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Youngsters Risk Their Lives to Enter U.S. by Susan Carroll NOGALES, Sonora—Salvador's short, skinny legs dangle from a metal chair in a government-run shelter. He is 4 years old and wears a small University of Arizona Wildcats sweatshirt from a box of donated clothes. He sucks on a vanilla cookie and stares blankly at the shelter's coordinator, a kind woman running short on patience. "Mijo," says Calendaria Cruz, leaning in closer, "where's your mama?" He shakes his head. Salvador is among a growing number of children and young adolescents caught crossing the Southwestern U.S.-Mexico border. They face the same risks as adults, but their journeys are often compounded by fear and innocence. The majority of the 85,000 undocumented immigrants younger than 17 arrested last year were teenagers striking out on their own to find their families or seek jobs in the United States. But increasingly, U.S. Border Patrol agents are finding children, some too young to tie their shoes, entrusted to smugglers. Salvador doesn't understand how he ended up in a white-walled migrant youth shelter tucked next to a funeral home on the outskirts of Nogales, a staging ground for migrants trying to cross into the United States. He sips his soda, sucks on his cookie and waits. Reasons for Crossing Immigration experts say the reason for the increase in children crossing is rooted in a U.S. border policy that has disrupted migration patterns between Mexico and the United States. In the mid-1990s, the U.S. Border Patrol launched a strategy to control the Southwestern border, concentrating agents and technology in popular crossing points from El Paso to San Diego. Before the security buildup, undocumented immigrants would work seasonally in the United States and then return home to Mexico or Central America for holidays, funerals or first Communions. They crossed with relative ease, often making the journey without a smuggler. After the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, undocumented immigrants in the United States found that more towering walls of steel and motion sensors, along with additional border agents, separated them from their children. The cost of returning home had reached more than $1,000 a head, and smugglers were leading people through increasingly remote areas of the desert. "It's inconceivable to me that anyone would be willing to knowingly put their child in harm's way," said Paul K. Charlton, the U.S. attorney in Phoenix, who is pushing for stiffer penalties for people convicted of child smuggling. "My only guess would be that these people do not truly understand the risk these children are facing." Some parents don't take the risk and bear the separation so they can send money back home. But many decide that instead of going home, they would send for their children to come to the United States. For those who do decide to send for their children or pay a smuggler, the wait to be reunited can be years. Still, those plans don't always work out. The number of children and teenagers apprehended has increased slightly since 2000, while overall apprehensions along the Southwestern border dropped more than 43 percent through the end of last year. In 2000, children and teens made up 5 percent of arrests. Last year, that number grew to 9 percent. Since the start of the federal fiscal year in October, agents have arrested 672,800 undocumented immigrants, including more than 63,700 minors. In all of last year, 85,446 arrests of teens and children were reported. A Child's Dream Ignacio Cervantes Pantoja has grown-up dreams but a child's imagination. On the morning of April 14, during school vacation for Easter week, the gangly 11-year-old left his family's scrap-wood home in San Luis, Sonora, a Mexican border town southwest of Yuma, Ariz. That afternoon, a social worker went to the house to tell his mother that Ignacio had tried to cross the U.S.-Mexico border again, his third attempt in a month. He was treated at a Mexican clinic for dehydration and then sent home. "He's stubborn, and he won't listen," Matilde Pantoja said of her son. "He's a child." The fifth-grader is matter-of-fact when he talks about his future. He has a plan. He'll leave his family's home in the border town of San Luis and take the dirt road across the street, through the park, and keep going until he reaches the edge of the steel-gate fencing that separates the United States from Mexico. He'll cross the border and find his great-uncle, Alfonso, who lives in Los Angeles. He'll get a good job, he said, and occasionally he'll return home for visits and bring home presents. "I'll buy my dad a car," he said. "I'll have a good job, and we'll eat well." Ignacio's mother listens and cringes. She has eight other children, two still in diapers. Her eldest daughter, Maria Teresa, 15, wears a pink maternity top and flip-flops. The baby is due in two months. The family is trying to get by on Ignacio's father's wages, about $40 a week working two jobs. Ignacio is struggling in school, but he's smart, she said. He taught himself how to make balloon animals by studying a clown in the town square. With skinny arms, Ignacio can make a pink poodle, a flower or a giraffe to trade to tourists for a few pesos. He washes windshields and then gives the money to his mother. She doesn't know how to stop him from leaving for the United States and he refuses to stay. "I told him next time he has to ask permission," she said. "What am I supposed to do?" |