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94–466 PDF 2015

S. HRG. 113–645 

DANGEROUS PASSAGE: CENTRAL 

AMERICA IN CRISIS AND THE EXODUS 

OF UNACCOMPANIED MINORS 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS 

UNITED STATES SENATE 

ONE HUNDRED THIRTEENTH CONGRESS 

SECOND SESSION 

JULY 17, 2014 

Printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Relations 

( 

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/ 

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS

ROBERT MENENDEZ, New Jersey, Chairman

BARBARA BOXER, California 

BENJAMIN L. CARDIN, Maryland 

JEANNE SHAHEEN, New Hampshire 

CHRISTOPHER A. COONS, Delaware 

RICHARD J. DURBIN, Illinois 

TOM UDALL, New Mexico 

CHRISTOPHER MURPHY, Connecticut 

TIM KAINE, Virginia 

EDWARD J. MARKEY, Massachusetts 

BOB CORKER, Tennessee 

JAMES E. RISCH, Idaho 

MARCO RUBIO, Florida 

RON JOHNSON, Wisconsin 

JEFF FLAKE, Arizona 

JOHN McCAIN, Arizona 

JOHN BARRASSO, Wyoming 

RAND PAUL, Kentucky 

DANIEL E. O’BRIEN, Staff Director

LESTER E. MUNSON III, Republican Staff Director

(II)

C O N T E N T S 

Page 

Arnson, Cynthia, director, Latin America Program, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington, DC ................................................. 48 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 49 

Corker, Hon. Bob, U.S. Senator from Tennessee .................................................. 3 

Johnson, Stephen, regional director, latin America and the Caribbean, International Republican Institute, Washington, DC ............................................... 54 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 55 

Menendez, Hon. Robert, U.S. Senator from New Jersey ...................................... 1 

Nazario, Sonia, author, Enrique’s Journey, journalist, KIND board member, 

Washington, DC ................................................................................................... 44 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 46 

‘‘Child Migrants, Alone in Court,’’ by Sonia Nazario, New York Times, 

April 10, 2013 ................................................................................................ 74 

‘‘The Children of the Drug Wars—A Refugee Crisis, Not an Immigration 

Crisis,’’ by Sonia Nazario, New York Times, Sunday Review/Opinion, 

July 11, 2014 ................................................................................................. 76 

Shannon, Jr., Hon. Thomas A., Counselor of the Department, U.S. Department of State, Washington, DC .......................................................................... 5 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 7 

Responses of Ambassador Thomas Shannon to questions submitted by 

Senator Robert Menendez ............................................................................ 66 

Responses of Ambassador Thomas Shannon to questions submitted by 

Senator Tom Udall ........................................................................................ 70 

Responses of Ambassador Thomas Shannon to questions submitted by 

Senator John Barrasso ................................................................................. 71 

Swartz, Bruce, Deputy Assistant Attorney General, Criminal Division, U.S. 

Department of Justice, Washington, DC ............................................................ 10 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 12 

ADDITIONAL MATERIAL SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD

Statement submitted by AFL–CIO President Richard Trumka .......................... 74 

Eligibility for Deferred Action, U.S. Department of Homeland Security ............ 80 

Few Children Are Deported, by Laura Meckler and Ana Compoy, Wall Street 

Journal, July 11, 2014 ......................................................................................... 81 

Number of Aliens Removed or Returned During the Bush and Obama Administrations ............................................................................................................... 83 

Statement submitted by Jana Mason, Senior Advisor for Government Relations, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees .................................. 84 

(III)

(1) 

DANGEROUS PASSAGE: CENTRAL 

AMERICA IN CRISIS AND THE EXODUS 

OF UNACCOMPANIED MINORS 

THURSDAY, JULY 17, 2014 

U.S. SENATE, 

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS, 

Washington, DC. 

The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:05 a.m., in room 

SD–419, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Robert Menendez 

(chairman of the committee) presiding. 

Present: Senators Menendez, Boxer, Cardin, Durbin, Murphy, 

Kaine, Corker, Risch, Rubio, Johnson, Flake, McCain, and 

Barrasso. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. ROBERT MENENDEZ, 

U.S. SENATOR FROM NEW JERSEY 

The CHAIRMAN. Good morning. This hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee will come to order. 

We are here today because we have a humanitarian crisis on our 

southern border—now a refugee crisis—which I would argue requires an emergency response domestically and the urgent recalibration of our foreign policy. Just as important that we address 

this refugee crisis, in my view, it is equally important that we do 

not rush to change our laws in a way that would strip these children of their rights to due process. 

In dealing with this crisis, it is imperative that we understand 

its root causes and why it is not about America putting out a welcome mat. It is about a desperate effort by desperate parents to do 

what any parent would do to protect their child from violence and 

the threat of death. 

We have with us two panels of experts who will help us fully understand the factors that have driven nearly 60,000 unaccompanied 

children, in the past 5 months alone, to flee their countries and 

seek refuge in the United States. 

This past weekend, in a piece in the New York Times by Pulitzer 

Prize-winning author Sonia Nazario—who is on our second panel 

today—wrote about, among others, Cristian Omar Reyes, a sixthgrader. His father was murdered by gangs while working as a security guard. Three people he knows were murdered this year, four 

others were gunned down on a corner near his house in the first 

2 weeks of the year. A girl his age was beaten, had a hole cut in 

her throat, her body left in a ravine across from his house. Cristian 

said, ‘‘It is time to leave.’’ 

2 

Or Carlos Baquedano, a 14-year-old who worked in a dump, picking scrap metal when he was a boy, making a dollar or two a day. 

When he was 9 years old, he barely escaped two drug traffickers 

who were trying to rape him. When he was 10, the drug traffickers 

pressured him to try drugs and join a gang. He has known eight 

people who were murdered, three killed in front of him. In one 

case, he watched as two hitmen brazenly shot two young brothers, 

execution-style. 

These stories are the tragic stories of life-changing experiences 

that too many children face in Central America every day, tens of 

thousands of children like Cristian and Carlos, whose stories are 

unknown, but no less tragic. 

For me, as someone who has closely followed Latin America for 

decades, the current crisis in Central America is no less shocking 

than for anyone else, but it does not come as a complete surprise. 

At the end of the civil wars that raged across Central America in 

the 1980s and 1990s, we did not pay enough attention, after the 

wars, to the region. We did not remain sufficiently engaged with 

our Central American neighbors. We did not work closely enough 

with them to address the structural problems of social and economic development or the societal violence that is fueling today’s 

crisis. 

I have complained strongly and argued forcefully that the years 

of cuts to the region would come at our own peril. Besides the deep 

poverty, we have enormous challenges in Central America, where 

we have the confluence of major drug trafficking as a via to the 

United States, where we have gangs that have dramatically increased in El Salvador from 600 to 40,000; then, of course, human 

traffickers, who take advantage of those set of circumstances. And 

the efforts that we failed to take end up now with the crisis on our 

southern border. 

Year after year, when we have reviewed budgets of this and past 

administrations, I have said that our constant cuts to Latin America and Central America will come at a price. And, unfortunately, 

in part, we are seeing that price today. So, we are going to spend 

$3.4 billion to deal with the consequences of the causes in Central 

America, but we will deal luckily—luckily, because we have only 

spent $110 million in five Central American countries under this 

proposal, with $300 million to deal with the core issues of citizen 

security, of combating the traffickers, of combating the drug cartels, of combating the gangs; $300 million–$3.4 billion. It would 

seem to me that, at some point, we will focus on the core problems 

so that we do not have the consequences in our country of the challenges of the deep issues that are facing Central America as it relates to citizen security. 

Although this hearing is about root causes and how we might 

deal with it, let me just take the moment, in personal privilege, of 

saying I oppose the changing of the existing law. There is a reason 

why that law was passed. It was passed to say that noncontiguous 

nations—if you are fleeing 2,000 miles to try to come to the United 

States, there may be a greater probability that you have a real case 

to be made for asylum, because you have a credible fear of the loss 

of your life, which, under our law, as I hear those who advocate for 

the rule of law—I agree—under our law, is very clear. 

3 

Now, if you flee 2,000 miles and you were told by the gangs, 

‘‘Join or die,’’ if you are raped and you flee 2,000 miles not to ever 

experience that tragic and traumatic set of circumstances, you do 

not come with anything but the clothing on your back. And when 

you get here to the United States, you are going to need a reasonable period of time to be able to produce the facts to make that 

case. That does not come with you. 

And so, I understand the desire to accelerate the process, but accelerating without due process is not acceptable. I believe the law 

presently has a series of provisions in it that would give the administration the wherewithal to accelerate, but with due process. 

So, I support the efforts for the resources that are necessary to 

meet the challenge. But, by the same token, those who just have 

a different view about what this law was intended to do, which 

passed with broad bipartisan support in both houses of the Congress and signed by a Republican President, is not something that 

I, personally, can accept. 

Finally, I hope we will hear our panelists’ views on the root 

causes of the problem, more broadly, the short- and long-term 

strategies that will strengthen governance and the rule of law in 

these countries, restore public confidence in the affected justice systems and civilian police forces that dismantles the human smuggling networks bringing these children to our border, making sure 

that children and families deported from the United States—and 

there will be many under the existing law who will be deported, 

who will not have proven a credible case—receive sufficient attention and support when they arrive home, and how we can lay a 

strong foundation so that we can have citizen security in Central 

America so that we will not face the consequences and they will 

face a more prosperous future. 

And, with that, I would like to recognize the distinguished ranking member, Senator Corker. 

STATEMENT OF HON. BOB CORKER, 

U.S. SENATOR FROM TENNESSEE 

Senator CORKER. Mr. Chairman, I want to thank you for having 

this hearing. And I know this is an issue that you feel very passionate about. 

I was glad to join you in the Senate-passed immigration bill. It 

was not a perfect bill, as any bill with 68 people supporting it is. 

Certainly, the immigration bill we passed out of the Senate, I am 

sure, can be improved, but I really do believe that the type of thing 

we are dealing with on the border now cries out for us, as a Congress, to deal with immigration reform. And I do hope that, at 

some point, we will do that. 

Now, you stressed some things in your opening statement, and 

I am going to stress some differing things in my opening statement. 

And my guess is that there are multiple veins of reasons as to why 

we are having this problem on the border. And it is my hope that, 

over the course of the next 2 or 3 weeks, that we will take into account all of those factors and put something in place that does 

solve this problem. 

4 

So, I want to thank you for calling the hearing. I want to thank 

the witnesses for being here today and sharing their wisdom with 

us. 

And, as I mentioned, I hope we will be able to establish a common understanding of the current and recent past economic and security situations in Central America that are driving this. I hope 

we will identify what Mexico and Central American countries are 

being asked to do to address the flow of unaccompanied minors 

across their borders. And, finally, I hope we can identify the administration’s strategic priorities for engaging Central American leaders in taking responsibility for addressing the region’s problems in 

order to secure sustained economic growth. 

The immediate problem is at our borders, and it is our government’s immediate responsibility to ensure the integrity of our borders. The ongoing migration crisis involving unaccompanied children is pushing our Border Patrol and Human Services personnel 

beyond their capacity to cope. The flow of unaccompanied children 

started to spike in 2012. Unlike in the past—and I think this is 

very important—when migrants sought to evade U.S. authorities, 

these migrants are turning themselves in, because they know they 

will not be immediately returned. This is a real change in the way 

the behavior is at the border. And I think it is something that we 

should focus on, in addition to the comments the Chairman made. 

Lawlessness and gang-related violence that targets the young 

certainly makes them want to leave Central America. The hope of 

joining family or getting an education and a better life are also 

powerful incentives to leave. But, levels of violence and lawlessness 

across Central America really are nothing new. Nothing much has 

changed in that regard. And yet, we have this huge influx that is 

occurring. 

Something else is clearly at play, here. Word of mouth and local 

news reports have spread about children being cared for by U.S. 

authorities, being connected with family already here, and being allowed to stay. A significant pull factor has developed, due to both 

the unintended consequences of current U.S. law, as well as the actual and perceived enforcement policies of the administration. It is 

highly likely that human traffickers are marketing this new way 

to get into the United States, which may also help account for the 

spike. United States, Mexican, Central American law enforcement 

efforts have been focused on counternarcotics operations and not 

this phenomenon. 

Post-9/11, U.S. attention was understandably focused elsewhere 

in the world, but we cannot afford to ignore the state of affairs in 

Central America. This migration crisis may well pass, but it will 

recur in one form or another. It calls attention to the need for the 

United States to craft and implement appropriate immigration policies to account for the clear unintended consequences of current 

law and its application by the administration, but also a proactive 

strategy to engage Central American leaders in taking responsibility for addressing the region’s problems in order to secure sustained economic growth. Stabilizing the region is in the U.S. national interest. Moreover, as Mexico itself increasingly becomes a 

destination country for migrants, the strategy can and should be a 

regional partnership. 

5 

So, with that, Mr. Chairman, thank you again. I look forward to 

the testimony and, hopefully, at least on this issue, a solution 

sometime soon in the United States Senate and Congress. 

Thank you. 

The CHAIRMAN. Well, thank you, Senator Corker. I do agree with 

you that, if the broad bipartisan immigration reform that had 

passed the United States Senate a year ago had been even taken 

up by the House of Representatives, that, while I will not say we 

would not have this problem, because root causes still exist, we 

would be better able to deal with the challenge, because the 

amendment that you authored with Senator Johanns ultimately 

dealt with border enforcement, trafficking, and a series of other 

critical issues that would have been helpful to us today. So, I appreciate your comments. 

Let me introduce our first panel: Thomas Shannon, the Counselor at the State Department—Ambassador Shannon has a long 

history in the hemisphere and knows very well some of these 

issues; and Bruce Swartz, the Deputy Assistant Attorney General 

for the Criminal Division of the Department of Justice. 

We appreciate both of you being here. Let me advise you both 

that your full statements will be included in the record, without objection. I would ask you to summarize them in about 5 minutes or 

so, so that we can get into a Q&A. 

With that, we will start with you, Ambassador Shannon. 

STATEMENT OF HON. THOMAS A. SHANNON, JR., COUNSELOR 

OF THE DEPARTMENT, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE, WASHINGTON, DC 

Ambassador SHANNON. Mr. Chairman, Senator Corker, distinguished members of the committee, thank you for this opportunity 

to testify today. It is an honor to appear before you with my distinguished colleague from the Department of Justice, Bruce Swartz. 

If I might, I would also like to thank you, Mr. Chairman, and 

you, Senator Corker, for the tremendous work that you and your 

committee have done in moving ahead ambassadorial nominations. 

The recent confirmation of Jim Nealon as our Ambassador to Honduras was an important step forward in the region, enhanced our 

diplomatic presence. So, thank you very much for the tremendous 

effort you both have made and your committee has made. 

I am grateful for the opportunity to address the foreign policy 

implications and consequences of the surge in unaccompanied children along our southwest border. In my written testimony, I lay 

out our understanding of the challenge we face on our southwest 

border, the strategy we have devised to address it, our diplomatic 

engagement up to this point in regard to that challenge, and why 

quick approval of the President’s supplemental budget request is 

important and necessary. 

As we consider the challenges posed by this migration of unaccompanied children, I would like to note the following. 

First, migration by unaccompanied children is not necessarily a 

new phenomenon along the frontier. What distinguishes this migration, however, and really what makes it unprecedented, is its 

size and its composition, as both the chairman and the ranking 

member have noted. What was historically a largely Mexican pheVerDate Nov 24 2008 11:29 May 15, 2015 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00009 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 S:\FULL COMMITTEE\HEARING FILES\113TH CONGRESS, 2ND SESSION\2014 ISSUE H
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nomenon is now a Central American phenomenon, and, in fact, it 

is concentrated on three countries, or three source countries: Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. The implication, here, of 

course, is that the flip in the source countries of these unaccompanied children means that something dramatic is happening in 

these three countries and something is driving this migration. 

And, while the motives behind the migration are mixed, many 

being driven by traditional factors, such as family reunification and 

economic opportunity, underlying much of the migration is a fear 

of violence caused by criminal gangs. In other words, there is a significant push factor, here, for the migration coming from Central 

America and from these three countries. But, at the same time, as 

has been noted, this push factor is being exploited by traffickers 

whose understanding of U.S. law and U.S. practice has allowed 

them to market a certain approach to bringing unaccompanied children to the border, especially the idea of taking them only to the 

border and then turning them over to U.S. authorities, something 

which is new. 

The third point I would like to make is that the migration is regional. While much of it is directed toward the United States, the 

impact is really being felt throughout the region. The U.N. High 

Commission on Refugees has registered a 400-percent increase in 

asylum requests in neighboring countries, which, from our point of 

view, means that, while most of the children are heading to the 

United States, largely because they have family already in the 

United States or networks of migration that they can plug into, 

those who, for whatever reason, are not going to the United States 

are still fleeing. They are just fleeing to other countries in the region. 

And fourth, as we devise a response, we know that our approach 

has to be regional, that it has to involve the source and the transit 

countries, but it also has to address those affected by this migration. In other words, we cannot solve this problem alone. We need 

to build partnerships. 

And again, I just came from Mexico. I was down on the Mexican 

frontier with Guatemala. And what is striking about this migration 

is that Mexico is now not only a source and a transit country of 

migration, but it is also a destination country, since many migrants 

are staying in Mexico, which means that Mexico is experiencing 

many of the problems that we have been experiencing over time 

with migration, and which means that we have a basis for a common understanding and approach on migration issues. But, also, 

Guatemala has become a transit country, as Hondurans and Salvadorans cross Guatemala. So, the mixing of purposes and relationships among the five countries that are both source, transit, and 

destination countries actually creates new opportunities for partnership. 

And through our diplomatic engagement in the region in fairly 

short time, I believe we have, first of all, fashioned a common understanding of the problem among the United States, Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. We have created a common 

public messaging campaign to counter the marketing tactics of the 

human smugglers, which we believe is beginning to have an impact. We have established new mechanisms of cooperation on immiVerDate Nov 24 2008 11:29 May 15, 2015 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00010 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 S:\FULL COMMITTEE\HEARING FILES\113TH CONGRESS, 2ND SESSION\2014 ISSUE H
7 

gration and border security with Mexico and Guatemala, which includes Mexico’s recent announcement of a southern border initiative. And we have begun repatriations of adults with children. The 

first flight to Honduras has already happened, and we are working 

toward similar repatriations to Guatemala and El Salvador. 

As we engage with the Central Americans on the causes and 

drivers of this migration, we have an opportunity to build a comprehensive and integrated regional strategy. And the supplemental 

request of $300 million, as I have noted, is really a downpayment 

on that larger strategy. 

With that, sir, I conclude my remarks, and I look forward to your 

questions. 

[The prepared statement of Ambassador Shannon follows:] 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF AMBASSADOR THOMAS A. SHANNON

Mr. Chairman, Mr. Ranking Member, distinguished members of the committee, 

thank you for this opportunity to testify before you on the ‘‘Crisis in Central America and the Exodus of Unaccompanied Minors.’’ It is an honor to appear before you 

with my distinguished colleague from the Department of Justice. 

We are facing an acute crisis on our southern border, as tens of thousands of children leave Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador to travel through Mexico to the 

United States. Driven by a mixture of motives and circumstances, these children are 

seeking reunification with their parents, better life opportunities, and, in some 

cases, safety from violence and criminal gang activity. 

The human drama of this migration is heightened by the nefarious role of human 

smugglers. Smuggling networks exploit these children and their parents, preying on 

their desperation and hope, while exposing the children to grave dangers, abuse, 

and sometimes injury and death along a journey of more than 1 thousand miles. 

Last week, in testimony before the Senate Appropriations Committee, the Secretaries of Homeland Security and Health and Human Services laid out the dimensions of this crisis, and its impact on existing resources at the Department of 

Homeland Security, the Department of Health and Human Services, local law 

enforcement agencies, state humanitarian and disaster response teams, municipal 

and state government, and on local communities as they face an unprecedented 

surge in attempted migration to the United States by unaccompanied children, even 

as overall migration remains at historic lows. 

The President’s supplemental budget request of $3.7 billion dollars is aimed at 

addressing this crisis, especially the resource and infrastructure challenges we have 

along our southern border. The need for additional funding to meet these challenges 

is great, but it is necessary to ensure that these children, an especially vulnerable 

class of migrant, are treated in a humane and dignified fashion as we protect our 

border, enforce our laws, and meet our international obligations. 

The supplemental request for the U.S. Department of State and USAID also identifies additional funding to address the factors that are pushing children from their 

homes in Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. In tandem with existing resources 

and programs, this funding would allow us to enhance our engagement in Central 

America and fashion an integrated and comprehensive approach to the economic, 

social, and security challenges that lie behind the current migration crisis. 

In my testimony today, I would like to lay out for the committee our understanding of the crisis, the diplomatic steps we have taken so far to address the problem, the response we have received from the Central American countries and Mexico, and how we would use supplemental funding to counter the underlying causes 

of the crisis. 

