speedy proceedings at southwest customs back then. She only stayed in detention center for less than a month, yet Monge still considers her experience devastating.
“I thought I was going to the prison. I seriously thought I’m not getting out of here,” Monge said. “And once they took me to the detention center, I realized I might just be deported.”
Unlike most of the children in detention centers nowadays, Monge was taken good care of during her time there. With far fewer cases and enough resource back then, the custom agents got in touch with Monge’s dad in a few weeks. And they worked something out for Monge’s dad to bring her to Maryland to start a new life.