Early Wednesday morning, Border Patrol agents encountered two Guatemalan brothers, ages two and six, who had crossed into the United States without their family after writing their U.S. contact names and phone numbers on their shirts.
The boys were part of a larger group of 18 migrants from Honduras, Guatemala and Cuba who encountered agents near La Grula, Texas, in the state’s far south in the Rio Grande Valley area.
“Many of the unaccompanied children encountered by the Border Patrol are too young and unable to provide names or phone numbers to family members,” the agency said. said In a news release
A pair of Guatemalan boys who arrived alone at the US-Mexico border on September 21, 2022
(border post)
Finding adequate identification for such unaccompanied migrants means that “agents must rely on information written on articles of clothing or handwritten notes found in their possessions, adults in the group and/or their home country’s consulate,” the Border Patrol continued.
This year, the Border Patrol has encountered nearly 140,000 unaccompanied minors crossing into the United States, according to official statistics.
When federal officials encounter unaccompanied children, they are placed in government custody until a family contact can be found in the United States, or, barring that, transportation can be arranged back to the immigrant’s home country.
The issue of the treatment of immigrant children has returned this year after the governors of Texas and Florida sent buses and planes full of immigrants to liberal jurisdictions as a political stunt.
At least a dozen children, some newborns, were sent on such transports in recent weeks. According to a independent Analysis.
Meanwhile, single adults entering the United States are often deported before they can access their legally protected asylum rights under the controversial Trump-era Title 42 program.
The policy, an alleged pandemic measure cooked up by the Trump administration’s arch immigration adversary Stephen Miller, is reportedly Over the CDC’s protestAllows immigration officials to refuse entry to asylum-seekers on the basis of Covid.
According to the Pew analysis, the Biden administration already does The great majority carried of About 2.2 m heading 42 Expulsion since the policy came into effect.
Banned this year under the Health Act, which is the Biden administration Renewed in August Despite previous plans to abandon it, the 1.07m summit operated in 2021 will perform well on the track, According to Border Patrol statistics.