THE ISSUE

Migration by unaccompanied children is not a new phenomenon. It has ebbed and 

flowed for some time. However, what has changed is the size of the migration and 

the source countries. In the past, most children migrating illegally to the United 

States were Mexican nationals. Under existing law, these children could be returned 

to Mexico through expedited removal. In 2008, we returned 34,083 unaccompanied 

(Mexican) children to Mexican authorities. Vigorous enforcement of our laws, new 

forms of law enforcement partnerships with Mexico through the Merida Initiative, 

and efforts by the Government of Mexico to address the factors driving such migraVerDate Nov 24 2008 11:29 May 15, 2015 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00011 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 S:\FULL COMMITTEE\HEARING FILES\113TH CONGRESS, 2ND SESSION\2014 ISSUE H
8 

tion helped reduce by half the number of unaccompanied children from Mexico who 

were apprehended attempting to enter the United States. 

As you are well aware, this decline has been offset by a surge in unaccompanied 

children migrating from Central America. While we have witnessed an increase in 

such migrants from Central America over the past several years, more than 50,000 

unaccompanied children from Central America have been apprehended along our 

southwest border this fiscal year. Of these migrants, nearly three-quarters are 

males between the ages of 15 and 17. 

Efforts by the U.S. Government, the United Nations High Commission of Refugees, and NGOs to understand the drivers of this migration and information collected in interviews conducted by Customs and Border Protection officials highlight 

the mixed motives behind this surge in Central American migration. For the most 

part, these children have abandoned their homes for a complex set of motives that 

combine a desire to be with their parents and pursue a life of greater opportunity 

and wider possibility. Underlying some of this migration is a fear of violence in their 

home communities, and a fear that criminal gangs will either forcibly recruit or 

harm them. 

In short, this migration trend is the product of economic and social conditions in 

Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala. A combination of poverty, ineffective public 

institutions, and crime have combined to push these children from their homes and 

to begin an arduous and dangerous journey. 

While the United States has been the primary destination of these migrants, 

largely because family members are already here, the impact of the migration has 

been felt throughout the region. The United Nations High Commission on Refugees 

has identified a more than 400-percent increase in asylum requests made by unaccompanied children from Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador in neighboring 

countries. 

To address the challenge posed by the migration of unaccompanied children, we 

have fashioned a five-part strategy designed to stem the flow of migrants, screen 

them properly for international protection concerns, and then begin timely repatriation. This strategy consists of: 

—One: Establishing a common understanding of what is happening and why between the United States, the three source countries—Guatemala, Honduras, and 

El Salvador—and the major transit country, Mexico. 

—Two: Fashioning a common public messaging campaign to deter migration, especially by children. This campaign highlights the dangers of migration, but also 

counters misinformation of smugglers seeking clients. 

—Three: Improving the ability of Mexico and Guatemala to interdict migrants before they cross into Mexico and enter the established smuggling routes that move 

the migrants to our border. 

—Four: Enhancing the capacity of Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador to receive 

and reintegrate repatriated migrants to break the cycle of migration and discourage further efforts at migration. 

—Five: Addressing the underlying causes of migration of unaccompanied children 

by focusing additional resources on economic and social development, and enhancing our citizen security programs to reduce violence, attack criminal gang structures, and reach out to at-risk youth. 

This cooperative effort is defined by collaboration between the United States, 

Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. It is a new approach to address 

migration issues that reflects the ties and common interests created among our 

countries by demographics, trade relations, and increased security cooperation. 

So far, our diplomatic outreach has created a common understanding of the problem of migration by unaccompanied minors and the responsibility of all the countries to address it. President Obama’s outreach to Mexican President Enrique Pena 

Nieto; Vice-President Biden’s trip to Guatemala to meet with the leaders of Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras; Secretary Kerry’s meeting with these leaders in 

Panama; DHS Secretary Johnson’s trip to Guatemala to meet with President Perez 

Molina; Under Secretary of State Sarah Sewall’s trip to Honduras; and my own 

engagement with the Foreign Ministers of Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, and 

Mexico were all part of intense engagement over the last several weeks. 

Our engagement has allowed us to fashion a common public message that has 

received support from the highest levels of government in Guatemala, Honduras, 

and El Salvador. For example, the visits of the First Ladies of these countries to 

the southern border to meet with unaccompanied children, and their subsequent 

public statements urging their compatriots not to send their children north or expose them to smugglers have echoed powerfully in their counties. Combined with 

public messaging campaigns by our Embassies, the governments of these countries 

9 

and Mexico, we have helped create a new and dynamic debate about illegal migration that undermines efforts by smugglers to entice young people into migration 

through misinformation about the risks of the journey and the benefits they will 

supposedly receive in the United States. 

The July 7 announcement of Mexican President Pena Nieto of a new Mexican 

southern border strategy was a welcome step towards improving Mexico’s ability to 

exercise greater control along its border with Guatemala and Belize. Announced in 

the presence of the Guatemalan President, this initiative is a manifestation of a new 

willingness to work together along their common border. To match this level of cooperation, we are working to provide support to Mexico’s southern border initiative 

and intend to provide $86 million in existing International Narcotics Control and 

Law Enforcement (INCLE) funds, and we are working with Guatemala to improve 

its border controls, with special focus on building joint task forces that link all agencies with responsibility for border control. On July 15, the Government of Mexico 

named a coordinator for its Southern Border Initiative. Senator Humberto Mayans 

Cabral, head of the Senate’s Southern Border Commission, will act as a ‘‘czar’’ to 

oversee and direct the Mexican Government’s efforts to stem illegal migration across 

its southern border. 

In regard to repatriation and reintegration, Vice President Biden announced during his trip to Guatemala $9.6 million to improve the ability of the source countries 

to increase the number of repatriated migrants they can receive and assist in their 

reintegration. On July 9, DHS Secretary Johnson signed two memorandums of cooperation with the Guatemala counterpart. The first focuses on enhancing cooperation on immigration, border security, and information-sharing. The second provides 

a process to share information on Guatemalan nationals repatriated to Guatemala. 

On July 14, USAID provided approval to the International Organization for Migration to commence this work. On July 14, Honduras received a repatriation flight of 

adults with children recently apprehended at the Southwest border. 

Our work in Mexico through the Merida Initiative, and in Central America 

through the Central America Regional Security Initiative (CARSI), has allowed us 

to build the relationships, understanding, and capacity to help the Central American 

source countries address underlying causes of migration by unaccompanied children. 

Our development assistance work conducted by USAID has also allowed us to build 

assistance partnerships that can be turned to helping our partner countries address 

the economic and social development issues that also contribute to migration. 

KEEPING OUR STRATEGIC FOCUS

Our assistance to the seven countries of the region currently falls under the 

umbrella of CARSI. Since 2008, Congress has appropriated $642 million on programs that have been predicated on the view that establishing a secure environment and functional law enforcement institutions is the first and essential step in 

creating conditions for investment and economic growth. We know thanks to a 

recent independent evaluation by Vanderbilt University that USAID’s work with 

at-risk youth in select municipalities is highly successful in reducing crime and 

increasing the reporting of it. Likewise, the Department of State’s Bureau of 

International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs has demonstrated impressive 

results with its Model Police Precinct program in El Salvador and Guatemala. Still, 

those and other successful U.S. programs are relatively small in scale and should 

be scaled up with the committed involvement of the countries concerned. 

We have learned a lot since CARSI began in 2008, and we now seek to build on 

those experiences. Specifically, we need to link our work on citizen security with our 

efforts to promote economic growth, opportunity, and job creation. Without addressing the economic and social development challenges, we cannot meet the concerns 

and aspirations of the adolescents and young adults fleeing Central America. Many 

of the new proposals in the supplemental request are intended to create the opportunity and organization that Central American economies currently lack. 

THE SUPPLEMENTAL REQUEST

The supplemental request, although focused largely on addressing resource and 

infrastructure issues along our border, also has an important component focused on 

the work I have described and designed to be a downpayment on that new strategic 

objective. The $300 million request allocates $5 million on public diplomacy and 

messaging, and $295 million in Economic Support Funds (ESF) on an initiative 

broadly grouped under the headings of prosperity, governance, and security. 

The $125 million directed toward prosperity would focus on improving economic 

opportunity and creating jobs, improving customs and border controls to enhance 

10 

revenue collection and economic integration, and investing in energy to reduce the 

cost and improve access to energy as a driver of economic growth and investment. 

The $70 million requested for governance would focus on improving public sector 

management, fiscal reform, and strengthening the independence, transparency, and 

accountability of the judiciaries in Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. The purpose of these funds would be to promote rule of law, attack corruption, and enhance 

the efficiency and efficacy of government. 

The $100 million requested for security would focus on expanding communitybased programs to reduce youth crime and violence, expand national police capacity, 

attack gangs and transnational organized crime, promote prison reform, and 

enhance migrant repatriation capacity. These funds would enhance our work with 

partners to expand and nationalize our citizen security efforts and address the violence that is one of the principal drivers of migration. 

We believe this request is reasonable and necessary. It builds on work we are 

already doing in Central America, takes advantage of existing expertise and experience, and expands our ability to encourage Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador 

to work with us closely on an issue of compelling human drama and national 

interest. 

Moving forward we hope to work with Congress to broaden the scope of our efforts 

and deepen our engagement with Central America. We must build a new, comprehensive, and collaborative approach with Central America and Mexico to problems that have an immediate manifestation in migration, but underlie the larger 

development and security challenges facing our closest neighbors. By working to 

meet the challenge of illegal migration of unaccompanied children to the United 

States, we will be advancing broader interests in the region and giving substance 

to our vision of an Americas where democracy and markets deliver economic and 

social development. 

I thank you for the opportunity to discuss the crisis of unaccompanied children 

with you and look forward to your questions. 

The CHAIRMAN. General Swartz. 

STATEMENT OF BRUCE SWARTZ, DEPUTY ASSISTANT ATTORNEY GENERAL, CRIMINAL DIVISION, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF 

JUSTICE, WASHINGTON, DC 

Mr. SWARTZ. Chairman Menendez, Senator Corker, members of 

the committee, thank you for this opportunity to discuss, today, the 

Department of Justice’s law enforcement response to the problem 

of unaccompanied children crossing illegally into the United States. 

The Department of Justice is, of course, bringing the full range 

of its authorities to bear on this problem; in particular, its immigration authorities. But, at the same time, we are also focusing our 

criminal justice authorities. And that response takes two forms: 

first, our own investigations and prosecutions within the United 

States; and, second, our work overseas to help build the law enforcement capacity of our partners in the source countries from 

which these children are coming. 

Let me turn, first, to our own law enforcement investigations and 

prosecutions. Our strategy in this regard has three prongs: it attacks the smugglers, the criminal gangs in the home countries of 

these individuals that prey upon them, and the cartels that exploit 

and profit upon the smuggling of these children through the territories they control. 

With regard to our smuggling work, we build on a long history 

of successful prosecution of smuggling organizations. We have done 

literally thousands of these cases, including complex international 

criminal smuggling groups. But, as Senator Corker has noted 

today, this presents a new type of smuggling and a new, more difficult issue, from a law enforcement perspective, since the smugglers do not have to cross the border, since the children are being 

11 

encouraged simply to present themselves, and since our intelligence 

suggests that many of these smugglers are not operating in largescale organizations, but, rather, in small groups. Nonetheless, we 

are committed to developing strategies to attack these smugglers 

through investigation and prosecution. And, to that end, Deputy 

Attorney General Cole met, last week, with U.S. attorneys on our 

southern border to push forward our strategic thinking in that regard. 

The second prong, as I mentioned, is our attack on the criminal 

gangs that prey on these children in their home countries and help 

spur their migration to the United States. In this context, our organized crime and gang section within the Department of Justice aggressively targets the leadership of MS-13, the 18th Street Gang, 

and other transnational criminal gangs that attack not only these 

children and their family members in those countries, but also pose 

a threat to the United States. And we have continued, and will continue, to bring such cases. 

The third prong, as I mentioned, is our attack on the cartels. The 

cartels, our intelligence suggests, profit by taxing these individuals, 

these children as they come through their territories, and by sometimes exploiting them as couriers or otherwise. Here, too, we, of 

course, have a strategy that looks not only at the high-value targets in these cartels, but also the full range of the enterprise. We 

also have disruption activities, including one last month led by 

DEA, bringing together Central American countries, that seek to 

stop the smuggling of all contraband. 

But, as has been noted, however, we cannot do this alone. And 

so, the second part of our criminal justice response is working to 

build the capacity of the countries from which these children are 

coming. And in that regard, we have both a short-term and a longterm goal. The short-term goal is to build the kind of trusted partners, vetted units, within these countries that we can work with as 

our own law enforcement partners and that can also address the 

most serious violent crimes within those countries. The FBI, with 

State Department funding, has created transnational antigang 

units. DEA has created special investigative units. Homeland Security also has vetted units. These units create an important nucleus 

for prosecuting these cases within the countries with trusted prosecutors and police counterparts, and they help protect U.S. citizens, 

as well, by doing so. 

Our longer range strategy is to build the capacity of these countries across the criminal justice system, from investigations to prosecutions to prisons. And, in that context, we have two organizations 

within the Department of Justice dedicated to that task, our Overseas Prosecutorial Development Office, OPDAT, and our Criminal 

Justice Development Office, ICITAP. Our strategy in both of those 

cases is, with State Department support, to place, on a long-term 

basis, Federal prosecutors and senior law enforcement experts in 

those countries to work with their counterparts and to think 

through a systemic change to their justice systems. 

Here, too, we have had success in these countries. We have seen 

this work. We have seen it work in Colombia. We have seen it work 

in the Balkans. We have seen it work around the world. And thus, 

the Department of Justice strongly supports the supplemental 

12 

funding request, here, which, among other things, would provide $7 

million to allow the Department of Justice to increase its placement of prosecutors and of senior law enforcement experts to work 

with their counterparts in these source countries, and to help reduce the violence that serves as one of the drivers for the crisis 

that we face today. 

Thank you. I look forward to your questions. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Swartz follows:] 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF BRUCE SWARTZ

Good afternoon, Chairman Menendez, Ranking Member Corker, and members of 

the committee. Thank you for the opportunity to appear before the committee today 

to discuss the Department of Justice’s law enforcement efforts to address the 

humanitarian challenge created by unaccompanied children who lack lawful status 

that are crossing into the United States through our southern border with Mexico. 

I also particularly want to thank the Chair for holding this hearing and for his continued leadership on this important issue. 

As Attorney General Holder has noted, how we address the issues associated with 

unaccompanied children goes to the core of who we are as a nation. The Department 

of Justice is, therefore, committed to working with our interagency and international partners to find humane, durable solutions to this pressing problem. My 

colleagues from the Department of Justice have testified in other hearings regarding 

the steps that the Department is taking to address this problem from an immigration law perspective. Among other steps, the Department is increasing the number 

of immigration judges assigned to conduct hearings and prioritizing adjudication of 

cases that fall into the following four groups: unaccompanied children; families in 

detention; families released on ‘‘alternatives to detention’’; and other detained cases. 

At today’s hearing, however, I will focus on the Justice Department’s law enforcement steps we are taking to address this issue. Our actions in this regard fall into 

two categories: (1) investigation and prosecution of those who are facilitating the 

illegal entry of unaccompanied children into the United States and those who are 

preying upon those children; and (2) work with our foreign counterparts to help 

build their capacity to address the crime and violence that can serve as potential 

catalysts for the flow of these children to the United States. 

INVESTIGATIONS AND PROSECUTIONS

The Department of Justice has a long history of investigating and prosecuting 

human smugglers. Recent cases include that of Joel Mazariegos-Soto, a leader of a 

human smuggling organization, who was prosecuted in the District of Arizona, and 

sentenced to 60 months in prison for his role in operating an illegal human smuggling organization. Mazariegos-Soto and his associates utilized multiple stash 

houses in the Phoenix area, including one—discovered by agents with the U.S. 

Immigration and Customs Enforcement Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) in 

October 2012—containing over 27 unauthorized immigrants, and another—found in 

January 2013—with over 40 unauthorized immigrants. 

Similarly, in the Southern District of Texas, an individual named Lenyn Acosta 

was recently prosecuted and sentenced to 97 months in federal prison for his role 

in a conspiracy to transport or harbor unauthorized immigrants present in the country. Acosta was the organizer and leader of a conspiracy involving hundreds of undocumented immigrants, including juveniles. He also caused serious bodily injury to 

a female unauthorized immigrant he harbored by sexually assaulting her, demonstrating the sort of dangers faced by those persons being smuggled into the 

United States. 

The Department of Justice also recently secured the extradition from Morocco of 

an individual named Habtom Merhay, a national of Eritrea and a citizen of the 

United Kingdom, who will now stand trial in Washington, DC, for human smuggling 

charges related to his alleged role in smuggling primarily Eritrean and Ethiopian 

undocumented migrants from the Middle East, through South and Central America 

and Mexico into the United States. 

These cases are just a few examples but are emblematic of the work of federal 

prosecutors and law enforcement agents who enforce our Nation’s immigration laws. 

But we now face a new type of human smuggling. In contrast to the typical smuggling case, there is no effort to hide these children from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officials stationed along the borders. To the contrary, the 

smugglers of these children essentially have to do nothing more than transport 

13 

them to the vicinity of the border and instruct them to approach the CBP. Thus, 

the smuggler need never enter the U.S., thereby limiting the possibility that he or 

she will be arrested by U.S. authorities. The difficulties in effectively investigating 

and prosecuting these cases are compounded by their transnational nature. Notably, 

the majority of the planning and activity associated with these crimes occur in one 

or more foreign countries—and outside the ordinary investigative reach of U.S. authorities. Moreover, while human smuggling organizations are clearly participating 

in the movement of families and unaccompanied children to the U.S. border, there 

are also indications that a significant part of the movement of children and families 

from Central America may be unstructured, relying on informal contacts and individuals who are opportunistically assisting the migrants in return for payment. This 

makes the problem of unaccompanied children particularly difficult to attack 

through investigation and prosecution, because many of the individuals assisting 

the children may not be part of any large-scale criminal organization. 

Nonetheless, the Department of Justice is working collaboratively with the 

Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to facilitate investigations that may lead 

to prosecutions of those responsible for the illegal entry of minors into the United 

States. Among other things, we are working with our foreign counterparts to 

encourage them to target facilitators operating in their countries. 

Additionally, we are encouraging disruption strategies in Central American countries that will make cross-border smuggling—whether of drugs people, or contraband—more difficult, by targeting the cartels that may exploit the children being 

smuggled, or who may impose ‘‘taxes’’ on human smugglers who wish to use the cartels’ smuggling routes. 

The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), for instance, has led disruption 

efforts in Central America and Mexico, such as Operation Fronteras Unidas—an operation designed to detect, disrupt, and dismantle drug trafficking organizations 

(DTOs) involved in the land-based smuggling of illicit substances, precursor chemicals and bulk cash throughout Mexico and Central America. This operation was 

intended to help strengthen communication and coordination within the region and 

assist in identifying the key land-based transportation routes and methods utilized 

by the DTO’s throughout Central America and Mexico and to support ongoing investigations and prosecutions in the U.S. and Central American countries. 

During May 2014, Operation Fronteras Unidas was supported by personnel from 

Mexico and seven Central American countries. This included 523 host nation personnel who focused resources at 24 checkpoints throughout the region. As a result, 

Operation Fronteras Unidas yielded seizures of 1,512 kilograms of cocaine; 516 

pounds of marijuana; 367 grams of crack cocaine; $334,585 in cash; 1 assault rifle, 

1 handgun and 1 grenade; 54 drug-related arrests and 5 arrests on human smuggling charges during the 10 day action. Such successful initiatives demonstrate that 

international collaboration against complex transnational issues is possible. 

The Department of Justice also continues to prosecute gang-related crimes related 

to Central America, thus working to address one of the root causes of the instability 

in these countries that helps drive this crisis. Since 2007, the Justice Department’s 

Organized Crime and Gang Section (OCGS), in conjunction with our U.S. Attorney 

Offices (USAOs), in cases investigated by the FBI, ATF, and ICE/HSI, has aggressively pursued transnational violent gangs headquartered in Central America. For 

example, OCGS, in conjunction with our USAOs, has prosecuted complex racketeering indictments against the national and international leadership of the notorious international street gang La Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13. OCGS and the 

USAOs, together with their law enforcement partners have successfully secured convictions for racketeering offenses, murder, kidnapping, sexual assaults, and narcotics and weapons trafficking, and have secured life sentences and, in one instance, 

the death penalty, against the worst offenders of the gang in the United States. Significantly, several of these cases have not only targeted regional or national leadership of MS-13, but also have included indictments of the gang’s leaders in El Salvador who have orchestrated criminal conduct in the United States from their jail 

cells in El Salvador. 

