This year's surge of unaccompanied illegal immigrant children across the Mexican border into the United States is under way, with more than 3,000 entering the United States last month – the highest rate since the peak of
last summer's border crisis.
While the numbers are down by 40 percent compared to last summer, fiscal year 2015 appears to be shaping up to see the second-biggest surge on record,
The Washington Times reported Monday.
In the first six months of the 2015 fiscal year, authorities report having apprehended 15,647 children traveling without parents. At the same time in 2014, the number of children who had been apprehended there was 28,759.
The statistics make clear "that the surge of illegal arrivals from Central America was never really over," said Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies with the Center for Immigration Studies.
Vaughan attributed the problem to the failure of the Obama administration and Congress to take action to stop the "pull factors" encouraging tens of thousands of people from Central America to try to enter the United States illegally.
She said one important factor behind the surges is the requirement that children from Central America be released into the United States rather than swiftly returned to their home nations.
In the great majority of cases, the children disappear into the United States, adding to the estimated 11 million illegals already in the country. Late last month, the Congressional Research Service said that 62 percent of the children failed to show up for their cases in court between July 2014 and February 2015.
Last year, the Obama administration at first blamed weak economies and crime in Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador for triggering the border surge. Later, however, it acknowledged that human traffickers were advertising the illegal journey into the United States by highlighting the fact that the U.S. immigration system requires non-Mexican children to be released into the country while they await decisions on whether they can remain.
Adolfo F. Franco, a former official at the U.S. Agency for International Development overseeing Latin America and the Caribbean, told the Senate Homeland and Government Affairs Committee last month that Congress should work to overturn President Barack Obama's deportation amnesty, saying it entices people to try to enter the United States illegally.
"There is a sense that the law in the U.S. has changed, and therefore it is easier to come to the United States and ultimately get a work permit and Social Security number," Franco said. "That is the driver and that is the pull factor" luring people to attempt to crash the southern border.
He said the United States should handle illegals from El Salvador, Guatemala and other Central American countries as it does Mexican juveniles, who are quickly sent home, thereby deterring others from trying to enter.
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