美国国家公共电台 NPR As Border Crossings Tick Up, Migrants Bring Children, Take More Dangerous Routes

As Border Crossings Tick Up, Migrants Bring Children, Take More Dangerous Routes

AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:

The number of immigrants illegally crossing the southern border plummeted 1 when Donald Trump 2 took office, but the number is again on the rise. In response, the president plans to deploy 3 up to 4,000 National Guard troops. As NPR's John Burnett reports from West Texas, immigrant shelters are overflowing 4 with recent arrivals. And some migrants are trying more dangerous routes to evade 5 capture.

JOHN BURNETT, BYLINE 6: The intake 7 room at Annunciation House, an immigrant shelter in downtown El Paso, is packed these days. Parents and squirming children sit with their travel bags. They are the aggravations of Donald Trump.

LESLIE MORAN: (Speaking Spanish).

BURNETT: Thirteen-year-old Leslie Moran, with a ponytail and a Minnie Mouse shirt, says she and her father, Daniel, left Honduras because there was so much crime and she couldn't attend school anymore. "They threaten you, and they rob you," she says. "We came here so I'd have a new opportunity to study." Her journey north and thousands like it have bedeviled the Trump administration just as they did President Obama. New figures show in this mini-surge in March a 200 percent increase in border apprehensions 8 compared to last year. Agents detained nearly 40,000. Most were families or kids traveling alone from Central America.

RUBEN GARCIA: People have made the fundamental decision that they can no longer be in their country.

BURNETT: That's Ruben Garcia, for 40 years the director of Annunciation House. He says his shelter is receiving about 400 people a week. Immigration and Customs Enforcement books them, straps 9 on electronic ankle monitors and drops them off at his center. They're given a shower, a hot meal and a ride to the Greyhound station. They continue their journeys to Seattle or Los Angeles or Atlanta, where they check in with ICE and wait for their day in immigration court. Garcia says so many immigrants are traveling with their children these days because the smugglers tell them to.

GARCIA: Bring one of your kids because you stand a better chance of not getting locked up right off the bat. And so that's part of the way that the smuggler 10 presents it.

BURNETT: The Trump administration asserts that some immigrants know the game. Families and minors 11 know that under catch-and-release, they'll be able to live in the U.S. for years while their cases work their way through overloaded 12 immigration courts. Moreover, Trump says immigrants are coming to take advantage of a program called DACA that he tried to terminate. It gives benefits to unauthorized immigrants brought to the U.S. as children. Chris Carlin, a public defender 13 in the region, says that's nonsense.

CHRIS CARLIN: I have quite literally 14 represented thousands of defendants 15. I have never heard a defendant 16 have any idea what DACA is. That is meaningless to them.

BURNETT: A half-dozen Central Americans interviewed at Annunciation House, to a person, said they came here to escape thuggery and joblessness in their hometowns. They walked across the international bridge and surrendered. Others are taking greater risks. They're crossing the Rio Grande and making a dangerous trek 17 through remote mountains and desert.

RONNY DODSON: They're coming in droves now. I just - we see them two or three groups at a time.

BURNETT: Brewster County Sheriff Ronny Dodson says his deputies are finding young men, dead and alive, who have hiked a hundred miles across this stark 18 landscape. In December, they discovered the remains 19 of a 14-year-old Guatemalan boy on a ranch 20 near Alpine 21.

DODSON: He'd been there a few days. It just didn't happen. He'd been there for a while. You know, it was cold. The weather was cold. So, I mean, it wasn't a lot of decomposing 22 like it normally does. But it's not pretty.

BURNETT: On a recent patrol along a winding 23 gravel 24 road near the Rio Grande, border agent Rush Carter, who rode this country as a cowboy in his former life, describes what he sees.

RUSH CARTER: Really rugged 25 country - large mountains, deep canyons 26, a lot of brush, a lot of cactus 27, a lot of rock. Very tough country to walk through on foot.

BURNETT: Border Patrol agents complain that too often they're forced to spend time processing undocumented immigrants they catch. They can take an agent out of the field all day, especially if it's a kid that requires more attention. Robert Boatright is chief patrol agent in the Big Bend.

ROBERT BOATRIGHT: We're being more methodical with the children. We do welfare checks every 15 minutes on unaccompanied children, right? You know, we're making sure that the children get fed. They may get snacks.

BURNETT: The Border Patrol hopes the National Guard can assist with some of these duties so that its agents can get back into the field to deal with the current surge of immigrants. John Burnett, NPR News, El Paso.