At the same time, we are continuing to consider alternative investigative and 

prosecutorial strategies. The Department is redoubling its efforts to work with Mexican and Central American authorities to identify and apprehend smugglers who are 

aiding unaccompanied children in crossing the United States border. The Deputy 

Attorney General met last week with the five U.S. attorneys whose districts lie on 

our Southern Border to discuss strategies for disrupting and dismantling criminal 

organizations that smuggle migrants into the United States. 

14 

CAPACITY BUILDING

At the same time that we are using the criminal justice process in the United 

States to address the problem of unaccompanied children crossing our southern border, we are also committed to helping build the capacity of our foreign counterparts 

to address the violence—particularly the gang violence—that can serve to encourage 

migration. This violence can be addressed by a sustained commitment to law 

enforcement reform by the Central American countries from which these minors are 

fleeing. Where a country has made such a commitment, the Department of Justice 

has demonstrated its willingness to assist through exchanges of expertise. The 

Department of Justice, however, does not receive appropriations for overseas capacity-building. Instead, we look primarily to the U.S. Department of State and the 

U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), as the lead U.S. Government 

agencies for foreign assistance, for funding for our overseas security sector assistance work. We ask you to support the administration’s full supplemental request. 

With regard to capacity-building, the Justice Department’s main efforts are 

through our constituent law enforcement agencies—the FBI, DEA, USMS, and 

ATF—and two offices within the Department solely dedicated to overseas security 

sector work: the International Criminal Investigative Training Assistance Program 

(ICITAP) and the Office of Overseas Prosecutorial Development, Assistance and 

Training (OPDAT), both of which are located in the Criminal Division of the U.S. 

Department of Justice. Both OPDAT and ICITAP are tasked with furthering U.S. 

Government and DOJ interests abroad through programs related to the criminal 

justice system. With State Department approval and funding, OPDAT and ICITAP 

can place federal prosecutors, and senior law enforcement officers, as long-term resident advisors in countries seeking to reform their laws as well as their investigative, 

prosecutorial, and correctional services. 

Within the region, the Department currently has OPDAT prosecutorial Resident 

Legal Advisors (RLAs) in Mexico, El Salvador, and Honduras. Mexico is by far our 

most robust program. There, OPDAT and ICITAP are supporting Mexico’s decision 

to make a transition from an inquisitorial system to an accusatory one, and are 

working collaboratively with Mexican prosecutors, investigators, and forensic experts, including on specialized programs in the areas of money laundering and asset 

forfeiture, intellectual property, evidence preservation, and extraditions. ODPAT has 

also worked closely with the Government of Mexico and the U.S. Marshals Service 

on Witness Protection issues. 

In that regard, the RLA in Honduras has provided technical assistance and mentoring to Honduran police and prosecutors on complex investigations, specifically 

emphasizing the investigation of human smuggling organizations. He has worked to 

establish better communication between law enforcement and prosecutors regarding 

enforcement actions on the border, ensuring cases involving human smugglers are 

properly handled to ensure successful prosecutions; and is creating a team of human 

trafficking prosecutors and organized crime prosecutors that can respond when 

needed anywhere in Honduras on short notice. In addition, the RLA has led efforts 

to coordinate antismuggling efforts among Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala. 

Similarly, in Mexico, the TIP–RLA has worked with counterparts to focus on vulnerable minors, and on cross-border criminal conduct; this, too, provides a basis for 

enhanced antismuggling efforts. More generally, our ICITAP advisors also provide 

essential collaborative support that enhances the investigative capabilities of our 

law enforcement counterparts, including with regard to investigating smuggling 

organizations. In Mexico, ICITAP provides organizational and capacity-building support to the Federal Ministerial Police (PFM or the investigative function of the 

Attorney General’s Office). ICITAP also supports the establishment of a national 

framework for professional standards and training as well as a nationwide sustainable training system for crime scene first responders. 

In El Salvador, the State Department has charged both OPDAT and ICITAP to 

assist the Salvadoran Government to achieve economic growth by: first, reducing the 

impact of organized crime on small and medium businesses, whose contribution to 

growth is key to the economic well-being of El Salvador; second, ensuring El Salvador’s labor force is protected from crime while transiting to and from work; and 

third, ensuring that public transportation service providers serving the labor force 

are protected from crime. Through such efforts, the Department of Justice helps to 

address the violence that undercuts economic growth, and spurs immigration. 

With Department of State funding, our law enforcement agencies also have helped 

to increase capacity to address violent crime in the region. The FBI has created 

Transnational Anti-Gang (TAG) Units to combine the expertise, resources, and jurisdiction of participating agencies involved in investigating and countering 

transnational criminal gang activity in the U.S. and Central America. These 

15 

groups—headed by FBI agents who lead vetted teams of national police and prosecutors in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras—coordinate with FBI Legal 

Attache ́s assigned to those regions and with the Bureau’s International Operations 

Division. 

In the past 2 years, TAG El Salvador has located and captured two FBI top 10 

most-wanted fugitives, both of whom were gang members. These fugitives are now 

in the U.S. and are awaiting trial. TAG El Salvador is currently working on multiple MS-13 or 18th Street gang investigations tied to the following FBI Offices: 

Newark, Boston, Los Angeles, and Washington Field. In addition to gang investigations, TAG Guatemala has located and captured nine U.S. fugitives wanted for 

charges including murder, sexual assault, and financial fraud. These fugitives have 

been extradited, or are awaiting extradition, to the United States for trial. 

In addition to combating transnational gangs such as the MS-13 and 18th Street 

gangs, the TAGs assist domestic FBI and other federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies conducting gang investigations involving Salvadoran, Guatemalan, 

and Honduran nationals engaged in criminal activity within the United States. The 

TAGs also provide gang investigation training in the Central American region to the 

national police forces, as well as prison employees within the host nation. TAG 

members have also provided gang training in the U.S., as well as in Mexico and 

other Latin American countries. 

Lastly, the TAGs have been extremely successful in investigating, indicting, and 

prosecuting MS-13 and 18th Street members in each of the host countries who were 

responsible for conducting extortions and other criminal activity affecting the 

United States and/or Central American countries. 

Similarly, the DEA has formed cooperative partnerships with foreign nations to 

help them to develop more self-sufficient, effective drug law enforcement programs, 

and so to reduce violence. Since its inception in 1997, the Drug Enforcement Administration’s (DEA) Sensitive Investigative Unit (SIU) program has successfully supported host-nation vetted programs. These programs are implemented with the 

assistance of the Department of State using operations funding appropriated to 

DEA. The SIU program selects only the best host-nation law enforcement officers, 

who receive 5 weeks of basic investigative training at DEA’s training facility in 

Quantico, VA, before being assigned an in-country DEA Special Agent mentor. Once 

a member of an SIU, host country personnel become part of a select investigative 

team whose primary focus is to target the highest level criminal drug traffickers, 

DEA’s Consolidated Priority Organization Targets (CPOTs). 

The administration has proposed a supplemental funding request for FY 2014 of 

$295 million in Economic Support Funds for State and USAID to address the situation at our Southern border. Of the $295 million in Economic Support Funds for 

State and USAID, $7 million would be transferred to DOJ to support the wide range 

of DOJ programs in the region, including vetted units, Regional Legal Advisors, and 

Senior Law Enforcement Advisors. This funding will allow DOJ to assist Central 

American countries in combating transnational crime and the threat posed by criminal gangs. The aim is to address the issues that have been a factor in forcing many 

migrants to flee Central America for the United States. We ask that you support 

the administration’s request for the Department of State so that the administration 

can continue robust foreign engagement with the region and we hope that, working 

with the Department of State, we can continue and enhance our effort. 

Specifically, the funding for DOJ would provide legal and law enforcement advisors for El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras and allow the Department to 

initiate law enforcement and prosecution training programs in each of the three 

countries to build capacities to effectively handle ongoing complex investigations, 

emphasizing the investigation of human smuggling organizations; improve communication between law enforcement and prosecutors regarding enforcement actions on 

the border, particularly in cases involving human smugglers; and help create teams 

of human trafficking prosecutors and organized crime prosecutors who could 

respond when needed on short notice. 

CONCLUSION

I very much appreciate the opportunity to discuss with you the ways in which the 

Department of Justice is dedicated to addressing the many challenges associated 

with unaccompanied minors illegally entering the United States. Those challenges, 

which are shared by the numerous other federal agencies charged with enforcing 

our Nation’s immigration laws and securing our borders, can be overcome—but to 

do so will require the dedication of necessary resources. There are no quick or easy 

fixes to this problem. The Department of Justice, however, is committed to using 

the full range of investigative tools and laws available to us to enforce U.S. immiVerDate Nov 24 2008 11:29 May 15, 2015 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00019 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 S:\FULL COMMITTEE\HEARING FILES\113TH CONGRESS, 2ND SESSION\2014 ISSUE H
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gration laws and to investigate and prosecute those engaged in smuggling vulnerable children to this country. In addition, we are prepared to help provide international partners with the means to address human smuggling and issues related 

to unaccompanied minors well before those problems have reached the borders of 

the United States. 

Thank you for the opportunity to discuss the Department’s work in this area, and 

I look forward to answering any questions you might have. 

The CHAIRMAN. Well, thank you both for your testimony. Let me ask you, Ambassador Shannon. In the President’s $3.7 

billion supplemental request, less than 10 percent of the funding 

is destined to address the root causes of the current refugee crisis. 

In addition, at the same time that the supplemental comes, the administration proposed a 20-percent cut in FY15 to its Central 

American Regional Security Initiative. So, I am trying to understand how we will spend billions to deal with the consequences, but 

we are presented with a 20-percent cut in a Central American Regional Security Initiative. Can you explain to me how that makes 

the right policy sense for us? 

Ambassador SHANNON. Thank you very much for the question, 

and it is a good one, and I think it goes to the heart of the challenge we face. 

The 20-percent cut was the product of a larger budget request in 

a constrained budget environment in which we had to balance a variety of competing demands. Obviously, in light of what is happening right now, we need that 20 percent back, and we need much 

more of it. 

And the supplemental budget request is a two-part request. And, 

as you know, the largest part of it goes to DHS and HHS for law 

enforcement and for human services in relationship to this crisis. 

And it is a considerable amount of money, obviously, but it is in 

response to the immediacy of the crisis on our border, and the presence of a significant number of people on that border, and the need 

to process them and determine whether or not they have protection—— 

The CHAIRMAN. I am with you on the supplemental, although I 

might structure it a little differently. But, nonetheless, I am with 

you on the supplemental. I get it. We have a crisis, we have to deal 

with it. I said that to the President. 

But, we will have a continuing crisis if we do not begin to deal 

with the root causes, the opportunity to vet units that are both police enforcement as well as prosecutorial opportunities, if we do not 

use our intelligence integrated on the drug traffickers within the 

region, if we do not help them fight against the gangs that are 

heavily armed. 

And that is not just about being a good neighbor to Central 

America. That is in our own national security interests. Because 

where do we think the drugs are headed? Where is the demand? 

Here. Where do we think the traffickers want to take it? Here. 

Where do the gangs ultimately, in part, derive in synergy their resources? There, through that process. 

So, it is in our own national security interests. And this is what 

I have been trying to be saying for years, and I hope that we will 

see a change of course, both by the administration and by the Congress, who shares blame, because no one has been paying attention 

to what is happening in the hemisphere in a way that understands, 

17 

in our own front yard, in our own national interest. So, I hope that 

this becomes a defining and galvanizing moment for us to be thinking in policy in a different way. 

Now, much has been said by some quarters about the pull factor 

of such actions as deferred action. Is it not true that deferred action would not give anyone who comes now or who has come in the 

last year any access to any adjustment of status in this country? 

Ambassador SHANNON. That is my understanding, correct. 

The CHAIRMAN. Now, is it not also true that even the immigration law passed by the United States Senate that had a date of December 2011, you had to physically be in the country? That would 

not give anybody who comes subsequently any status or any eligibility or any cause of right, other than maybe through asylum, to 

come to the United States and receive the opportunity to stay. Is 

that true? 

Ambassador SHANNON. That is my understanding. 

The CHAIRMAN. Would that be true, Mr. Swartz? 

Mr. SWARTZ. Yes, Mr. Chairman, that is my understanding, as 

well. 

The CHAIRMAN. Now, you know, I look at the continuing argument that we just have pull factors, here, and people seem to be 

blind to the violence factors, but it seems to me that violence is a 

large part. I am sure that there is a universe of children who may 

have a parent here, or other relative, and want to be reunited. 

They will not have a legitimate claim, and they will ultimately be 

deported. But, it seems to me that there is a fair number of children who are ultimately fleeing violence. Because if that is not one 

of the driving factors of this crisis, why are we not seeing the same 

pull factors of children coming from other Central American countries outside of these three, and others in the region? 

Ambassador SHANNON. As we interview the children as they 

come across our border, as they are apprehended by Border Patrol—really, as they turn themselves in to Border Patrol—and as 

others interview children in other countries in the region, it is evident that, like all migration, there are mixed motives, here, as I 

note in my testimony, but an underlying theme is the violence. In 

fact, if we overlay, on maps, where many of these children are coming from, and where gang violence and drug cartel presence is the 

strongest, they largely lie one on top of the other. 

The CHAIRMAN. Now, some of my colleagues have called for cutting off all assistance to the Governments of Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras if they do not ‘‘do more.’’ And I believe that 

these governments have a responsibility. I shared that with the 

three ambassadors from those countries in a recent private meeting 

I had with them. I have shared that with some of their heads of 

state as I have moved throughout the region. But, it is important 

to point out that, in Guatemala—and correct me if I am wrong on 

these, or if you have any additional information—the First Lady of 

Guatemala launched a massive media campaign urging children 

not to migrate, and President Perez’s party in the Guatemalan 

Congress presented legislation to increase penalties and efforts to 

combat human smuggling more effectively. 

In Honduras, the government has moved one of its elite police 

units, which received training through State Department proVerDate Nov 24 2008 11:29 May 15, 2015 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00021 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 S:\FULL COMMITTEE\HEARING FILES\113TH CONGRESS, 2ND SESSION\2014 ISSUE H
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grams, to the border to turn back children seeking to flee the country. And the First Lady has also played a prominent role, in terms 

of public messaging. 

I understand that there is a new agreement signed between the 

Governments of Guatemala and Mexico with reference to the border security between their two respective countries, and that there 

is in the offing some similar agreements and decisions by the Mexican Government, in addition to those bilateral agreements, to move 

resources and to pursue an elimination of those who seek to ride 

the train of death and to look at interior enforcement. 

Is that information that I am gleaning publicly, is that correct 

information, or is it wrong? And, if it is right, is there anything 

else that I have missed that is happening? 

Ambassador SHANNON. It is correct, sir. The efforts by the Central American governments, especially the First Ladies, to work 

with us on a larger public messaging campaign to highlight the 

dangers of illegal migration northwards, especially for unaccompanied children, has been welcomed by us. And what we are being 

able to do through this public messaging campaign is change the 

dynamic of the migration debate in the region. Because, previously, 

when migration was largely men going forward to the United 

States looking for work, this was seen as something that was not 

immediately evident or important to the source countries. But, now 

that the faces of these migrants are unaccompanied children, it has 

created a political dynamic that these countries must respond to. 

And they are responding to them. And visits to our southwest border by the First Ladies of Guatemala and Honduras, and their efforts to work with their own governments to promote public messaging, has been a very important part of our larger campaign. 

Mexico has also begun to engage with us in a very helpful way, 

and its Southern Border Initiative, which is what you were referring to—it was announced by President Pena Nieto, on Mexico’s 

southern border with Guatemala, in the presence of the Guatemalan President, has also established a tiered system of interdiction that will help manage the flow of migrants across those borders, separating out the legal migrants who work in that border 

area, but then attempting to interdict illegal migrants who are 

heading north. Because, as I noted earlier, Mexico, while a transit 

country, is also becoming a destination country, and it is finding 

that many of the Central American migrants moving north are actually staying in Mexico, either because they are seeking work or 

because they are being recruited by cartels as they move through 

some of the more conflictive zones of Mexico. 

So, what we are seeing is, as we fashion a common understanding of the problem and fashion common strategies, a new opportunity for partnerships, with Mexico in particular, but also with 

Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras, that are going to put us 

in a position to better deal with this problem. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much. 

Senator Corker. 

Senator CORKER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

And thank you both for being here. 

I want to begin with the phenomenon that is occurred. We had 

a extensive debate last year on border security as part of immigraVerDate Nov 24 2008 11:29 May 15, 2015 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00022 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 S:\FULL COMMITTEE\HEARING FILES\113TH CONGRESS, 2ND SESSION\2014 ISSUE H
19 

tion reform, and one of the things that was focused on was the effectiveness of border control. And there was this whole issue of 

sign-cutting, okay, where, basically, the border control agents 

would try to determine how many people had actually come across 

the border, because we could not detect all the people who were 

coming. And, as a result of not getting to any kind of scientific, if 

you will, way of resolving that, we ended up with the border control 

amendment, that the chairman mentioned earlier, which just said 

what we were going to do. 

What has changed? I mean, the big issue with border control 

was, we did not feel like we had any idea of who was really coming 

across, because they were trying to avoid the authorities. Now all 

of a sudden, 12 months later, they are trying to turn themselves 

in to authorities. So, just tell me what has happened in the last 12 

months that has, 180 degrees, changed the behavior of people who 

are coming into our country. 

Ambassador SHANNON. Well, that is the big question, sir, and it 

is the one that we have been struggling with. And as we interview 

the migrants coming across and as we engage with our partners, 

our primary purpose is to understand the drivers and the networks 

that are moving these people. And, as you noted in your opening 

remarks, the marketing being used by smugglers has played an important role in the unaccompanied minors. 

Senator CORKER. Yes. Look, I had a nice conversation with you, 

right prior to this, and I appreciate it. I just want to know, 

though—I mean, unless we answer that question—— 

Ambassador SHANNON. Yes. 

Senator CORKER [continuing]. We are not going to—so, I got 

some of the background stuff, but—— 

Ambassador SHANNON. Right. 

Senator CORKER [continuing]. That phenomenon of people coming 

into our country and, instead of avoiding the authorities, turning 

themselves in, you have got to have some gut instinct as to what 

is driving that. What is it? 

Ambassador SHANNON. Well, the smugglers know what happens 

along the frontier when the children present themselves to Border 

Patrol officers. They know they will be taken into custody, and they 

know they will be turned over to HHS. What we have tried to highlight in our public messaging is that the process does not end 

there, that the children will then go into deportation proceedings. 

And, for those who are determined not to have a protection need, 

they will be deported. And that has been absent from the smugglers’ marketing strategy. 

But, what happens along that frontier is understood by the 

smugglers, and this is one of the reasons they have been successful 

in marketing this kind of smuggling. 

Senator CORKER. So, addressing that policy issue certainly needs 

to be a part of what we are doing. 

So, let me—Jay Johnson presented to a large group of Senators 

yesterday—I found his presentation, other than quoting my friend, 

Senator McCain, was very lucid, and I thought he did a very good 

job laying out—John, that was a joke—other than laying out, you 

know—I thought he laid out the problem very, very well. One of 

the things he talked about, though, that I think is correct, is that 

20 

four-sevenths of the people that are actually coming in are now— 

they are adults. I mean, we are focused on this children issue, but 

a big part of people who are coming in under this phenomenon are 

adults that are not accompanied by minors. Is that correct? 

Ambassador SHANNON. I am not familiar with—I mean, the 

adults coming in get removed immediately. You are—unless you 

are talking about adults coming with children. 

Senator CORKER. All right. So, then there are three categories. 

Ambassador SHANNON. Right. 

Senator CORKER. There are adults, there are adults with minors, 

and then there are minors. 

Ambassador SHANNON. Yes. 

Senator CORKER. And I know there is differing categories as to 

how we deal with those, but we have a large group of adults. We 

have got adults with minors. And what are we doing, specifically, 

with them, at present? 

Ambassador SHANNON. Obviously, DHS can answer this better 

than I, but my understanding is that adults with minors who are 

coming across—initially, we were unwilling to separate the children from the adults, so the adults were being held, put into deportation proceedings, and then released on their own recognizance. 

But, we have begun to deport adults with minors. In fact, the first 

deportation flight has gone to Honduras, either yesterday or the 

day before, and we are planning additional ones to Salvador and 

Guatemala. 

Senator CORKER. And I do not know the solution, here. I am 

seeking answers. Some people have said that one of the big problems we have with the minors is that we are, you know, putting 

them with, you know, guardians, if you will, within the country, 

that many of them are not documented; therefore, they are very 

unlikely to ever show up back in the court. And some people have 

advocated that we, instead of doing that, put these young minors 

in detention facilities and care for them there. What is your response to that? 

Ambassador SHANNON. Well, sir, again, this is a Department of 

Homeland Security and HHS issue more than it is a State Department issue. But, I would say that holding children in detention for 

long periods of time is bad for kids; and therefore, we either need 

to hasten our deportation processes and proceedings or put them 

with family. 

Senator CORKER. And so, the first deportation proceedings are occurring. 

Ambassador SHANNON. Correct. 

