Risky choices: How U.S. laws affect migrant children’s journeys to border

U.S. immigration law and the legal categorizations it imposes on migrants shape the journeys of migrant children from Central America as they move through Mexico toward the southern U.S. border, according to a new Yale study.

In the study, sociologist Ángel Escamilla García documents the various hard decisions Central American youth are forced to make during their journeys to maximize their chances of not being deported once they reach the United States. Those choices include concealing sexual assaults, beatings, and other crimes inflicted on them during their travels; drastically altering their routes through Mexico; and separating from their family members before attempting to cross the border.

The study, published in the journal Ethnic and Racial Studies, is based on interviews and focus groups that Escamilla García conducted with 32 minors who were migrating to the United States from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. He spoke with the participants at migrant shelters in four locations in southern and northern Mexico.

His findings shed light on the ways migrant youth learn about the legal classifications of people under U.S. immigration law and assess how those categories account for their experiences while traveling.

"The legal categories created by U.S. immigration law have an impact that extends well beyond the county's territorial borders, which makes journeys of vulnerable groups, such as unaccompanied children, slower and more perilous," said Escamilla García, assistant professor of sociology in Yale's Faculty of Arts and Sciences. "Something I found fascinating about the youth I met in Mexico was the amount of knowledge circulating among them about U.S. immigration law. They would assess how they thought the laws would affect their cases, which led them to make decisions that were risky but aimed at enhancing their chances of gaining legal status in the United States."

Undocumented minors who enter the United States without a parent or legal guardian are categorized as unaccompanied children (UACs), a group considered vulnerable and treated differently from other undocumented migrants.

UACs entering the United States most commonly apply for one or both of two types of immigration relief - asylum and Special Immigrant Juvenile Status - that extend legal status to migrants fearful of returning to their countries of origin, Escamilla García explained. Qualifying for either designation requires meeting parameters that govern eligibility.

Escamilla García found that minors traveling through Mexico learn about U.S. immigration law primarily through three sources: conversations with other migrants (the source of information for 50% of migrants); consultations with lawyers and staff at migrant shelters (20%); and through social media apps (30%), including Facebook and WhatsApp groups.

Acquiring knowledge can cause minor migrants to conceal sexual assaults, brutal physical violence, and other crimes experienced during their journeys, Escamilla García said.

Edelmira, a 17-year-old girl Escamilla García interviewed for the study, said she was sexually assaulted soon after she crossed the border from her home county of Honduras into Mexico. She suffered headaches and stomach pain afterward but decided not to report the crime after learning that rape and other physical violence migrants suffer en route to the United States is irrelevant to their asylum applications, Escamilla García said.

"The attorneys already told me that it's good to report violence so that the authorities know what is happening, but they also told me that what happened to me here doesn't matter in my case up there [in the U.S.]," Edelmira told Escamilla García.

UACs, as a protected class, are allowed to remain in the United States while their immigration cases are pending. They can be reunified with a family member or other qualified individual to care for them as their cases progress. Lacking a sponsor, they are put in the care of the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement, which places them in a shelter or, for young children, with a foster family.

Facundo, a 17-year-old Guatemalan, told Escamilla García he had pre-arranged to have a family friend who lived in Florida meet him at the border but had to change plans after learning that he could be locked up for months in a detention center if his sponsor was not a relative. He was instead attempting to make new arrangements with an uncle who lives in New York, but since that uncle is undocumented Facundo would have had to meet him at a different location on the border than where he had planned to meet the family friend. Changing sponsors added stress to Facundo's journey - and caused him to change his route mid-journey, Escamilla García said.

Some of the migrant minors who were interviewed calculated that they had a better chance of remaining in the United States if they arrived at the border alone, and so separated from family members during their journey through Mexico.

For example, Junior, a 17-year-old from Guatemala, decided to separate from his two adult brothers at a city on the U.S.-Mexico border after realizing that he could cross more easily as a UAC, Escamilla García said.

"These decisions, all made by vulnerable young people as they are traveling across Mexico toward uncertainty on the U.S. border, demonstrate that migrant minors have agency," he said. "They're not naïve. They react to what they learn and change plans due to legal considerations based on their knowledge of U.S. immigration law."

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