Honduras, and the U.S. border crisis no one is talking about

The Honduran kids are starting to pile up in detention centres along the U.S. border. Since Oct. 1, about 52,000 “unaccompanied minors” have been caught by by U.S border patrols in the southwest. Hondurans, Guatemalans and Salvadorians mostly.

That’s extraordinary. About 200 kids caught every day, after a dangerous, frightening journey of at least 2,400 kilometres. Likely 60,000 kids this year.

When 599 Chinese migrants showed up in rusty boats on B.C. shores in 1999, Canadians were plunged into panic. 

The same number of young migrants get arrested on the U.S. border every three days. Others make it across without being caught, or turn back on the journey.

They’re political fodder in the U.S., their stories reconstructed to fit the narrative desired by each side. 

Really, they’re kids. Some set out on incredible journeys on their own. Others were helped by families who took on huge debts - $4,000 to $6,000 - to hire a coyote. When their children are caught at the border, and returned, the debt remains.

The road to the U.S. is littered with bodies. The journey often involves riding a freight train called El Bestia. Gangs prey on migrants.

Imagine the desperation of parents who send their children on such a journey.

Canadians should understand the impulse to seek a better life. About 96 per cent of us come from somewhere else.

Those days are gone. Even as trade agreements removed barriers so capital and goods could move freely between countries, workers weren’t allowed the same freedom. They were trapped.

It makes sense for a Honduran kid to gamble on the journey to the U.S. They have seen the benefits - almost 20 per cent of GDP is money sent home by foreign workers, mostly in the U.S., mostly illegal. Everyone knows friends or family members who have made the trip. (And everyone knows people who have started the journey and never been heard from again.)

The U.S. is trying to turn back the tide. It’s fighting rumours an amnesty applies to minor migrants. This week, Homeland Security director Jeh Johnson warned parents of the risks children face travelling to the U.S.

But the day after Johnson’s warning was released, the U.S. State Department updated its travel advisory for Honduras. 

“Critically high” levels of crime and violence. Highest murder rate in the world. Corrupt police. Crimes often not even investigated and criminals operating “with a high degree of impunity throughout Honduras.” Narcotraffickers  and gangs, “known to commit crimes such as murder, kidnapping, extortion, carjacking, armed robbery, rape, and other aggravated assaults.”

Overblown, I’d say.

But if that’s the official U.S. governments position, it can not be surprised that Honduran teens are heading to America.

Escaping violence is a motivation. The gangs in the cities - imports from the U.S. - kill casually.

But mostly, the young migrants are looking for a chance.

I was amazed by the hopefulness of Hondurans in our time there. There are few jobs, schools are bad and opportunities are desperately scarce. But people open small stores, or take courses to prepare for a job that probably doesn’t exist. Kids stay in school, sign up for trade courses. It is at once inspiring and heartbreaking.

Embarking on a journey to the U.S. is a demonstration of that hopefulness.

Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez tried to shift responsibility to the U.S. The children are war refugees, he said, driven out of their country by violence fuelled by the drug trade.

Americans (and Canadians) consume cocaine. Without them, the drug would not be transported through Honduras and other countries too poor to control the business.

True enough. The 43-year-long “war on drugs” is a costly, destructive failure that has enriched and empowered a few - gangs and cocaine cartels included - and accomplished, literally, nothing while resulting in hundreds of thousands of deaths. Drugs are cheaper and more available than ever.

But Honduras would be a bad place to be young even if not a single of cocaine moved through the country. Gangs and poverty and a broken society are the real problems.

“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” it says on the Statue of Liberty. Canada embraced the same sentiments, without the poetry.

Except today, we don’t want those masses to show up. 

The fears about foreign workers and wages are understandable. For me, the problem is with the word “temporary.” We should welcome new citizens, not people brought here to be cheap labour and then sent home.

The kids flooding the U.S. border are risking everything for a chance at a new life. 

And we’re locking them up and sending them back were they came from.

Update: This great graphic shows where the kids are coming from.