Senator CORKER. Is that correct? Your first—— 

Ambassador SHANNON. For adults with minors. 

Senator CORKER. For adults—— 

Ambassador SHANNON. The deportation proceedings for children 

have been ongoing over time. 

Senator CORKER. But, is there a concern—is there a concern that, 

when the children are placed with guardians or foster parents, or 

whatever our terminology is for that, and when they are undocumented, that it is very unlikely that they are going to come back 

to the courtroom to actually be adjudicated? Is there a—and sometimes I guess there are 500 days that go by—400 days, 300 days— 

21 

before that occurs, and, again, very unlikely. And so, it appears to 

me that we have a policy issue, that, while the cartels and gangs 

may be taking advantage of it, it is something that is easily taken 

advantage of. Is that correct? 

Ambassador SHANNON. Oh, without a doubt, they take advantage 

of our processes and the fact that we are a rule of law—I mean, 

a rule-of-law country and that our deportation proceedings sometimes can be lengthy. One of the purposes of the supplemental is 

to provide funding to increase the speed of those deportation proceedings. 

However, I am not sure of the exact number who actually show 

and do not show for these kinds of proceedings. But, there is a reason to show up, especially if your intent is to file a request for asylum or refugee status. In other words, if you believe you have a 

protection need, then you want to show up for these kinds of—— 

Senator CORKER. And what percentage of the young people who 

are here—what percentage of them do you think are in need of asylum protection? 

Mr. Swartz. 

Mr. SWARTZ. Senator, I think that that is a question that we are 

examining, and it will have to be developed as the facts—— 

Senator CORKER. But, you have a lot of insights as to what has 

occurred. How many of them do you think are needing asylum? 

Mr. SWARTZ. Senator, I think that is a question that we would 

have to analyze and respond to you in writing as to a percentage 

in that context, particularly as this is a developing—— 

Senator CORKER. Well, look, I am not asking for the official DOJ 

statement. I am asking you, as an expert in this area, as if you 

were having a conversation with someone, What is your sense of 

the number of young people that are coming into this country during this phenomenon that need asylum? 

Mr. SWARTZ. Again, Senator, I understand that the—— 

Senator CORKER. Mr. Swartz, you are not going to be a very good 

witness, if you will not answer questions based on your knowledge 

as an expert in this area, supplied to us by DOJ. 

Mr. SWARTZ. Well, Senator, I can speak to the—as I said at the 

outset, it is the criminal justice aspect, here, and the impetus for 

many of these children to flee. Whether the basis for their asylum 

is sufficient will have to be determined in the proceedings themselves. 

Senator CORKER. Just a range. 

Mr. SWARTZ. Senator, I am really not prepared—— 

Senator CORKER. Yes. 

Mr. SWARTZ [continuing]. At this stage, to—— 

Senator CORKER. I will tell you this, it does not give me a lot of 

faith in the public officials who are dealing with this issue if they 

do not have some kind of gut instinct as to the number of people 

who are coming into this country that might actually really need 

asylum. That does not give me a very good sense of you having a 

handle on the situation. 

Mr. SWARTZ. Senator, I will certainly talk with my colleagues in 

the Executive Office of Immigration Review to get their review and 

their views on that particular question. 

I can speak to the criminal justice aspects, here—— 

22 

Senator CORKER. Yes. 

Mr. SWARTZ [continuing]. As opposed to the immigration aspects 

to the asylum—— 

Senator CORKER. Well, can Mr. Shannon answer that question? 

Ambassador SHANNON. I do not have the figures from the—obviously, from our own government, but the U.N. High Commission on 

Refugees, in interviews that it has done, thinks that 58 percent of 

the migrants could have a protection concern. 

Senator CORKER. Yes. Good. 

Well, let me just say that, typically, when people ask for an appropriation to deal with an issue, they have a sense of the magnitude of the problem in each category that we are trying to solve. 

And so, if you are up here asking for us to solve a problem—and 

I hope we will, and I think many of the questions the chairman has 

asked are legitimate, and I hope some of mine are, and many others will ask legitimate questions—but, if you all do not really have 

a sense as to the magnitude of what we are dealing with, it is very 

unsettling to think about money coming to a problem when we do 

not understand necessarily how big the problem is, nor necessarily 

what the solutions are. 

So, I thank you for being here. I know other people have questions. And I do hope that, as a group, we will solve this problem 

in the next few weeks—put forth policies that will help solve this 

problem. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Senator Corker. 

Before I call on Senator Boxer, let me just create a framework, 

here. I know we have a lot of questions. And some of us attended 

that session yesterday, other of us belong to other committees, 

whether on Judiciary or Homeland Security, in which the appropriate officials will be best posed, particularly the Department of 

Homeland Security, to answer some of them. I invited Mr. Swartz 

here in the context of what we are doing, which is the focus of the 

hearing on Central America and how we change the dynamics of 

that, and from the Criminal Division as it relates to engaging. 

Senator CORKER. Yes. 

The CHAIRMAN. I just want to put in context that I did not ask 

the Department to come here to talk about the status of asylumseekers. I do not want anyone to feel that Mr. Swartz is not being 

forthcoming. I did not ask him to come here to answer questions 

that are not within his department’s jurisdiction. I asked him to 

come here to tell us how do we help fight crime in Central America? 

Senator CORKER. Yes. 

The CHAIRMAN. Others can continue to ask, but I just want to 

set the record—— 

Senator CORKER. If I could, since you—— 

The CHAIRMAN. Sure. 

Senator CORKER. I appreciate that point of view, and that is the 

purpose of the hearing. I would hope that officials within our Departments would be communicating with each other, and would 

have communicated with each other when this appropriations request came up, and would have a general sense of what is driving 

this. So, I apologize if you feel I got off topic, but I would hope 

that—— 

23 

The CHAIRMAN. No, it is a totally legitimate question, Senator 

Corker. I invited witnesses here with a purpose—it does not mean 

they do not have broader knowledge; but, when they do not, I am 

not going to suggest that they are not being forthcoming. And I do 

believe that the appropriators are getting—in their hearings—some 

of those questions asked. I know that Senator Carper, in the Department of Homeland Security, has been pursuing some of this 

very line of questioning. 

I just do not want to think that the administration, here, is being 

evasive. I have gone after the administration more than my share 

on different topics. So, I know there will still be many of these 

questions. 

Senator Boxer. 

Senator BOXER. Thank you. 

Mr. Swartz, I think you could help Senator Corker and others if 

you just went back and looked at how many of all those that have 

sought asylum, the children, in the last few years, got asylum. I 

think it is a very important point. From what I gather, it is about 

50 percent. But, I would appreciate your doing that, as well. 

But, I want to thank my chairman and ranking member for this 

very important hearing to look at a humanitarian crisis, a challenge for each of us, because we can do something about this, regardless of party. And if ever we were able to be brought together, 

I pray that our sense of humanity will bring us together. Because, 

in my long lifetime, I have noticed that innocent children bring us 

together. And they are standing in front of us. And we have to deal 

with this in a smart way. And we have to step up. 

So, just before I get to my questions, I think there are two main 

questions. And I thank both of my leaders, here, for this. First, do 

we need to change the bipartisan Feinstein 2008 law signed by 

President Bush? Now, I have asked staff to review this, and I have 

not said anything until today regarding how I feel about it, because 

I was very open to seeing what we should do. And I believe that 

bill, that Feinstein-Bush bill, does give the administration the flexibility it needs to do the right thing here. I do not even know what 

their view on it is. They are looking at it. But, that is my view. 

So, I agree with the chairman. I think we can do, under that law, 

the right thing for these children, and the right thing for our Nation. And that is what we are balancing. 

And then, the second question is, Do we need more resources? 

And, without a doubt—without a doubt—I cannot believe people 

are actually standing up, who voted against comprehensive immigration reform, and saying, ‘‘We do not need any money.’’ We do 

not have the tools without the funding, so we need to deal with 

this. And I do have faith in Senators Mikulski and Shelby, and I 

hope that they will move together and lead us on this. 

Now, we know that many of these children are fleeing their 

homes. I am not saying everyone, but most, I believe, are fleeing 

their homes and making that treacherous journey—and let us call 

it that—because they are coming from some of the most violent 

places in the world. The murder rates in these countries are some 

of the highest, with Honduras earning the tragic distinction of 

‘‘Murder Capital of the World.’’ Poverty, inequality, unemployment 

are widespread. Crime, violence, and corruption are ubiquitous. 

24 

Gangs and drug traffickers are terrorizing civilian populations. In 

many cases, these vulnerable boys and girls are fleeing for their 

lives. 

But, here is the thing: They are not just fleeing to the United 

States. And, Mr. Chairman, I think this is an important point that 

was raised by Mr. Shannon. In fact, these children are also seeking 

safety in other Northern and Central American countries, like Mexico and Panama, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Belize, where, since 

2009, asylum applications are up over 700 percent. So, what does 

this say? It tells us this is not just an American problem, it is a 

regional problem. And I do not believe we can solve it on our own, 

nor should we. 

So, Ambassador Shannon, I have a question. Why would the administration not call an emergency summit of the Organization of 

American States? Now, we know the OAS is a body that was set 

up for regional, political, economic, and social cooperation. It seems 

to me that this is the right venue to take a look at this as a broader problem—while we take care of what we have to do here. Could 

you react to that idea? 

Ambassador SHANNON. Well, it is a very good suggestion, and I 

thank you for it. 

We have had an opportunity to do several regional events related 

to this question. There was a Regional Migration Conference held 

in Managua, Nicaragua, under the auspices of the U.N. High Commission on Refugees, about a month ago, where we were able to 

fashion documents and approaches that allowed us, I think, to understand, in a common fashion, how—this dynamic, this crisis of 

migration. A similar conference was held just a few days ago in 

Mexico City, sponsored by the Mexican Government in the Holy 

See, on migration and development. And the Government of Honduras, yesterday, held a Regional Migration Conference, where we 

were also present. Along with the—— 

Senator BOXER. Well, if I could just say—— 

Ambassador SHANNON. Sure. 

Senator BOXER [continuing]. That is really good. But, I am talking about a regional summit at the highest levels, that we utilize 

the OAS. It was set up for this purpose, so I cannot imagine a better thing. 

Now, I have talked to the administration about this idea. They 

seem open to it. But, I hope you will take back this idea, because—— 

Ambassador SHANNON. Happily. 

Senator BOXER [continuing]. The American people, when they 

look at this—my State, a border State—they are compassionate. 

We have a few who are not, let us be clear. And the ugly side has 

been shown. And that happens. But, overwhelmingly, people want 

to do the right thing. But, they also know this is a regional issue. 

We cannot do everything alone. It is too hard. We are coming out 

of some hard times. I want us to do our share. I want all the countries in the region to do their share too. So, please take that back. 

Now, Mr. Swartz, the Department of Justice runs two programs 

that train law enforcement and prosecutors in Central American 

countries who are trying to hold these deadly gangs and traffickers 

accountable and combat corruption in their own governments. It 

25 

just sounds like complete lawlessness in these countries when you 

read about it, that these children are so fearful that they are either 

going to be abused by these gangs, tortured by these gangs, or, if 

they do not get recruited, killed, perhaps. So, can you explain to 

us—because I admit that I am certainly not an expert on what is 

happening on the ground—can you give us a sense of what is going 

on on the ground there? Either of you who might know better than 

I. 

Mr. SWARTZ. Senator Boxer, I can start and then turn to Ambassador Shannon. 

Senator BOXER. Okay. 

Mr. SWARTZ. I think that it is clear that, in these countries, violence is endemic and is, indeed, the backdrop for the particular 

surge that we are seeing now. Even if it is not the immediate cause 

for every child to leave, it is certainly a destabilizing factor in each 

and every one of these countries. It undercuts economic growth and 

economic opportunity. It makes it extremely dangerous for individuals simply to live in those countries. 

In terms of what we are doing on the ground, as I mentioned, 

our response has both short-range immediate goals and longer 

range goals. To our vetted units, in particular, that work with our 

law enforcement agencies—the FBI, DEA, Homeland Security investigations—we hope to be building the kind of capacity in those 

countries that will allow them to address the violent crime that 

plagues their citizens. And again, I stress, it protects our citizens, 

as well, since these gangs operate across borders. MS-13, the 18th 

Street Gang operate in the United States, in El Salvador, and other 

countries in the region. 

But, beyond that, as you mention, with State Department funding for our resident legal advisors from our overseas prosecutorial 

group, our resident law enforcement advisors from ICITAP, our 

criminal investigative group, we can begin to work on thinking 

through what systemic changes need to be made in these countries 

with our partners. And we have seen this. We have seen the possibility of doing this, Colombia being, of course, the most recent and 

most relevant example in the region, in which we took a country 

that some people considered to be on the edge of being a failed 

state, and, with the commitment of that country, were able to think 

through changes to their prosecutorial system, to how they did investigations, how they create, really, a democratic policing and an 

adversarial system that protects the citizens, both their rights to 

be fairly tried and their rights to be protected against criminal 

groups. 

So, this is really a question of having the funding to make this 

possible. The Department of Justice does not receive direct appropriations for this work. We receive it from State Department. And 

one of the reasons why the—— 

Senator BOXER. Thank you. 

Mr. SWARTZ [continuing]. Supplemental is so important. 

Senator BOXER. I agree. I want to just say, that is the kind of 

thing the American people need to know, and that is why I think 

a high-profile conference, where the world gets to see that the region cares about these kids and about the future. So, you know, my 

26 

kids always say I repeat things too much, but I repeat: I think a 

high-profile OAS summit with these ideas would be very helpful. 

Mr. SWARTZ. And, Senator, if I might add, the Mexican attorney 

general has suggested that we have a meeting of the attorneys general of the region to address this issue, and Attorney General Holder very much welcomes that opportunity, as well. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. 

Senator Risch. 

Senator RISCH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

You know, this problem came to light this year with this huge 

influx of unaccompanied children illegally entering this country. 

And, when it did, people started to look at it, and the first thing 

we heard was, ‘‘Well, it was because of the 2008 law that was 

passed.’’ And so, I think a lot of us said, ‘‘But, you know, before 

we do that, what we need to do is have a look at the facts.’’ So, 

what we did, they had this graph prepared of illegal children entering the United States. And this is only apprehensions. These are 

unaccompanied minors and apprehensions. Have you seen this 

chart? 

Mr. SWARTZ. Yes, sir. 

Senator RISCH. Okay. The chart hits you pretty quickly. It is not 

the 2008 law. Because you had 19,000 enter in 2009, you had 

18,000 in 2010, 16,000 in 2011. Indeed, if anything, the direction 

of this was going down. But, then in 2012, this thing just skyrockets. You have got 24,000 in 2012, you have got 38,000 in 2013, 

and this year, through June 15, we have got 52,000. And the numbers that exploded were from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. The Mexican numbers did not change that much, but it was 

those Central American countries. 

So, before you can resolve a problem, you have got to know what 

is causing the problem. What happened in 2012? 

Ambassador SHANNON. Great question, and an important graph. 

Actually, the numbers explode at a point, but there was obviously pressure building before that. And the pressure was building 

for a variety of reasons. I think very little of it has to do with the 

immigration debate here. Our interviews on the border with unaccompanied children who have been detained, and in-country with 

aspiring migrants, indicates that they have little understanding of 

the dynamics or the migration debate in the United States. But, 

what they do know and what they do understand is how people are 

treated on the frontier when they arrive. 

And when I talk about the pressure building—2009, of course, is 

when we suffered an international economic downturn. And the 

hemisphere itself, and Central America, is particularly devastated 

by this. So, from 2009 through 2011, you have economic distress in 

the region. And then, on top of that, because of the success that 

Mexico is having through its Merit Initiative, you have gangs and 

Mexican cartels moving into parts of Central America in order to 

control the drug-trafficking operations and building alliances with 

gangs. 

And so, I think the stressors that are driving this are, first, economic and then they are cartel activity, and then linking the cartel 

activity to gang activity. 

27 

Senator RISCH. Mr. Shannon, I hear what you are saying. But, 

look, I am looking for something in 2012. You talked about economic downturn in 2009. If the economic downturn was in 2009, 

which we know it was, it went down in 2009, 2010, and 2011. 

Ambassador SHANNON. Right. 

Senator RISCH. It was not until 2012 that it hopped up. 

Mr. Swartz, what is your view? Briefly. 

Mr. SWARTZ. Senator, again, I think that there is, as Ambassador 

Shannon suggested, a variety of causes. One hears everything from 

coffee rust affecting some of the plantations, involving economic 

changes during this time period. But—— 

Senator RISCH. Appreciate the coffee rust—— 

Mr. SWARTZ. But—— 

Senator RISCH [continuing]. And all that, but—— 

Mr. SWARTZ [continuing]. But, I think, Senator, as you say, that 

it is one of the things that we are trying to study to try and understand, but underlying it, from the perspective of the Department of 

Justice, is the economic instability caused by a violent crime setting. 

Senator RISCH. In 2012, did we have any significant event regarding U.S. immigration policy that occurred? Did the President 

sign any Executive orders in 2012? 

Ambassador SHANNON. I understand what you are driving at, 

Senator, but I—— 

Senator RISCH. I am. 

Ambassador SHANNON [continuing]. But I would argue that the 

dynamic of the migration debate in the United States—— 

Senator RISCH. I hear what you are arguing. 

Ambassador SHANNON [continuing]. Does not have an impact. 

Senator RISCH. But, are you telling me that his Executive order 

that we are not going to send children back did not cause an explosion when people understood that, if they got here, that they were 

not going to have to go back anymore? Are you denying that that 

has anything to do with the explosion of numbers? 

Ambassador SHANNON. What I am saying is that the traffickers 

have a marketing strategy, and the fact of the matter is, children 

have been deported and will be deported. But, what the smugglers 

were able to do is fashion a marketing strategy for kids who wanted to leave, for parents who wanted their kids to leave and were 

able to show that, when those kids got to the frontier, that they 

would not be removed immediately. 

Senator RISCH. And that marketing strategy was based upon the 

change in policy that the President took in 2012. Is that a fair 

statement? 

Ambassador SHANNON. I think it was based on the TVPRA issue 

regarding noncontiguous—— 

Senator RISCH. Mr. Swartz, do you agree or disagree that the 

change in policy by the President’s Executive order in 2012 had no 

effect on this explosion that has occurred? 

Mr. SWARTZ. I agree with Ambassador Shannon, that our intelligence suggests that traffickers are marketing misunderstandings 

about how U.S. immigration law will work, the expectation these 

children will not be deported back from the United States, and that 

that has been a key driver in this, as well. 

28 

Senator RISCH. You think they had a misunderstanding of the 

President’s Executive order in 2012 that they were not going to 

send children back? 

Mr. SWARTZ. We think that they—far as we can tell, that there 

is a general portrayal that is not based on actual U.S. law—— 

Senator RISCH. Has the President tried to do anything to correct 

this impression he gave in 2012 that has caused this new marketing program? 

Ambassador SHANNON. No, we have been very clear that these 

children, should they not have international protection concerns or 

needs, will be deported. 

Senator RISCH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

The CHAIRMAN. Senator Cardin. 

Senator CARDIN. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Let me thank both of you for your work here and your testimony. 

It is clear, Mr. Swartz, as you pointed out, that the spike is related to the instability in the three countries involved because of 

the criminal activities within those three countries. That is what 

I think you responded to the question. And that has caused increased gang activities, it led to trafficking. And traffickers will do 

whatever they can in order to make money. It is also true that this 

country has been one of the strongest in working with the international community to encourage countries to have an understanding that their border can be a sanctuary for those who otherwise are at risk in their own country. That is what we have been 

urging countries around the world to do. And we have participated 

in international efforts to provide safety for people who are not safe 

in their native country. 

So, I think we all want to make it clear—and this is a point that 

we have all stressed—that it is not safe to put your child in the 

hands of a trafficker or in a position of being taken to our border. 

And doing so does not change that child’s status. That child will 

be put in deportation. That has got to be clear. But, I think we also 

have to be mindful that, Ambassador Shannon, the number you 

gave—not our number, but the number that the international community—the representative for refugees suggests that there is— 

over 50 percent of these children may, in fact, need some form of 

protective service. That is an international responsibility that the 

United States also needs to be mindful for. 

So, let me get to the point that the chairman raised initially, and 

that is, the President is asking for $3.7 billion; $3.4 billion is dealing with the consequences of a failed policy within the native countries. Now, failed policy means there is instability, that it is not 

safe for families and children; and therefore, they are putting their 

unaccompanied children at risk through transit to the United 

States. And only .3, or $300 million, is being used for dealing with 

the causes. 

We have programs in these countries. We have the Millennium 

Challenge Corporation that is operating in Honduras and El Salvador. We have Partnership for Growth operating in El Salvador. 

We have the Central America Regional Security Initiative. So, we 

have programs that were intended to deal with some of these 

issues. 

