Fleeing Gangs, Children Head to U.S. Border By FRANCES ROBLES JULY 9, 2014 SAN PEDRO SULA, Honduras — Anthony O. Castellanos disappeared from his gang-ridden neighborhood on the eastern edge of Honduras’s most dangerous city, so his younger brother, Kenneth, hopped on his green bicycle to search for him, starting his hunt at a notorious gang hangout known as the “crazy house.” They were found within days of each other, both dead. Anthony, 13, and a friend had been shot in the head; Kenneth, 7, had been tortured and beaten with sticks and rocks. They were among seven children murdered in the La Pradera neighborhood of San Pedro Sula in April alone, part of a surge in gang violence that is claiming younger and younger victims. The killings are a major factor driving the recent wave of migration of Central American children to the United States, which has sent an unprecedented number of unaccompanied minors across the Texas border. Many children and parents say the rush of new migrants stems from a belief that United States immigration policy offers preferential treatment to minors, but in addition, studies of Border Patrol statistics show a strong correlation between cities like San Pedro Sula with high homicide rates and swarms of youngsters taking off for the United States. “The first thing we can think of is to send our children to the United States,” said a mother of two in La Pradera, who declined to give her name because she feared gang reprisals. “That’s the idea, to leave.” Honduran children are increasingly on the front lines of gang violence. In June, 32 children were murdered in Honduras, bringing the number of youths under 18 killed since January of last year to 409, according to data compiled by Covenant House, a youth shelter in Tegucigalpa, the capital. With two major youth gangs and more organized crime syndicates operating with impunity in Central America, analysts say immigration authorities will have a difficult time keeping children at home unless the root causes of violence are addressed. In 2012, the number of murder victims ages 10 to 14 had doubled to 81 from 40 in 2008, according to the Violence Observatory at the National Autonomous University of Honduras. Last year, 1,013 people under 23 were murdered in a nation of eight million. Although homicides dropped sharply in 2012 after a gang truce in neighboring El Salvador, so far this year murders of children 17 and under are up 77 percent from the same time period a year ago, the police said. Nowhere is the flow of departures more acute than in San Pedro Sula, a city in northwestern Honduras that has the world’s highest homicide rate, according to United Nations figures. Between January and May of this year, more than 2,200 children from the city arrived in the United States, according to Department of Homeland Security statistics, far more than from any other city in Central America. More than half of the top 50 Central American cities from which children are leaving for the United States are in Honduras. Virtually none of the children have come from Nicaragua, a bordering country that has staggering poverty, but not a pervasive gang culture or a record-breaking murder rate. “Everyone has left,” Alan Castellanos, 27, the uncle of Anthony and Kenneth, said in an interview in late May. “How is it that an entire country is being brought to its In some cities, blocks are empty because gangs demanding extortion payments have forced out homeowners. Many people have had to move within the country in a displacement pattern that experts liken to the one seen in Colombia’s civil war. The office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees said that from 2008 to 2013, the number of asylum claims filed in Mexico, Panama, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Belize increased sevenfold. Most were from people of Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras, the three nations with large numbers of migrants now arriving at the United States border. Refugee advocacy organizations have urged the State Department to treat the children arriving at the United States border as refugees, and proposed a processing system where asylum claims could be reviewed in Central America and those accepted could move safely to the United States or countries willing to accept them, as was done in countries such as Haiti and Iraq. They have not yet received a response, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops said. Continue reading the main storyContinue reading the main story President Obama urged Congress on Wednesday night to pass a $3.7 billion budget supplement that would, among other things, beef up border security, hasten deportations and help Central American nations address security problems. “The best thing we can do is make sure the children can live in their own countries, safely,” he said. During a recent late-night visit to the San Pedro Sula morgue, more than 60 bodies, all victims of violence, were seen piled in a heap, each wrapped in a brown plastic bag. While picking bullets out of a 15-year-old boy shot 15 times, technicians discussed how they regularly received corpses of children under 10, and sometimes as young as 2. Last week, in nearby Santa Barbara, an 11-year-old had his throat slit by other children, because he did not pay a 50-cent extortion fee. “At first we saw a lot of kids who were being killed because when the gang came for their parents, they happened to be in the car or at the location with them,” said Dr. Darwin Armas Cruz, a medical examiner who works the overnight shift. “Now we see kids killing kids. They kill with guns, knives and even grenades.” Dr. Armas said his family was thinking of migrating, too. Correction: July 11, 2014 Because of an editing error, an article on Thursday about the murderous gang violence in Honduras that is a factor in the recent wave of migration of Central American children to the United States misstated the amount of money that President Obama has requested from Congress to address the problem. It is $3.7 billion, not more than $4 billion. Meridith Kohut contributed reporting from San Pedro Sula, and Gene Palumbo from San Salvador. A version of this article appears in print on July 10, 2014, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Fleeing Gangs, Children Head to U.S. Border.
Posted on: Fri, 11 Jul 2014 08:02:51 +0000
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