29 

But, if I could just point out—to me, the most successful program 

that was initiated to deal with a global problem that affected our 

country was PEPFAR, where we had significant resources identified with the U.S. initiative that made a consequential difference 

for future generations. What does it take to have that type of effort 

for safety of children in Honduras, in El Salvador, in Guatemala? 

How can we change these programs? If we are going to spend $3.7 

billion—and you clearly have made the case that these funds are 

needed—we would like to be able to at least start down the path 

of the United States using its international development assistance 

to keep children safe in these three countries. And, quite frankly, 

I have not seen that from the administration. What does it take? 

Ambassador Shannon. 

Ambassador SHANNON. Well, thank you very much for that. And 

I appreciate the larger point, which is an important one. And the 

safety and well-being of children is part of a larger approach of 

U.S. development assistance. And, obviously, as we built our 

CARSI programs, as they built our Millennium Development programs, as we built our bilateral assistance programs, the idea was 

to address a country comprehensively, in an integrated fashion, 

with the hope being that we would be able to address the concerns 

of children and adults, women and men, and the different sectors 

and factors of a society. But, obviously, what we are looking at now 

is something distinct, something dramatic. We are really looking at 

a modern-day—— 

Senator CARDIN. But, see, the proposal—the supplemental budget is dramatic on the number of prosecutors, it is dramatic on the 

number of personnel on the border, on the new facilities—it is dramatic, except it is not dramatic on making a change in the three 

countries where the children are coming from. Why not? Why not 

at least put forward a proposal that would have a consequential 

impact? President Bush did that for HIV/AIDS. Why are we not 

doing it for countries in our own hemisphere? 

Ambassador SHANNON. Well, it is a great argument, it is a great 

point, and I am happy to take it back to the White House and to 

the Department. 

The 300 million we are asking for is designed to operate in three 

countries, so it is concentrated; and it is designed to address the 

principal drivers, we think, of this migration, which is the violence, 

but also economic opportunity and corruption and poor public institutions. And we think that, by doing this, we are going to advance 

the well-being of the children. But, the idea of fashioning a larger 

policy, not just in these three countries, but throughout the region, 

around children is a good one. 

Senator CARDIN. Do you really believe that if Congress approved 

the $3.7 billion exactly as the administration suggested, that it 

would have a major change in the three countries as it relates to 

the safety of children? 

Ambassador SHANNON. It will have a positive impact, but—— 

Senator CARDIN. That is not my question. Would it make a major 

change in—— 

Ambassador SHANNON. In some areas, it will; in other areas, it 

will not. Because so much of this violence is localized, and it all depends on the strength of gang structures. But, what is important, 

30 

as I noted, the 300 million will connect to programs we already 

have, but ultimately will be a downpayment in a larger effort to 

fashion a new kind of Central America. 

Senator CARDIN. Well—— 

Mr. SWARTZ. Senator, if I might address that. I think that that 

money can be consequential, from the Department of Justice’s point 

of view. We have seen that, in terms of being able to put our personnel on the ground to work with their counterparts, it does not 

necessarily take that much money, but it takes a sustained commitment. It will not happen overnight. But, we have seen the ability to change criminal justice systems in a way that help protect 

children, in particular, but, more generally, to change the way the 

society addresses criminal justice. 

So, we think that it can be an important step. It is just a downpayment. It is not going to happen overnight. But, it is an essential 

first step. 

Senator CARDIN. Mr. Chairman, I would just point out that this 

committee has jurisdiction over development assistance, and I 

would just hope that we would be able to weigh in, on a bipartisan 

basis, as to this opportunity to make a difference in the way that 

we provide development assistance in these three countries to 

make children’s—and families feel more confident of their future, 

rather than putting them on trains coming to the United States. 

The CHAIRMAN. I thank the Senator. And something I have been 

advocating for a while. And now that we have an opportunity and, 

unfortunately, a crisis to crystallize people’s thinking, maybe it 

would be a moment to move forward. 

As I introduce Senator Rubio, let me recognize that his daughters, Amanda and Daniela, are seated in the audience, watching 

Dad at work. So, you would better do a good job, Senator. [Laughter.] 

Senator Rubio. 

Senator RUBIO. Thank you for the pressure. I appreciate it. 

[Laughter.] 

Thank you both for being here. 

And thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding this hearing. 

Let me just preface this by saying this is an issue I care deeply 

about and am impacted by. We have huge Central American communities, particularly in South Florida, where I live, and so I am 

familiar with this issue’s reality, not simply by what is reported in 

the media, but what I hear from them. And there is no doubt that 

the violence in some of these cities is as bad as it is anywhere in 

the world, and that that is the reason why people want to leave 

those countries. 

But, we have to examine the reason why they want to come here, 

as opposed to going to Panama or some other place that is a lot 

closer, or staying in Mexico, and what it is that is driving them 

here. 

And I think it is unfortunate and counterproductive to ignore 

both the reality and the applications of our immigration laws and 

the impact that that is having on our crisis. And I say that as 

someone who is a demonstrated supporter and continue to believe 

that this country needs to reform its immigration laws, for the good 

31 

of our country and also to live up to our heritage as a nation of 

immigrants. 

But, word of mouth on this issue is extremely powerful. Word of 

mouth is the reason and the way people are getting a lot of information in Central America. And the word of mouth in Central 

America is—that these traffickers are using—that there is this new 

special law in America—there is a special law that allows you to 

stay. And part of the tactics that they are using and are being 

spread is, there is a special law, that expires in July or in August, 

to create a time-constraint pressure so people will do it immediately, and do it now. And the special law they point to—and 

you—and I understand it is not the way it was written, but the 

special law they point to is the deferred action decision that was 

taken in 2012. That is what they point to, and they say, ‘‘There is 

this special law that will allow you to enter the U.S., and stay.’’ 

And we can say, ‘‘Well, under this law, you are not allowed to stay, 

because you do not meet the criteria.’’ And that is technically accurate. But, if you look at how it is applied in reality—not that law, 

but our immigration policies—they are right that there is a special 

law, or at least a special practice, because if you arrive in the U.S. 

as an unaccompanied minor or as a parent with children, you are 

not treated the same as someone who arrives here as a single male 

who—adult—who traveled across the border. 

And I saw figures, just yesterday, that 70 percent of the people 

who have crossed that border as unaccompanied minors or as part 

of a family unit are in the United States. And they know the process, because word of mouth gets there. The process is, you are apprehended. If there is someone in the United States to—who they 

can turn you over to—in many cases, these children already have 

parents in the United States—you are turned over to your parents. 

There is a long period of time—they know that there are backlogs 

in the court system. They are given a notice to appear. In some instances, they think it is ‘‘un permiso,’’ a permit, which it is not. 

And in some instances, they never show up for the notice, but, even 

if they did, the hearing may be years in the future. That is the reality of the law. 

So, in truth, if you arrive in the United States as an unaccompanied minor, you are going to get to stay, at least for an extended 

period of time, before you are even asked to appear again. And that 

word of mouth gets back. People call home, people report what has 

happened, and that takes on a strong implication. 

By the way, I also read some documents the other day that now 

what is happening is that there are individuals crossing—and I do 

not know what the figures are and how widespread this is—but 

that we have found instances—and perhaps if this is not true, you 

will point it out—but that we now know of instances where there 

are unrelated adults posing as the parents of children, as family 

units, at the border. Is that accurate? 

Mr. SWARTZ. Our understanding, Senator, is that there are some 

circumstances, particularly—we are actually targeting, through our 

colleagues in other countries, forged documents—to try and establish false family relationships for that purpose. 

Senator RUBIO. So, there are now—I mean, the word of mouth 

has gotten back that if you arrive in the United States by yourself 

32 

as an adult, your chances are a lot better if you arrive as a parent 

of a child that is traveling with you. And so, you have got unrelated adults pretending to be married and pretending that some 

children in the group are their children. So, that is something that 

shows design. 

There is also evidence that I have seen that there are churches 

and nongovernmental organizations in Mexico and in Central 

America that are both advising, assisting, and, in some instances, 

encouraging people to undertake this journey, as well. 

And, last but not least, I think we are naive if we think that the 

governments of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras view this 

as a problem for them. They view this as a U.S. problem for the 

United States to solve. And we are naive if we ignore the fact that 

13 percent of their combined gross domestic product is made up of 

remittances from the United States. So, if 13 percent of your gross 

domestic product is comprised of remittances from the United 

States, it behooves you to have as many people as possible in the 

United States sending back remittances. And I say this, as I have 

shared with them privately, as well, and I say it now publicly— 

with individuals from those governments—they do have an interest 

in this. And that is why I think they have been less than cooperative. I know their capacities are limited, as well, but I think they 

have been less than cooperative, in some regards, in addressing 

some of this. 

I say all this in the context of the fact that this is just one more 

reason, in my mind, why, long term, this country has to address 

this issue. I believe that if we had a legal immigration system that 

worked better, that would be a conduit for people who do want to 

come to the United States to come in a way that is safe. I believe 

that if we had enforcement mechanisms that worked better, people 

would be discouraged from entering the country. But, this is in evidence of the fact that what we have now today in place in this 

country is a disaster that needs to be addressed. But, I also do not 

think we can be naive about the reality that we are facing in this 

regard, and I think we have to understand the complexities of everything that is driving these folks across the border and making 

this happen. 

I did want to ask you briefly about the two points that I raised. 

The first is, Is there, in fact, evidence that there are NGOs and 

church groups and others who are assisting and encouraging people 

in these routes? And what I mean by ‘‘assistance’’ is, you know, 

providing transit routes and, in some instances, just encouraging 

people to undertake this, acting as facilitators. 

Ambassador SHANNON. I am sure there are plenty of people taking advantage of this migrant train for their own goods or the 

goods of their organization. Most of them are criminal. There are 

NGOs and church-related groups that provide shelter to migrants 

along the way. I visited one in Tapachula yesterday and had an opportunity to speak with migrants there and the people who run the 

place. It is run by a Catholic organization called the Organ De Los 

Migrantes, which is an Italian order of priests. And their purpose 

is to provide a place for migrants to stop. 

33 

Senator RUBIO. When they speak to them, do they tell them, 

‘‘You should really reconsider this trip. It is very dangerous. This 

was not the right thing to do’’? 

Ambassador SHANNON. Many of them do. I do not know if all of 

them do, but in the one I was in, they also deal with women who 

are being trafficked in southern Mexico and providing shelter for 

them. And so, they do—at least in the shelter I was in, I was told 

that they do highlight the dangers, but their primary purpose is to 

provide shelter, as opposed to providing guidance. 

Senator RUBIO. I have one more question. 

The CHAIRMAN. Sure. 

Senator RUBIO. I have heard reported in the media, and I have 

talked to some folks who have undergone the journey in the past, 

who say that, as a matter of course, as a prophylactic matter, 

women on this journey are advised to take contraceptives, because 

they can expect to be sexually assaulted. Is that accurate? 

Ambassador SHANNON. Not just women, but girls. 

Senator RUBIO. Thank you. 

The CHAIRMAN. Senator Kaine. 

Senator KAINE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

And thank you, to the witnesses, for your service and appearance 

today. 

I am going to try to spend just a little bit on diagnosis and then 

more on prescription. 

So, quick on the diagnosis: To what degree is violence a factor 

in this flood of youngsters to the border? Is it a major factor, a 

minor factor, or no factor? 

Ambassador SHANNON. I believe it is a major factor. 

Senator KAINE. Mr. Swartz. 

Mr. SWARTZ. Yes, Senator, I agree, it is a major factor, in two 

ways. First, as Ambassador Shannon has pointed out, the mapping 

suggests that these children are coming from the most violent 

areas. And, significantly, we are not seeing an explosion of individuals coming, across the board, from every country. 

Senator KAINE. To the extent that violence is a major factor in 

this, to what extent is the drug trade a factor in that violence? Is 

the drug trade a major factor, a minor factor, or no factor? 

Ambassador SHANNON. It is that—the drug trade is what has expanded the reach of gangs in Central America and has provided 

the gangs with the money and the transnational connections they 

need to play a role in smuggling operations, but also in trying to 

control large parts of their community. So, it is significant. 

Senator KAINE. Major factor, Mr. Swartz? 

Mr. SWARTZ. Yes. The connection between gangs, and now the 

narcotics cartels, is certainly a significant factor. 

Senator KAINE. So, if the flow is being driven by violence as a 

major factor, and if that violence is connected to the drug trade as 

a major factor, let me ask you my next question. To what extent 

is the drug trade driven by U.S. demand for illegal drugs? Is that 

a major factor, a minor factor, or no factor? 

Ambassador SHANNON. Nearly all the drugs transiting Central 

America are going to the United States. 

Senator KAINE. Mr. Swartz. 

34 

Mr. SWARTZ. Yes. We recognize that our consumption is a major 

factor in this regard. 

Senator KAINE. Okay. So, the way I look at this challenge—and 

I lived in El Progreso, Honduras for a year. And about 600 of the 

52,000 kids who have come to the border are from El Progreso. 

They are being largely chased out of their neighborhoods by violence, violence connected to a drug trade, and a drug trade that is 

intimately connected to the United States demand for drugs. It is 

United States dollars flowing south, and it is drugs flowing north 

into the United States. And the amount of those dollars is so significant that it is warping the institutions of these Central American nations in very dramatic ways. 

This flood of folks, refugees, to the border is not unconnected to 

the United States. It is not unconnected to the—it is intimately 

connected to the United States. 

I was in Syrian refugee camps in Turkey about a year ago, and 

then I have been in Lebanon and Jordan, dealing with Syrian refugee issues, as well. And I remember, Mr. Chairman, asking myself the question, ‘‘Wow, when I see Lebanese who are not really 

that wealthy, and they have refugees, equivalent of one-quarter of 

the population, that have arrived in Lebanon in the space of 3 

years, and they are having to do double shifts in schools to educate 

refugee kids,’’ or I see the number of Syrian refugees in Jordan, 

one of the poorest countries in the world, in terms of the amount 

of water, and they are have having to deal with a number of refugees driven there by violence, when they have few natural resources of their own, and I saw those countries dealing with this 

massive influx of refugees—one-quarter of the population—and I 

found myself asking myself, a year ago, ‘‘Gosh, I wonder how the 

United States would deal with refugees who came to the United 

States, driven by violence from somewhere else. I wonder if we 

would deal with them in the same way that Lebanon or Jordan or 

Turkey is dealing with refugees.’’ 

And that is kind of what we are seeing, if I go by your answers: 

refugees who are coming here, driven by violence, driven by violence that is connected to the United States. And so, we have a 

connection with this. We have a connection with this. And we have 

an obligation to try to be creative in solving it. 

I echo the comments that the chair made before I arrived about 

how disappointing it is to see the dwindling CARSI funding in recent years, $130 million in the FY15 budget. The President’s original budget proposed $130 million for CARSI and about $800 million for the detention of folks at the border who might come unaccompanied. And now we are going to take it up to $3.8 billion. It 

would seem to me that we could spend money a little bit better to 

deal with a problem of violence that is driven by U.S. drug trade 

in these nations, and that would be a better way to spend the 

money, both for those youngsters and also for us. 

Let me ask about drug interdiction. I am on the Armed Services 

Committee. General Kelly is the SOUTHCOM—SOCOM, commander. He testified before us in March during a status hearing. 

He said, with respect to drug interdiction, because of the combination of austerity sequester and the movement of military resources 

elsewhere, he says he watches 75 percent of the drugs that could 

35 

come into the United States just go right by him, because he does 

not have the resources to interdict, either between Central America 

and the United States or even coming into these Central American 

nations. 

Would more vigorous support for drug interdiction, so that these 

drugs do not even land in these Central American nations—would 

that be a way we could potentially help reduce some of the violence 

that are—that is being experienced in the three nations we are 

talking about? 

Ambassador SHANNON. Well, the short answer is ‘‘yes.’’ But, obviously, we have to deal with the consequences today. And the gangs 

are not going away. And having established themselves, they will 

continue to look for any source of revenue they can find, whether 

it is shakedowns, whether it is operating other illegal activities, or 

whether it is drug trafficking. So, as we look for ways to reduce the 

pressure on Central America, we are going to have to recognize 

that the gangs are now embedded in Central America, and dealing 

with them is going to be a significant task. 

Mr. SWARTZ. From the Department of Justice perspective, we certainly agree that interdiction is critical. We also agree, as Ambassador Shannon suggested, that we have to strike against these 

gangs. We have done so. We will continue to do so, targeting their 

leadership both here and in El Salvador and other countries in the 

northern triangle. 

This is truly—again, as you suggest, Senator—a shared responsibility and it is a shared danger for the American people. These 

criminal groups operate in our country and in those countries, as 

well. 

Senator KAINE. One of the things that puzzles me is—when I 

lived in Central America, there was a great deal of cultural similarity between Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua. 

How come there is not a huge number of these youngsters coming 

from Nicaragua? 

Ambassador SHANNON. Again, we only have limited insight into 

this. I think a lot of it has to do with historic migration patterns. 

It is not just Nicaragua, it is also Costa Rica and Panama. Historically, these countries have not migrated to the United States the 

same way that Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras have. And the 

migration networks that have been established over time make it 

easier for migrants coming from those three countries to settle in 

the United States. 

But, it also has to do with the drug-trafficking patterns. And the 

traffickers coming out of the Andes are looking for easy jump 

points into Mexico. And the Mexican cartels have found, especially 

Honduras, an easier mark than either Nicaragua, Costa Rica, or 

Panama. 

Mr. SWARTZ. I would add to that, simply, also the penetration of 

gangs varies from country to country, as you know, Senator. Nicaragua does not face exactly the same issues with regard to MS-13 

or the 18th Street Gang. 

Senator KAINE. All right, thank you. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. 

Senator Johnson. 

36 

Senator JOHNSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Let us all agree that we have a humanitarian crisis on our border that needs to be addressed. I want to confine my questioning 

on the definition of the problem. What we really should be talking 

about here is the definition of the problem of unaccompanied children, and what we are debating is whether we need to spend more 

money and if we do spend, how it should be spent. 

I want to, first, start off by asking, in a sentence, just a sentence, 

what is the achievable policy goal we should be addressing right 

now? 

Mr. Swartz. 

Mr. SWARTZ. From the Department of Justice perspective, the 

achievable policy goal is to work with these countries—the three 

source countries, in particular—to build their justice systems so 

that they can address these issues, in the first instance, lessen the 

likelihood that there will be a—— 

Senator JOHNSON. Okay, good. Again, one sentence. 

Mr. Shannon. 

Ambassador SHANNON. To build partnerships with Mexico as a 

transit and designation country, Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador—— 

Senator JOHNSON. Okay, again, no, you are missing the mark. 

Our goal needs to be stopping the flow. Right now, we have to deal 

with the 57,000 unaccompanied minors who came to this country. 

Secretary Johnson said there will be 90,000, potentially, by the end 

of this fiscal year, and over 100,000 by the beginning of 2015. We 

have to stop the flow. That is the achievable goal. I do not think 

we can achieve solving the drug problem or improving their economies, or reducing violence in these countries—I do not think that 

those are achievable goals. I do not care how much money we have 

spent on it. And we will talk about some data to talk about that. 

I have seen that exact same chart. Like Senator Risch was talking about—I have done a fair amount of calculations on that. 

Mr. Swartz, do you know what percent of these unaccompanied 

children we have sent back over the last 5 years? 

Mr. SWARTZ. Senator, I understand that you have asked for that 

information from the Department of Justice. We are obtaining 

that—— 

Senator JOHNSON. So, your answer is ‘‘no.’’ 

Mr. SWARTZ. We are obtaining that information—— 

Senator JOHNSON. Okay. So, your answer is that you have it. 

Okay? 

Mr. SWARTZ. I do not have that—— 

Senator JOHNSON. Since 2009, we have returned roughly 16,800 

children out of 174,000 unaccompanied minors who have come into 

this country. So, that is a rate of 9.6 percent. So, more than 90 percent of those children are still in this country. 

Now, over time, it has really declined. So, in 2009, we returned 

about 23,000; 2010, a little under 22 percent; 2011, under 19 percent; 2012, with deferred action for childhood arrivals, it dropped 

to 8.6 percent; once deferred action for childhood arrivals was fully 

implemented, we are down to 4.3 percent. Looking at what Senator 

Risch was talking about, I think it is pretty obvious what is a real 

correlated cause of the spike in unaccompanied children. 

37 

I want to talk about the push factor and how unrealistic it is 

that we can spend any amount of money on it. Just tell me what 

we have already spent. In just the last 3 years, we have spent $956 

million in U.S. economic assistance to those three countries. In 

terms of drug control, we have spent $76 billion. Do you really 

think throwing a few hundred million dollars down there is going 

to solve that problem at all? I would say not. 

Let us talk about murder rates. Mr. Shannon, you said that the 

pressure is building. You know, the fact of the matter is, in El Salvador, murder rates spiked in 2011, at 70 per 100,000, but it is 

down to 40. Guatemala has actually declined from 46 per 100,000 

in 2008 down to 40 now. Honduras built up to 91 in 2011, and 

went down to 87 in 2013. And, by the way, just to put that in perspective, the murder rate in Detroit in 2012 was 54.6; in New Orleans, 53.2. We can talk about this push factor, but I would really 

be looking more at the policy pull factor, in terms of causing this. 

And I also want to just talk about spending, in general. We have 

spent a lot of money, in terms of ICE, Border Patrol, and U.S. Customs, Immigration Services, and HHS refugee programs. In 2008, 

we spent $171⁄2 billion dollars on those programs. You divide it by 

the 1.2 million removals and returns in 2008, and that is about 

$14,900 per deportation or removal. Okay? $14,000. In 2012, we 

spent $21.4 billion, divided by about 650,000 removals and returns, 

and that is about $33,000 per removal or return. 

Because I would argue that in very bad economic times, there is 

not as much economic activity, we have fewer immigrants coming 

illegally into this country. We spend a lot of money, on a per-person 

basis, in terms of what agencies have to spend their money on and 

in terms of the individuals, but we have more than doubled spending since 2008. Why do we need another $3.7 billion? And is it 

going to have any effect whatsoever? 

Mr. Shannon. 

Ambassador SHANNON. I believe it will. The immediate impact, 

of course, will be to allow us to manage the flow of people coming 

across the border in a better fashion, in a faster fashion, and in a 

fashion that allows us to determine those who have protection 

needs and those who do not. And those who do not will be deported 

in a timely fashion. 

Senator JOHNSON. But, how to answer the fact that we have actually doubled spending from $14,000 per return or removed immigrant to over $33,000 in 2012? We have more than doubled spending. Why do we need more? Why are we spending it so ineffectively? 

The CHAIRMAN. Well, as a corollary to that question, so that the 

committee can understand, Is all the spending on border enforcement just related to returns? Is that not the equivalent of a police 

department and what we spend in a police department if we were 

to divide it in the number of arrests and convictions? So, I want 

to get a total picture, here, because if we are going to say that all 

of this money is divided into the number of deportees, well, then 

we can take a lot of people off the border that our border States 

have asked us for, in terms of enforcement, so that people will be 

deterred from even coming or interdicted when they come. 

38 

Senator JOHNSON. Mr. Chairman, I am just trying to provide 

some reasonableness in terms of—— 

The CHAIRMAN. And I am trying to make sure that we are talking about the same thing—— 

Senator JOHNSON. Well, of course, we would need more time to 

really vet these numbers properly so we really understand what is 

happening. We were in our meeting yesterday, and Sylvia Burwell 

talked about, ‘‘Well, how much is it going to cost per bed, per child, 

per day?’’ And her answer was somewhere between $250 and 

$1,000 per day. And her defense of $1,000 was, ‘‘Well, you know, 

if we cannot plan for it, it is really expensive to do it.’’ If I do not 

plan a vacation properly, I am still not paying $1,000 per day to 

stay at the most expensive hotel. 

Again, the debate we are having is, Does—this administration, 

who apparently did not plan on this, even though their action 

caused it—does it really need another $3.7 billion, or do we have 

enough already built into a base budget to handle this? And, by the 

way, if we are going to spend money trying to solve the drug problem, the crime problem, the violence problem in those Central 

American countries, is that just a pipedream? Will we have any effect whatsoever on that? 

Mr. SWARTZ. Senator, if I could address that. I do not think it 

is a pipedream, and I think we have examples where we have had 

a transformative effect on the criminal justice systems of countries. 

We have done it in Colombia, we have done it in the Balkans, and 

it is been for the benefit—in the national security interest of the 

United States, as well. We have to engage with these countries. 

Their criminal justice problems are our criminal justice problems, 

as well. 

Senator JOHNSON. But, we have engaged, to the tune of a billion 

dollars over the last 3 years. Just economically. 

Thank you. 

The CHAIRMAN. Senator Flake. 

Senator FLAKE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Thank you for the testimony. 

I agree with what is been said by my colleagues about—let us 

get at the real goal, here. The real goal is to stem the tide of unaccompanied minors. This is a crisis. It is a humanitarian crisis. And 

we have got to do something. Our concern—I can tell you mine and 

many of my colleagues’ concern about the President’s request is, it 

seems to be geared at maintenance of a problem rather than fixing 

the problem and actually changing the incentives that go into it. 

I was glad to hear your explanation, Ambassador Shannon, of 

what this really is and what caused this spike. We can talk about 

violence in those countries. It is there. Talk about drug trade, cartels. That is there, has been there. But, it does not explain the 

spike. 

Now, some people will blame DACA or the Senate considering 

immigration reform, or whatever else. But, as has been pointed 

out, the President’s plan, DACA, did not apply to these kids. Nothing contemplated by the House or the Senate would have allowed 

this kind of spike. And so, as you said, the smugglers have latched 

onto this successful marketing strategy. And I would submit that, 

unless we change the incentives, it will continue to work. 

39 

A lot of these people in the smuggling trade—the human smuggling trade—were in the drug trade. A lot, over time, have gone 

over to human smuggling, because penalties are less than drug 

smuggling. We have corrected some of that, but not all the way. We 

still need to deal with those issues. 

But, if you look at this, right now, for these smugglers, this is 

a sweet gig. They are able to have this marketing strategy, which 

works, because, as we know, most of these kids are allowed to stay, 

and the possibility for prosecution for them is minimal, because 

they do not even have to come into the country, they get them 

through Mexico, take them to the border, tell them where to cross, 

and never even cross into the country. Now, we can still go after 

them, but we cannot even arrest them, or we would have to go into 

Mexico. And we have, you know, some cooperation on that, but it 

really does not happen. So, for the smugglers, things are not going 

to change until the incentive structure changes. 

And the concern that I have is that, if you look at what the President’s request is, $1.8 billion just for the Department of 

Health and Human Services, which has no role in border enforcement or deportation—it is to actually take these kids and house 

them and then place them with a sponsor. As has been said by 

Senator Rubio, the net effect, the practical effect right now, what 

is there on the ground, regardless of what we say in advertising 

campaigns, whatever the President said—and I want to compliment the President for saying what he has said, to the Vice 

President for saying what he has said about these kids, that most 

of them will not qualify, ‘‘Do not send your kids to the border’’— 

they are saying the right things, I think the administration is. The 

problem is, it is not backed up by actions. When the President says 

that, ‘‘Your kids will be deported, they will not be able to stay,’’ 

that is belied by the facts on the ground. And the facts on the 

ground are that if a child—an accompanied—unaccompanied minor 

or a child with a mother comes across, very, very few are actually 

being sent back. 

Cecilia Munoz, Director of the White House Domestic Policy 

Council, said this, ‘‘If you’’—and she is right—‘‘If you look at the 

history of these kids in cases that apply to them in this situation, 

seems very unlikely that the majority of these children are going 

to—they are going to have the ability to stay in the United States.’’ 

They are saying that. That should be the case, but the practical effect of our policy is that, once a child is placed with a sponsor, it 

is extremely unlikely that they are going to be deported. And she 

said, ‘‘If we are to stem the tide and start sending the right signals 

to families down south, it will need to involve literally thousands 

of kids being repatriated.’’ I mean, I think everybody recognizes 

that. When planes show up and the smugglers realize—and the 

families that are paying this realize that their money was ill spent, 

that they subjected their children to a lot of potential abuse or 

abuse for nothing. But, right now, what they see is these kids being 

placed with a sponsor, given a court date months or years in the 

future, and then—think about it for a minute—the charge of HHS 

is to place a child in the least restrictive environment that is in 

their best interest. If you draw that out a bit, would we be placing 

a child with a sponsor who is either a parent, or relative, or someVerDate Nov 24 2008 11:29 May 15, 2015 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00043 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 S:\FULL COMMITTEE\HEARING FILES\113TH CONGRESS, 2ND SESSION\2014 ISSUE H
40 

one else in this country, and is it in our best—or, the children’s 

best interest, later, to rip that child away from that family member 

or those family members, and then deport them later? I think the 

families that are coming, and certainly the smugglers understand— 

that is not going to happen. And so, the incentive structure is still 

there. 

And my concern—I think a lot of our concern is that, until we 

change that structure, until we can expedite the process so that we 

are not having to place these children here in this country, only to 

show up or not show up later at some type of hearing or legal proceedings—until we change that incentive structure, the smugglers 

will continue, because, for them, it is a successful strategy with 

very little downside, not even having to come into the country. You 

know, it used to be, when you had human smuggling, you had to 

get kids across the Arizona border, get them to the I–10, place 

them with someone else. At least somebody was at risk of being 

caught. Now, not likely. And so, they have a good gig—for them, 

a good gig going. And I am afraid that we need to change the incentive structure. 

Ambassador Shannon, do you—I have rambled a bit, I know, but 

do you see a change in this behavior, on the part of the smugglers 

and the families that they are preying on, changing unless we 

change the incentive structure here? 

Ambassador SHANNON. Changing the incentive structure will 

change a particular form of migration. It will change smugglers 

turning their kids in at the border. It will not stop the migration. 

Senator FLAKE. Well, I—— 

Ambassador SHANNON. The—— 

Senator FLAKE. Understood. 

Ambassador SHANNON. The migration has to be addressed in the 

home country, because these kids are like boomerangs. It does not 

matter how far we thrown them. For those who feel that they are 

under threat and for those who are hopeless in their home countries, they will come back. 

Mr. SWARTZ. Senator, if I could add, we are trying to change the 

incentive structure for smugglers, as well. Our resident legal advisor in Honduras has put together a joint group involving Honduras, 

Guatemala, and El Salvador aiming exactly at how we can engage 

those countries in the prosecution of smugglers. 

Senator FLAKE. I think that is all good, and we ought to increase 

the number of refugees that are allowed here for a genuine claim 

of persecution, that those, to the extent possible, should happen in 

their home countries, at embassies and consulates there. But, my 

concern, here, is that, as long as we are placing these children and 

they have achieved their desired goal, to be reunited with family 

members or to stay for a long time, the incentives will not change. 

And that is my concern. And that is a bigger driver than everything else right now. 

Thank you. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. There are a lot of thoughtful views, 

here. Let me just go through a quick series of things, here. I just 

want to make sure, so we have an absolutely replete record. 

Mr. Swartz, are there more Border Patrol agents, Custom inspections, drone flights now than in any other time that you can recall? 

41 

Mr. SWARTZ. Yes, Mr. Chairman. 

The CHAIRMAN. As a matter of fact, is it not true that the Border 

Patrol and Customs Inspections is the largest law enforcement entity we have in the Federal Government? 

Mr. SWARTZ. That is correct. 

The CHAIRMAN. Now, children placed with a guardian, that question, who we fear will not show up, we have two choices. We can 

either deal with the costs of detaining that child, or we could, if we 

want to ensure that they show up, because we think they are being 

placed with a guardian who also may not have documented status, 

we could put an ankle bracelet on him, which would be more humane than detention, and far less expensive. So, there are options 

for us to consider as we deal whether a person has the right, or 

not, to ultimately seek asylum. 

Now, is there any way that we can change the smugglers’ marketing? I mean, I do not know that we promote the smugglers’ marketing, but is there any way we can change the—I think what we 

should be doing is smashing the smuggling networks. And I would 

say to some of these individuals, ‘‘Cooperate with us, in terms of 

who were the smugglers who brought you here,’’ and start prosecuting them. And when the smugglers know that there is a consequence to them, that they may in fact, go to jail either in that 

country or here, that we will have a change in their marketing, believe me. 

Mr. SWARTZ. And, Senator, I can say, in that regard, that one of 

our resident legal advisors in one of the northern triangle countries, for instance, will be traveling with his counterparts to interview children here in the United States for precisely that purpose. 

The CHAIRMAN. Now, I want to include in the record, since much 

has been made of 2012 and DACA, which is the deferred action 

items—what—since we want to make sure that we get the word 

out there, let us get the word out there. How do you actually qualify for deferred action? You must have come to the United States 

under the age of 16, and you must have continuously resided in the 

United States for at least 5 years preceding the date of 2012, which 

means that if you were not physically in the United States, and can 

prove it, since 2007, and, among other eligibility, you would not be 

eligible to adjust your status. Is that a correct understanding? I am 

reading from the Department of Homeland Security document. 

Mr. SWARTZ. Yes. 

The CHAIRMAN. You had to also not only be here since 2007, and 

be under the age of 16 when you came, but you had to be in school, 

you had to have graduated from high school, you have to have obtained a general education development certificate or be honorably 

discharged veteran of the Coast Guard or the Armed Forces of the 

United States. You cannot do all of that unless you were here before 2007. 

So, without objection, I will include the Homeland Security’s Eligibility for Deferred Action. 

[The information referred to above can be found of page 80.] 

Let me ask you, Is it not true that President Obama has deported more migrants than any President in recent history? 

Mr. SWARTZ. That is correct, Mr. Chairman. 

42 

1Table 39 can be found on page 103 of the 2012 Yearbook of Immigration Statistics: http:// 

www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/ois_yb_2012.pdf 

The CHAIRMAN. As a matter of fact, some have called him ‘‘The 

Deporter in Chief.’’ 

Now, it seems to me that Congress has unclean hands, here, in 

its failure to act to reform our immigration system. And, in the absence of that failure, what has been Congress’ successful role is to 

dramatically increase Borders and Custom enforcement to the 

point that we have had the most detentions and deportations at 

any other time. 

So, let me ask two final questions. Did all 60,000 of the children 

that we estimate have arrived, pay a smuggler to get here? 

Ambassador SHANNON. I do not know the exact figure, because 

I have not seen the results of the interviews that have been done, 

but the younger ones, almost certainly. Some of the older ones, the 

16- and 17-year-olds, at least in the conversations I have had with 

them either at Lackland, at the HHS facility, or in McAllen at the 

CBP facilities, or in the shelters, some have come on their own. 

The CHAIRMAN. And those who rode the ‘‘Train of Death,’’ did 

they have a smuggler? 

Ambassador SHANNON. Typically, yes. 

The CHAIRMAN. Okay. 

Now, the national security interests—if we do nothing—nothing 

as it relates to Central America, except tell the Central Americans, 

‘‘Get your act together’’—but, we do nothing more, what is going to 

be the consequences of that? 

Mr. SWARTZ. Mr. Chairman, I think that it will have serious law 

enforcement consequences for the United States, as well. As noted, 

these criminal gangs operate not only in the Central American 

countries, they operate in the United States. We are bringing actions against them, even today, on that basis. And the cartels do 

the same. 

The CHAIRMAN. And when we had a concerted effort in Colombia, 

did we not achieve taking a country that was virtually on the verge 

of not being able to control its own internal sovereignty, being run 

by drug lords, and ultimately change that country to what is now 

one of the finest democracies in the western hemisphere? 

Mr. SWARTZ. We did, Mr. Chairman. We know how to do this. 

The CHAIRMAN. Senator Corker. 

Senator CORKER. Mr. Chairman, I want to thank you for having 

the hearing. I actually—I think it is been very educational. 

And, if it is okay, I would like to also enter into the record an 

article from the Wall Street Journal entitled ‘‘Few Children Are 

Deported.’’ I would also like to enter, if okay, Table 391 from the 

U.S. Department of Homeland Security document that Senator 

Johnson was referring to that really challenges the notion and stipulates the differences between removals and returns. I think returns are actually diminishing at a pretty high level. 

[The information referred to above can be found on page 81.] 

Senator CORKER. But, here is what I would like to say. Look, I— 

this is a humanitarian crisis, and I think everybody here—all of— 

most of us have children, have—I mean, we—you know, to see 

43 

what is happening with so many children from other countries, you 

know, it breaks our heart. 

At the same time, with an emergency supplemental, it seems to 

me that what we should be addressing is, Is there something that 

we can immediately do to change the incentive structure? We have 

talked a little bit about what the phenomenon is. I do think it 

would be very important for all of government, on the executive 

side, to address what is causing this spike. And I do think there 

is a marketing that is taking place, but it is based on policies. 

And, actually, if you looked at returns, the returns issue is a big 

part of this. I mean, very few people are being returned. 

Mr. Swartz, I know I was—first of all, I appreciate you both 

being here. I know you all are great public servants. 

The reason I was focusing on the asylum issue is that if, in fact, 

the number is 58 percent, what that also means is that, if you actually ever make it to court, which very few do, you then have a 58- 

percent chance of a situation, possibly, where you are—no action is 

being taken against you there, too. So, I would like for—I think we 

ought to define—I do not want to get into the debate of what asylum is. And I know the U.N. and us, we have different categories. 

But, I do think it is important for us to, over time, define that. 

And I want to go back to the chairman’s thrust in this committee 

hearing. I do think it is important for us to develop policies that, 

you know, affect the region. And I do think some of the partnerships are important. And I think Senator Kaine’s comments about, 

‘‘Look, when you travel through Central America—in fairness, you 

can see that the U.S. demand for drugs is ravaging these countries.’’ I mean, that is a fair statement. That is fair. But, I would 

think that, during this period of time when we have an emergency, 

that what we would address, in an emergency, is the incentive 

structure and trying to address the problems that Senator Johnson 

raised, and then look—come back and look, longer term, at what 

we need to do throughout the region, if you will, to possibly have 

some impact on what is happening. Some of the Central American 

countries do not have this issue. I think we should look at why 

they do not. Some of the Central American countries do have this 

issue. Honduras, in particular. 

So, I thank you for the hearing. I think that what is before us 

right now is maybe an acute issue that we need to first address, 

and then I do hope that, over time, the committee will develop a 

longer-term plan. 

And again, I thank you both for being here. I know there are 

emotions—they are running high on both sides. And hopefully 

there will be some consensus to a policy that will stem the flow as 

quickly as possible and then let us address some longer-term 

issues. 

Thank you both very much. 

The CHAIRMAN. Well, thank you, Senator Corker. 

One request of Mr. Swartz. I would like you to produce to the 

committee what were the detentions of children and the deportation of children prior to 2009. So, for the, let us say, 8 years prior. 

Mr. SWARTZ. Mr. Chairman, we will do that. 

The CHAIRMAN. Secondly, Senator Corker, as the ranking member, has always been, and continues to be, a thoughtful member on 

44 

all of these issues, and I appreciate it. And the only thing I would 

say, that there is a difference between passion and emotion. Some 

of us are passionate about some of these issues, as some are passionate about the size of government or the cost of government, the 

spending of government. So, it is not so much emotion as it is passion, at the end of the day. 

With the appreciation of the committee for both of your testimony, you are excused at this time. 

I would like to call up our second panel. We are pleased to have 

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author, Sonia Nazario, who is 

been recognized for her book, ‘‘Enrique’s Journey.’’ She serves as a 

board member of KIND, Kids in Need of Defense. We also have 

Cynthia Arnson, the director of the Latin American Program at the 

Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, here in Washington. 

And I would ask the audience who is leaving to do so quietly, 

please. 

And Stephen Johnson, the regional director for Latin America 

and the Caribbean at the International Republican Institute. 

Let me welcome you all to the committee. As I said to our previous panel, your full statements will be included in the record in 

their entirety, without objection. I would ask you to try to summarize them in about 5 minutes or so, so that we could engage in a 

dialogue. 

And we will start with you, Ms. Nazario. If you would turn your 

microphone on. 

STATEMENT OF SONIA NAZARIO, AUTHOR, ENRIQUE’S JOURNEY, JOURNALIST, KIND BOARD MEMBER, WASHINGTON, DC 

Ms. NAZARIO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Senator Corker, and 

other members of the committee, for inviting me to speak to testify 

before you today. 

I am Sonia Nazario, a journalist, author, board member of Kids 

in Need of Defense, a nonprofit founded by Microsoft and Angelina 

Jolie that recruits pro-bono attorneys to represent unaccompanied 

children. 

I first went to Central America to write about civil wars in the 

early 1980s. I focused on unaccompanied children, 15 years ago, 

writing the modern-day odyssey of one boy, Luis Enrique Motino 

Pineda, whose mother left him in Honduras when he was just 5 

years old. Eleven years later, he went in search of her in the 

United States by riding up the length of Mexico on top of freight 

trains. 

Last month, I returned, for the first time in a decade, to 

Enrique’s home in Nueva Suyapa, a neighborhood of Tegucigalpa. 

I lived there for 1 week. I saw a huge change in why children are 

migrating to the United States, a level of violence directed at them 

that astounded me. I have lived through Argentina’s dirty war and 

ridden on top of seven freight trains controlled by gangs through 

most of Mexico. I am not easily spooked. But, after a week, I 

thanked God I got out of Enrique’s neighborhood alive. 

Gangs have long ruled parts of Nueva Suyapa, but recent control 

by narcocartels has brought a new reach and viciousness to the violence. Children, in particular, are being targeted here and throughVerDate Nov 24 2008 11:29 May 15, 2015 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00048 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 S:\FULL COMMITTEE\HEARING FILES\113TH CONGRESS, 2ND SESSION\2014 ISSUE H
45 

out the country. Children are kidnapped, found hacked apart, 

heads cut off, skinned alive. Sometimes at night, men in facemasks 

strafe anyone on the street. War taxes are imposed on virtually everyone. If you do not pay, the narcos kill you. Many neighborhoods 

are even worse. 

Cristian Omar Reyes, an 11-year-old 6th grader in Nueva 

Suyapa, told me he had to leave Honduras soon, no matter what. 

He has been threatened twice by narcos, and he fears the worse. 

Last March, his father was killed by gangs. Three people Cristian 

knows were murdered this year. A girl his age was clubbed over 

the head, dragged off by two men, who cut a hole in her throat, 

stuffed her panties in it, and left her broken body in a nearby ravine. ‘‘I cannot be on the street,’’ says Cristian, who narcohitmen 

pass by—he says that narcohitmen pass by on these three-wheeled 

taxies. ‘‘They shoot at you. I have seen so much death.’’ 

Gangs are forcibly recruiting children as young as 10 to be their 

foot soldiers throughout the country. Children told me they had 

two choices: join or get out to stay alive. This is no different than 

child soldiers who are forcibly conscripted in Sudan. 

Schools in Nueva Suyapa have become the narcos’ battleground. 

Girls face particular dangers. Recently, three girls were raped and 

killed in Nueva Suyapa, one of them 8 years old. Two 15-year-olds 

were abducted and raped. A girl I interviewed, who had been 

threatened by gangs, said, ‘‘It is better to leave than have them kill 

me here.’’ And Cristian told me, ‘‘I am going this year, even if I 

need to ride on that train.’’ 

Children like Cristian fully understand how lethal the journey 

can be. Neighborhoods are dotted with people who have lost limbs 

to the train. Many know someone who has died in that attempt. 

The Zetas narco cartel is kidnapping 18,000 Central Americans off 

those trains every year, and they prefer children. They demand 

ransom and kill children whose relatives cannot or will not pay. 

You would have to be, honestly, crazy or desperate to save your 

life to ride on that train now. Many of these children, not all, are 

refugees. Refugees flee their country for safety, because they face 

persecution and possible death and cannot turn to their government to protect them. Despite billions the United States has spent 

to disrupt the flow of drugs from Colombia up that Caribbean corridor, the narco cartels, mostly Mexican, have simply rerouted inland to Honduras. Around 2011—2011—the narcos’ grip in the 

neighborhoods, like Nueva Suyapa, tightened. That was, not coincidentally, the first year the United States started to see a surge in 

unaccompanied children. 

We must address this situation, but by treating these children 

humanely. And that means more than using the word in the title 

of legislation. To roll back basic protections of the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008 and expedite deportation means Border Patrol will give even trafficking victims a cursory screening. Their job is to secure our borders, not to collect information from traumatized children. 

The U.N., among others, has found that the screening of Mexican 

children for protection concerns by Border Patrol has been a failure. Every child should have a full, fair, and timely hearing before 

an immigration judge and an attorney. While KIND has recruited 

46 

thousands of volunteer lawyers, more than 70 percent of children 

must still present complex immigration cases without counsel, due 

to the surge. So, picture a 7-year-old boy that I saw alone in court, 

shivering with fright, expected to argue against the government’s 

attorney, who is battling to send him home. 

Let me finish by saying, we must bolster security in Honduras 

and the region, not by funding corrupt police and military, but by 

strengthening accountability, the judiciary, and child protection. 

Less than a tenth of the President’s proposed $3.7 billion funding 

request is for aid to this region. Lacking funding, USAID has 

closed its program in Nueva Suyapa. 

We show deep concern for girls who are kidnapped in Nigeria, 

but not for girls kidnapped by narcos in Honduras. Why? How can 

we demand that countries neighboring Syria take in nearly 3 million refugees, but turn our backs on tens of thousands of children 

from our own neighbors? If we shortchange due process, I believe 

that Congress and this administration will be sending many children back to their deaths. 

Thank you for the opportunity to speak, and I welcome your 

questions. 

[The prepared statement of Ms. Nazario follows:] 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF SONIA NAZARIO

Good morning. My name is Sonia Nazario; I am a journalist, author, and serve 

on the board of Kids in Need of Defense (KIND), a nonprofit founded by Microsoft 

and Angelina Jolie that recruits pro bono attorneys to represent unaccompanied 

children. 

I first went to Central America to write about civil wars in Guatemala and El 

Salvador in the early 1980s. I focused on unaccompanied children 15 years ago, 

writing the modern-day odyssey of one boy, Luis Enrique Motino Pineda, whose 

mother leaves him in Honduras when he is 5 years old, and who sets off 11 years 

later to go in search of her in the United States by riding up the length of Mexico 

on top of freight trains. 

Last month, I returned for the first time in a decade to Enrique’s home in the 

Nueva Suyapa neighborhood of Tegucigalpa. I lived there for a week. I saw a huge 

change in why children are migrating north to the U.S.—a level of violence directed 

at them that honestly astounded me. I have lived through Argentina’s dirty war and 

ridden on top of seven freight trains controlled by gangs through most of Mexico. 

I am not easily spooked. But after a week, I thanked God that I got out of Enrique’s 

neighborhood in one piece. 

Gangs have long ruled parts of Nueva Suyapa, but the recent control by narcocartels has brought a new reach and viciousness to violence children in particular face 

in this neighborhood and throughout the country. People are found hacked apart, 

heads cut off, skinned alive. Children are kidnapped. People are routinely killed for 

their cell phones. On some 20 or 30 buses daily, passengers are all robbed at gunpoint; in one instance 23 were killed. Sometimes, at night, men show up in face 

masks and strafe anyone out on the street. Threatened families have had to abandon homes and flee with only the clothes on their backs. 

Several neighborhoods are worse than Nueva Suyapa; no one can go in without 

permission from gangs or narcotraffickers, and war taxes are imposed on every resident. If you don’t pay, they kill you. World Vision International, a Christian nonprofit group, has shut down operations in a nearby neighborhood because thugs 

won’t let their staff enter. 

Cristian Omar Reyes, an 11-year-old 6th grader in Nueva Suyapa told me he had 

to get out of Honduras soon—‘‘no matter what.’’ He has been threatened twice by 

narcos who said they would beat him up if he did not use drugs, and he fears worse. 

Last March, his father was robbed and murdered by gangs. Three people Cristian 

knows were murdered this year; four others were gunned down on a nearby corner 

in the span of 2 weeks at the beginning of this year. A girl his age resisted being 

robbed of $5. She was clubbed over the head and dragged off by two men who cut 

a hole in her throat, stuffed her panties in it, and left her arms and hips broken. 

She was found in a ravine across the street from Cristian’s house. 

47 

‘‘I can’t be on the street,’’ says Cristian, adding that there are sicarios—narco hit 

men—who pass by in mototaxis, three-wheeled motorcycle taxis, on his Nueva 

Suyapa street where crack is sold. ‘‘They shoot at you. I’ve seen so much death.’’ 

‘‘I’m going this year,’’ he told me. ‘‘Even if I need to ride on the train.’’ He promises himself he’ll wait until he finds a freight train moving slowly before jumping 

on to avoid being pulled under and losing an arm or leg. 

A decade ago, when children left Honduras planning to ride on the train through 

Mexico, many of them didn’t fully grasp how dangerous this is. That’s no longer the 

case. Neighborhoods are dotted with people who have lost arms and legs to the 

train, visible reminders of what La Bestia, or the so-called Train of Death, can do. 

Many know someone who has died in the attempt. They know that the Zetas, the 

most bloodthirsty narcocartel in Mexico, is kidnapping 18,000 Central Americans off 

those trains every year, and they prefer to grab children. They know the Zetas beat 

these children until they provide the telephone of a relative in the U.S., then 

demand $2,500 in ransom, and kill children whose parents don’t or can’t pay. I 

spent 3 months, off and on, riding on top of seven trains in 2000. It’s much worse 

now. You’d have to be crazy to do it—or desperate enough to fear for your life if 

you stay at home. 

I consider many of these children—not all—to be refugees. Why? Unlike an immigrant, who sets off for a new land to better their lives, a refugee is someone who 

must flee their country primarily for safety because their government cannot or will 

not protect them. If they stay, they face persecution and possible death. 

The U.S. has spent billions to disrupt the flow of drugs from Colombia up the Caribbean corridor. The narcocartels, mostly Mexican, have simply rerouted inland, and 

four in five flights of cocaine bound for the U.S. now land in Honduras. These cartels are vying for control over turf and to expand drug distribution, sales, and extortion in these neighborhoods. 

Around 2011 the narcos grip seemed to tighten in neighborhoods like Nueva 

Suyapa. That was not coincidentally the first year the U.S. started to see a surge 

in unaccompanied children. 

They are forcibly recruiting children as young as 10 and 11 to be their foot soldiers. Children told me they felt they had two choices: join with delinquents who 

worked for the narcos or reject them and get out to stay alive. This is no different 

than child soldiers who are forcibly conscripted in Sudan or in the civil war in Bosnia. Schools in Nueva Suyapa have become the narcos’ battleground. Teachers must 

pay a war tax to teach; students must pay ‘‘rent’’ to go to school. 

Building costly walls may make good politics, but they don’t work. We must 

instead focus on dealing with this exodus at its source. Folks in Honduras feel the 

U.S. hasn’t paid any attention to them since the Kennedy administration. Less than 

a tenth of the President’s proposed $3.7 billion supplemental funding request 

focuses on aid to these three countries. USAID had closed its program in Nueva 

Suyapa there due to lack of funding. 

If you want to fix this crisis you must do three difficult things. You must summon 

the political will to treat these kids humanely, and that means more than using that 

word in the title of legislation. It means giving them a full, fair, and timely immigration hearing, as required under the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (TVPRA) of 2008. To roll back basic protections of the TVPRA and expedite 

deportation—treat Central American children the same way we handle Mexican 

children—means Border Patrol agents will give at most a cursory screening to children, even those who are trafficking victims. These are folks trained to be law 

enforcers, not in child-sensitive techniques designed to get traumatized kids to talk. 

The U.N., among others, has found that the screening of Mexican children for protection concerns by Border Patrol has been a failure. 

It means providing every child who stands before an immigration judge an attorney. KIND has worked hard to recruit volunteers, and these more than 7,000 lawyers have done incredible work. But it’s a drop in the bucket, especially now given 

the surge. KIND estimates more than 70 percent of children are standing before a 

judge without anyone to help them mount and present complex immigration cases. 

These children face U.S. government attorneys arguing why they should be 

deported. No one in their right mind would consider this a fair fight, or anything 

approaching due process. I saw a 7-year-old boy alone in court, and KIND staff has 

seen 5-year-old children, answering judges’ questions, shivering with fright, clutching teddy bears. 

We also have to deal with insecurity in Honduras in a way that doesn’t fund corrupt police and the military that are a big part of the problem. We must strengthen 

the judiciary in Central America, accountability, as well as national child protection 

systems. 

48 

How can we have so much concern for girls kidnapped in Nigeria, but not for girls 

being kidnapped by narcos in Honduras who demand they be their ‘‘girlfriend’’ or 

they will kill them? How can we ask countries that neighbor Syria to take in nearly 

3 million refugees, but turn our backs on tens of thousands of children from our 

hemispheric neighbors to the south? If we short-change due process for these children, I believe Congress and this administration will be sending many children back 

to their deaths. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. 

Ms. Arnson, as I said before you were able to come back into the 

chamber, your full statement will be entered into the record. I 

would ask you to summarize in about 5 minutes. 

There is a vote going on. I am going to try to see if we can get 

through the testimony and then recess and come back for questions. 

STATEMENT OF CYNTHIA ARNSON, DIRECTOR, LATIN AMERICA PROGRAM, WOODROW WILSON INTERNATIONAL CENTER FOR SCHOLARS, WASHINGTON, DC 

Ms. ARNSON. Great. Chairman Menendez, thank you very much 

for this opportunity—Senator Corker, Senator Kaine, and others 

who have been present. 

I would like to emphasize some of the points that have been 

made by earlier speakers, but say that a long-term solution to what 

is now this humanitarian crisis depends on the quality of improvements in democratic governance, in citizen security, and in development in Central America. The United States Government must be 

prepared to commit to these goals over the long term, and Central 

American actors in and out of government must assume a willingness and a will to transform their own countries. 

There is no one causal factor. I will focus mostly on the push factors of criminal- and drug-fueled violence. We have heard the homicide statistics, but, as impressive as they are, they tell only part 

of the story. There is an excessive focus on homicides that is understandable, but it does not capture the other forms of street crime, 

threats, assault, kidnapping, sexual violence, and extortion that affect citizens on a routine and intimate daily basis. Many of these 

statistics about other crimes are not reliable, as civilians do not 

trust the police or other authorities. And this leads to a significant 

underreporting of even serious crimes. 

I would also encourage members of the committee to examine a 

map prepared by the Department of Homeland Security which 

studied the cities and towns of origin of the bulk of the undocumented children migrants between January and May 2014. They 

found that the largest number—20 of the top 30 sending cities and 

towns—were Honduran, led by San Pedro Sula, the most violent 

city in the world. And our own Department of Homeland Security 

noted that, ‘‘Salvadoran and Honduran children . . . come from extremely violent regions, where they probably perceive the risk of 

traveling alone to the United States preferable to remaining at 

home.’’ 

Gangs, or maras, are responsible—are not solely responsible for 

the levels of violent crime, but their role is pervasive and highly 

organized. I think it is important to highlight that the MS-13 and 

the 18th Street Gang were formed in the United States, in Los Angeles, and that U.S. deportations of gang members who had been 

49 

convicted of crimes in the United States for years with little or no 

advanced warning to government officials in the region contributed 

to the diffusion of gang culture and practices. Crime and violence, 

including that perpetrated by gangs, have worsened as drug trafficking and other forms of organized crime have spread. And those 

points have been dealt with extensively, and I will not go into them 

now. 

What I would like to address is the kinds of policy responses that 

this committee could oversee and that the U.S. Congress could 

take. I believe that there is really actually no time since the Central American wars of the 1980s that there has been so much 

media and policy attention focused on Central America. I welcome 

that attention. But, I also think that our inability or our walking 

away from the many needs of the peacetime era in the 1990s and 

early 2000s, you know, had some contribution to the current situation. The CARSI, the Central American Regional Security Initiative, that was launched in 2008 in response to the concern about 

the spillover of organized crime from Mexico, has focused, rightfully, on security. It has been underresourced, and it has not focused sufficiently on other government or development objectives. 

There is no silver bullet to address these problems. They have 

taken decades, if not, one could argue, centuries, to develop. But, 

I believe that progress is possible, with the right leadership, with 

sufficient resources, with active participation from Central American societies, and with integrated approaches, and, above all, with 

adherence to the principles of transparency and accountability. 

As we have seen in Colombia and so many other places, a key 

ingredient for policies to be successful is political will and leadership from the region itself. 

I believe that, as large as the current spending request is before 

Congress, far too little is made available for addressing the root 

causes of migration in Central America. There is approximately 

$295 million to address the economic, social, governance, and citizen security conditions in the region, but that amount is also to 

be used for the repatriation and reintegration of migrants in Central America. 

I believe that my time is up, and I will say that improving citizen 

security is a necessary condition for fostering economic growth and 

for fostering investment. Our assistance programs, up until now, 

have been too overly focused on counterdrug operations and not 

enough on providing citizen security and attacking the causes of 

crime and violence that affect citizens’ daily lives. 

I also believe we need to make efforts to foster opportunity in the 

legal economy by investing in human capital formation that 

matches education and job training with the demands of the labor 

market. 

I will end there, and I welcome your questions. 

Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Ms. Arnson follows:] 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF CYNTHIA J. ARNSON

Chairman Menendez, Senator Corker, and distinguished members of the committee, as someone who has closely followed Central American affairs for over three 

decades, I am pleased to have this opportunity to testify on the surge of unaccompanied minors arriving at the U.S. border from Central America. 

50 

As our Nation seeks to address this unprecedented influx, we must humanely and 

intelligently respond both to immediate needs and address longer term perspectives. 

In the short term, our response must ensure that, in accordance with U.S. and 

international law, those in need of protection as victims of human trafficking and/ 

or those with legitimate claims for asylum are afforded timely due process; that is, 

that they are assisted and not penalized. This principle is important to keep in mind 

in light of the pressures to remove children quickly, given the current size of the 

influx as well as to send a strong message in an effort to deter further migration. 

My testimony 1 will address three of the most important drivers of this flow, and 

suggest options for improving the quality of democratic governance, citizen security, 

and inclusive development in Central America. Indeed, a long-term solution to what 

is now a humanitarian crisis rests on these three pillars—what the U.S. Government is prepared to commit over the long-term in pursuit of these goals, and what 

responsibility Central American actors in and out of government are willing to 

assume to transform their own countries. 

There is no one causal factor that accounts for the unprecedented increase in unaccompanied children attempting to enter the United States, or the lesser but still 

significant increase in the number of adults attempting to enter with young children. The numbers of young children seeking to enter spiked in this fiscal year after 

smaller but significant increases in the past 2 years.2 Children from Nicaragua, 

Panama, and Costa Rica are, for the most part, not part of this increase. This begs 

a closer exploration as to why such large numbers are arriving from El Salvador, 

Honduras, and Guatemala—the so-called Northern Triangle. In general, the ‘‘push’’ 

factors behind this flow stem from the persistent failure of governments following 

the internal armed conflicts of the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, to guarantee the security of their citizens or provide a foundation for broad-based socioeconomic wellbeing.3 These twin failures have given rise to a cluster of factors that can be summarized as follows: 

CRIMINAL AND DRUG-FUELED VIOLENCE

Central America’s Northern Triangle (El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras) 

has been described with numbing regularity as the most violent region in the world 

outside countries at war. The staggering rates of homicide 4 take their largest toll 

on young men between the ages of 15 and 29, although young women have been 

increasingly targeted. Annual homicide statistics, as revealing as they are, tell only 

part of the story. For example, the homicide rate in El Salvador declined due to a 

controversial truce between the country’s two most important gangs. However, some 

parts of the country saw a rise in murders during the gang truce, reinforcing the 

point that crime rates within a country’s borders vary significantly, between urban 

and rural areas, from city to city, and—within cities—from neighborhood to neighborhood.5 Hence, a decline in the national average, as has occurred in Guatemala 

over the past several years, does not necessarily eliminate ‘‘hot zones’’ with high 

murder rates. Indeed, a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) study of unaccompanied minors attempting to enter the United States between January and May 

2014 found that the largest number by far came from Honduras. Twenty of the thirty top sending cities and towns were Honduran, led by San Pedro Sula, the most 

violent city in the world.6 As noted by DHS, ‘‘Salvadoran and Honduran children 

. . . come from extremely violent regions where they probably perceive the risk of 

traveling alone to the U.S. preferable to remaining at home.’’ 7

Moreover, excessive focus on homicides, while understandable, does not capture 

the many forms of street crime, threats, assault, kidnapping, sexual violence, and 

extortion that affect citizens on a routine and intimate basis. Many statistics are 

unreliable as civilians do not trust the police or other authorities, leading to significant underreporting of even serious crimes. 

Gangs or maras are not solely responsible for the levels of violent crime in the 

Northern Triangle, but their role is pervasive and highly organized. In post-war 

Central America, numerous factors contributed to the rise of gangs—migration to 

the United States, which divided families; a lack of opportunity; a culture of violence; access to firearms; an absence of social capital; rapid urbanization, etc.8 U.S. 

deportations of gang members convicted of crimes in the United States, for years 

with little or no advance warning to government officials in the region, contributed 

to the diffusion of gang culture and practices. Zero-tolerance or mano dura policies 

adopted by the Governments of El Salvador and Honduras, in particular, only made 

matters worse; these policies reinforced gang solidarity and membership as a form 

of protection from the state and led to prison overcrowding and the role of prisons 

as incubators of gang membership. All this took place against a backdrop of incomplete, and at times distorted, processes of building and reforming civilian security 

51 

and law enforcement institutions after the end of civil wars. Impunity and corruption remain rampant. 

Crime and violence, including that perpetrated by gangs, have worsened as drug 

trafficking and other forms of organized crime have spread in the Northern Triangle. However, the crisis of insecurity long predates the spillover of Mexican drug 

trafficking cartels such as the Zetas or Sinaloa into Central America. U.S. demand 

for drugs has served to deepen the security crisis, as has the failure to restrict the 

flow of firearms from the United States into Mexico and Central America. Weak 

institutions and some corrupt officials in those countries have permitted organized 

crime to flourish. 

POVERTY AND LACK OF OPPORTUNITY

Poverty by itself is not a good predictor of who will migrate and when, but a general lack of opportunity, particularly when coupled by high levels of violence in poor 

neighborhoods, creates an important push factor for those who are willing to risk 

their lives in order to enter the United States. Poverty levels in the Northern Triangle have gone down since the 1990s, but it is still the case that poverty affects 

approximately 45 percent of Salvadorans, 54.8 percent of Guatemalans, and 67.4 

percent of Hondurans. In Guatemala and Honduras, over half of those in poverty 

are classified as indigent, that is, in extreme poverty.9 According to the World Food 

Program, in Guatemala alone, approximately half of children, ages 5 and under, suffer from chronic undernutrition. Rural poverty in general is far worse than in urban 

areas. Growth rates in the three countries vary; all three economies suffered severe 

impacts as a result of the 2008 global financial crisis and for the most part, recovery 

has been mediocre. 

One striking indicator of the lack of opportunity is the proportion of 15 to 24-yearolds who neither study nor work. Known by the Spanish acronym ‘‘Ni-Ni,’’ they constitute 23.9 percent of youth in this age group in El Salvador, 22.6 percent in Guatemala, and 28.0 percent in Honduras. Many young women in this category help take 

care of households. Of young people 15–24 years of age who have work, low levels 

of education prevail. More than 60 percent of Guatemalans and Hondurans in this 

age group have left school before completing nineth grade. The same is true for 

approximately 48 percent of Salvadorans.10

Northern Triangle countries are also characterized by high levels of inequality of 

opportunity. Indicators such as the Gini coefficient and the United Nations Development Program’s Inequality Adjusted Human Development Index demonstrate that 

inequality is pervasive in the region.11

FAMILY REUNIFICATION

Migration flows from Central America into the United States increased in a significant way during the civil wars of the 1980s. Many of those entering the United 

States from El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Honduras were granted Temporary Protected Status. This designation has been renewed repeatedly long after the wars 

have ended and has been applied to new groups of migrants following natural disasters such as earthquakes and hurricanes, including Hurricane Mitch. Renewals of 

TPS have been carried out in response to requests from Central American governments who argue that a return of large numbers of migrants would be destabilizing 

given a lack of opportunities in the labor market. I am unaware of information that 

specifically links adults with TPS or Green Cards to the flow of undocumented children. But special consideration should be given to family reunification for Central 

American migrants who have legal status in the United States. 

According to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, of the 11.4 million unauthorized immigrants in the United States in 2012, the number of undocumented Salvadorans, Guatemalans, and Hondurans in the United States were 690,000, 

560,000, and 360,000, respectively. Often working in menial jobs, they have nonetheless managed to support family members back home through remittance flows. 

Remittances have boosted incomes and consumption in Central America, often substituting for, or at a minimum, supplementing weak social safety nets. Remittances 

constitute fully 17 percent of GDP in El Salvador and 20 percent in Honduras. What 

these figures demonstrate is that divided families in Central America are critical 

to the economic well-being of their relatives as well as to their countries’ economies 

overall. The human dimensions of this phenomenon should not be overlooked. This 

is especially true given that migration and the strains it places on separated families are seen as risk factors for young people joining gangs. 

Reporters’ interviews with young migrants as well as adults who care for them 

suggest that the desire of parents and children to be reunited is a push as well as 

pull factor behind the current flows. There is circumstantial evidence that rumors 

52 

have spread in communities in the region—stoked by unscrupulous and often brutal 

traffickers (coyotes) anxious to profit from the thousands of dollars each migrant 

pays—indicating that children will be reunited with their parents and allowed to 

stay in the United States once they reach the U.S. border. The Obama administration has recently begun publicity campaigns to counter these misperceptions. Even 

if perceptions can be altered, however, they will do little to curb the desperation 

that motivates young children and others to embark on a perilous and often fatal 

journey. 

POLICY RESPONSES

One thin silver lining in the crisis of undocumented minors is that it has focused 

renewed attention on the violence, poverty, and hopelessness that affect millions of 

Central American citizens. Indeed, I can recall no time since the Central American 

wars of the 1980s when so much U.S. media and policy attention has been paid to 

the region. Our failure to invest and remain engaged in Central America in the 

peacetime era, with the same resources and single-mindedness with which we 

fought the cold war, has no doubt contributed to the current situation. The Central 

American Regional Security Initiative (CARSI), launched in 2008 in response to concerns about the spillover of organized crime from Mexico, has focused on security 

without setting other governance and development objectives as priorities. CARSI 

has also been underresourced. This situation needs to change. 

There is no magic bullet to address these problems, which have taken decades if 

not centuries to develop. But progress is possible, with the right leadership, sufficient resources, active civic participation, integral approaches, and adherence to the 

principles of transparency and accountability. A critical ingredient for policies to be 

successful is political will and leadership from the region itself. Yet history has 

shown that the United States still wields tremendous influence and should not hesitate to exercise it on behalf of shared objectives. 

In the short run, the current crisis should be handled in ways that protect vulnerable children, many of whom have been traumatized in their home countries or during their journey to the U.S. border. Indeed, humanitarian workers receive frequent 

reports of trafficking for sexual exploitation or slave labor, as well as of organ trafficking, kidnappings, and brutal killings. The United Nations High Commissioner 

for Refugees estimates that 58 percent of unaccompanied minors have legitimate 

claims under U.S. and humanitarian law. 

Of the current funding request pending before Congress, far too little is to be 

made available for addressing the root causes of migration in Central America. The 

$295 million included to address ‘‘economic, social, governance, and citizen security 

conditions’’ is also to be used for the repatriation and reintegration of migrants in 

Central America. Once these purposes are accomplished, it is unclear how much will 

be left to meet the significant challenges in remaining areas. 

The following suggestions are intended to spur broader thinking about a comprehensive, long-term approach: 

• Transparency and accountability around new spending programs must be core 

commitments upheld by recipients in the region of U.S. and other international 

assistance. Corruption erodes trust and fosters cynicism across societies and 

undermines the legitimacy of government institutions. Building institutional 

capacity and effectiveness means gaining the confidence of citizens across the 

board. Leaders of key institutions should not serve unless they are models of 

these principles. 

• Future policy initiatives should, as much as possible, be the outcome of broadbased national dialogues in Central America among a range of stakeholders— 

government representatives; the private sector, business, and professional associations; the Church; think tanks and universities; organized labor; nonprofit 

organizations; campesino organizations. The forums, with the involvement of 

other donors and international development banks, should be convened for the 

purpose of devising concrete proposals for fostering security, governance, and 

inclusive development. 

• Improving citizen security—a public good—is a necessary condition for fostering 

investment and economic growth. U.S. assistance programs under CARSI have 

been overly focused on counterdrug operations and combating other forms of 

organized crime. A ‘‘whole of government’’ approach has purported to coordinate 

development and violence prevention strategies with improved law enforcement 

and interdiction. But in practice, development goals have been secondary and 

the security programs not sufficiently focused on fighting the crime and violence 

that affect citizens’ daily lives.12 The greatest examples of success in Latin 

America in improving citizen security involve local, community-based initiatives 

53 

that involve nongovernmental organizations, the private sector, and other civic 

groups in addition to the police and judiciary. 

• While security is paramount, other development and governance efforts must go 

forward in parallel fashion. Efforts must be made to foster opportunity in the 

legal economy by investing in human capital formation that matches education 

and job training with the demands of the labor market, including through strategic investment with a training component. Ensuring the reliability of a legal 

framework that creates certainty for investors without ignoring the needs of 

ordinary citizens for whom the judicial system does not function is paramount. 

• More must be done to improve the capacity of remittances to contribute to 

productive investment in communities, in addition to subsidizing household 

consumption. 

• Investments must be made to expand quality public education, including by 

stimulating U.S. community colleges and vocational and trade schools to partner with underserved communities in Central America. Part of these exchanges 

should be aimed at improving teacher training. 

No lasting solution to the current crisis will be found ‘‘on the cheap’’ or in the 

short run. In the current U.S. fiscal climate, only smart investments that derive 

from a strategic logic will survive the political process now and into the future. As 

the example of Colombia demonstrates, a major turnaround in a country’s fortunes 

is possible when bipartisan majorities in the United States provide sustained support to committed leaders in and out of government who mobilize their country’s 

own talent and resources. Central Americans came together with the support of the 

international community to end their fratricidal wars two decades ago. A similar 

effort is needed to convert the current crisis into an opportunity for building more 

inclusive and democratic societies. 

———————— 

Notes 

1 I am grateful to Latin American Program interns Kathryn Moffat, Angela Budzinski, and 

Carla Mavaddat for research assistance. 2The number of Salvadorans, Guatemalans, and Hondurans requesting political asylum in 

Belize, Costa Rica, Mexico, and Panama, also increased significantly. 3See Cynthia Arnson, ed., ‘‘In the Wake of War: Democratization and Internal Armed Conflict 

in Latin America’’ (Washington, DC, and Stanford, CA: Woodrow Wilson Center Press and Stanford University Press, 2012). 4The rates are 41.2 per 100,000 in El Salvador, 39.9 per 100,000 in Guatemala, and 90.4 per 

100,000, according to 2012 figures of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. 5See United Nations Development Program, ‘‘Informe Regional de Desarrollo Humano: 

Seguridad Ciudadana con rostro humano: diagno ́stico y propuestas para Ame ́rica Latina’’ (New 

York: 2013). 6The top cities in terms of places of origin of unaccompanied minors were: San Pedro Sula, 

Tegucigalpa, and Juticalpa, Honduras; followed by San Salvador, El Salvador; La Ceiba, Honduras; and Guatemala City. 7 U.S. Department of Homeland Security, ‘‘Homeland Intelligence Today: Unaccompanied 

Alien Children’’ (UACs) by Location of Origin for CY 2014: Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala, May 27, 2014. 8 Jose ́ Miguel Cruz, Rafael Ferna ́ndez de Castro, and Gema Santamarı ́a Balmaceda, ‘‘Political 

Transition, Social Violence, and Gangs: Cases in Central America and Mexico,’’ in Arnson, ed., 

‘‘In the Wake of War,’’ 317–49. Analysts such as Douglas Farah also point to the failure of postwar demobilization and reintegration schemes as a factor behind the rise of gangs. See Douglas 

Farah, ‘‘Organized Crime in El Salvador: Its Homegrown and Transnational Dimension,’’ in 

Cynthia J. Arnson and Eric L. Olson, eds., ‘‘Organized Crime in Central America: The Northern 

Triangle’’ (Washington, DC: Latin American Program, Woodrow Wilson International Center for 

Scholars, 2011), 104–38. 9 U.N. Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, ‘‘Social Panorama of Latin 

America’’ (Santiago: 2013). See also: Hugo Beteta, ‘‘Central American Development: Two Decades of Progress and Challenges for the Future,’’ Regional Migration Study Group, Woodrow 

Wilson Center and Migration Policy Institute, July 2012, 8. 10 10 Figures concerning the Ni-Ni’s are drawn from Programa Estado de la Nacio ́n, ‘‘Nini en 

Centroame ́rica: la poblacio ́n de 15 a 24 an ̃ os que no estudia ni trabaja,’’ presentation at the 

INCAE and Woodrow Wilson Center conference ‘‘Encuentro de Dia ́logo en Temas de Seguridad 

Centroamericana,’’ Managua, Nicaragua, March 24, 2014. 11See Dinorah Azpuru, ‘‘Las condiciones del Tria ́ngulo Norte y los menores migrantes,’’ 

ConDistintosAcentos, Universidad de Salamanca, Spain, July 14, 2014. 12 Andrew Selee, Cynthia J. Arnson, and Eric L. Olson, ‘‘Crime and Violence in Mexico and 

Central America: An Evolving but Incomplete U.S. Policy Response,’’ Regional Migration Study 

Group, Wilson Center and Migration Policy Institute, January 2013. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. 

Mr. Johnson. 

54 

STATEMENT OF STEPHEN JOHNSON, REGIONAL DIRECTOR, 

LATIN AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN, INTERNATIONAL REPUBLICAN INSTITUTE, WASHINGTON, DC 

Mr. JOHNSON. Chairman Menendez, Senator Corker, thank you 

for this opportunity to testify on the conditions in Central America 

that are driving out minors as well as adults. 

While overall apprehensions at the U.S. Southwest border are a 

quarter of what they were during the largest waves of Mexican migration that took place 14 years ago, the current uptick among 

Central American arrivals is worrisome because of the unaccompanied children that are among the migrants and are taking extreme risks. That highlights the citizen insecurity factor as a driver 

and the presence of criminal trafficking organizations. 

As you have already heard today, the region has persistent security challenges, so I will not add to the list, except to say that there 

is a good case to be made for focusing attention on the conditions 

that compel people to leave their country. 

Thirty years ago, after prolonged periods of civil conflict, these 

countries chose to exchange military rule for civilian elected leadership. No question, it was the right decision. But, at U.S. urging, it 

meant reorganizing government, adopting democratic behaviors, 

and building a base of public servants from a pool that had little 

experience. Police had to be divorced from the armed forces to 

which they had belonged. Courthouses had to be built and modern 

justice systems established. It is a process that is still going on 

today. 

Unfortunately, crime and violence prey on such societies at their 

moment of weakness. During this time, Colombian and Mexican 

drug traffickers, fueled by North American cocaine habits, invaded 

Central America. Initially disorganized, deportations from the 

United States gave rise to youth gangs. Our country has tried to 

help Central American neighbors, among others, such as Mexico, 

establish new justice systems, but these tasks take time, and they 

are resource-intense. Central America’s traditional models of centralized top-down governance with weak districts and municipalities also leave citizens, mayors, and town councils largely out of the 

business of making their communities more secure. 

In the work that it does in Central America, the International 

Republican Institute specializes in the development of citizen security mechanisms that bridge the gap between citizens, municipalities, and national-level efforts. We have begun working with public 

security officials at the ministry level, as well as municipal authorities, to strengthen citizen input and participation, and conduct exchanges with communities throughout the hemisphere that have 

exemplary citizen safety models. However, the number of municipalities is huge, and there is much work to be done, municipality 

by municipality. 

Mr. Chairman, the United States has many priorities in the 

world, but, whatever actions are decided, they should take into account the partnership that our country has entered with Central 

American countries 30 years ago to turn dictatorship into democratic rule. Most of the heavy lifting is being done by our partners. 

Our approach to helping them has to be long term, comprehensive, 

consistent, and strategic. 

55 

Thank you very much for this opportunity to testify, and I welcome your questions. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Johnson follows:] 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF STEPHEN JOHNSON

Chairman Menendez, Senator Corker, members of the Senate Foreign Relations 

Committee, thank you for this opportunity to testify on the conditions in Central 

America that are driving out minors as well as adults. Meager employment prospects, high rates of violent crime, and limited state capacity to guarantee services 

and apply the rule of law in the northern triangle countries of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras—factors triggering continued migration to the United States— 

have been and will continue to have an impact on the well-being of Central America 

and Mexico, as well as ourselves. 

IRI IN CENTRAL AMERICA

The International Republican Institute (IRI) is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization and one of the four core institutes of the National Endowment for Democracy. 

Our mission is to encourage democracy in places where it is absent, help democracy 

become more effective where it is in danger, and share best practices in democratic 

processes and governance where it is flourishing. While the future of the northern 

triangle countries is up to the people who live there to decide, the United States 

can have a pivotal role in helping these societies find tools and solutions that will 

bring down the level of violence and increase prospects for personal economic 

advancement—two key elements in reducing the outflow of migrants. 

Central America has long been a part of IRI’s programs. In carrying out our mission to support more democratic, accountable government, we have striven to 

enhance civic participation at the subnational level by increasing civil society organizations’ capacity and linkages to civic and political leaders of all parties and levels 

of government. Moreover, we have encouraged officials at all levels to reach out to 

citizens to listen to their ideas and become more aware of their concerns. In this 

vein, we have specialized in the development of citizen security mechanisms that 

bridge the gap between citizens, municipalities and nationally administered police 

programs. We have worked with public security officials at the national level, as 

well as municipal authorities, to adopt best practices that will make neighborhoods 

and communities safer. However, the amount of work to be done is huge and it cannot be done overnight. 

OVERVIEW

Among the issues that most challenge neighboring governments and citizens are 

economics and safety. Poverty and violence are conditions that push people out. 

Behind these factors are conflicts, demographic trends and governance issues that 

determine whether these conditions will improve or get worse. Where people go 

depends on finding conditions nearby that are better than the ones they are leaving. 

In that regard, the United States has witnessed two broad migration trends. For 

almost a century, movements from Mexico have been accompanied by economic 

downturns and lagging reforms at home and better job prospects in the United 

States. Migration from Central America has taken place mostly within the last 30 

years, triggered at first by internal conflicts and later by drug trafficking, high 

crime levels and gang violence. 

Migration from Mexico has been much more massive, judging by U.S. border 

apprehensions that peaked in 2000 at almost 1.6 million.1 Since economic conditions 

have improved, accompanied by internal reforms and Mexico’s embrace of free trade, 

its migrant outflows have begun to subside. Central American flows were probably 

greatest during the period of internal conflicts during the 1980s when an estimated 

1 million Salvadorans and Guatemalans came to the United States. There was a lull 

during the 1990s when peace accords were signed, then migration began to pick up, 

evidenced by 30,000 border apprehensions in 2000 to 142,000 in 2012.2

At the time when significant migration started, Central American countries (with 

the exception of Costa Rica) were making the difficult transition from military rule 

to democracy. Over time, the United States offered security and development assistance, political advice and trade benefits. For certain countries like El Salvador, 

Guatemala, and Honduras (known as the ‘‘northern triangle’’), the challenges were 

deeper and thus reforms have been halting and have taken longer. By their own 

accounts, they still have progress to make, largely in establishing rule of law, enhancing economic opportunity and improving governing processes. 

56 

CHALLENGES TO GOVERNANCE

On the supply side, it would seem that the Governments of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras should be more capable of stemming violent crime, which generally takes the form of murder, robbery, kidnappings, and extortion by street 

gangs. Yet for the past half-century, forces that continually tested their capacity to 

manage have challenged these three countries. In all cases, barriers to further 

progress suggest the need to improve the effectiveness of governance. 

In the late 1970s, the large agricultural plantations on which these economies 

depended began to mechanize, a shift that drove increasing numbers of rural farmworkers (campesinos) out of the fields and into cities to find work for which they 

were barely educated and largely unprepared. Growing populations overwhelmed 

rudimentary school systems that could hardly educate average citizens beyond primary grades. The military governments at the time could neither deliver services 

nor deal with social changes taking place. Hostilities escalated between radicals and 

military governments in El Salvador and Guatemala that brought in huge numbers 

of weapons. The resulting turmoil left an opening for criminal networks to enter just 

as increasing drug consumption in the United States began to fuel them. Colombian 

drug trafficking operations sprang up where police—all part of the military at the 

time and dedicated mostly to military tasks—were absent. Clandestine airports 

began to dot the Caribbean coast of Honduras. 

Elections that brought in civilian governments in Honduras (1981), El Salvador 

(1984), and Guatemala (1984) were encouraging but created new sets of problems. 

Some were basic like setting up functioning government agencies led by civilian 

politicians who had little previous administrative experience. Others were more 

complex such as reducing corrupt practices in politics and business. Another was 

separating the police from the armed forces and establishing the rule of law. The 

United States also began deporting undocumented Central American juveniles that 

had arrived in the 1980s and fallen into the U.S. corrections system. Some took 

what they learned from U.S. gang culture and transferred it to their new home. 

Gangs grew quickly, affiliating with U.S. groups, while taking in new deportees 

and unemployed youth from broken homes and informal farmworker families. In 

Guatemala’s main cities, some clashed with Mexican drug mafias competing for territory. Not only were new, civilian police forces having trouble keeping up with 

existing criminal threats, they were underresourced and, in the cases of Guatemala 

and Honduras, experienced several rounds of leadership changes.3 Lawmakers 

enacted new so-called ‘‘Hard Fist’’ (Mano Dura) laws intending to crack down, but 

weak courts and porous jails were unable to deal with the rising number of arrests. 

In Guatemala and Honduras, no social programs existed to supplant delinquent 

activity, as they did in neighboring Nicaragua—programs restructured from Sandinista youth indoctrination efforts of the 1980s. 

Another, often overlooked obstacle to improved citizen security has been the prevailing model of governance in much of Latin America, in which power is heavily 

concentrated in the executive branch of the national government. El Salvador, 

Guatemala, and Honduras have national ministries administering local schools, supplying most government services and controlling local police. In colonial times, central authorities appointed mayors and rarely delegated authority. In recent times, 

elected municipal governments have not enjoyed much more authority nor have 

mayors and councilmen had the administrative skills and experience to transparently manage public finances. Thus in today’s complex world, centralization 

ensures that only a few politically connected communities and neighborhoods get 

meaningful attention and opportunities for citizen involvement at the community 

are slim. The bureaucratic bottlenecks centralization hampers development, contributes to economic stagnation and lagging improvements to neighborhoods that then 

become subject to criminal predation. 

BUILDING CAPACITY AND CITIZEN PARTICIPATION

While many Central American citizens and leaders would like to see these conditions change, progress is not always possible without some encouragement. In IRI’s 

efforts to build governing capacity, IRI partners with citizens, civil society, and 

national and local authorities. Especially at the local level, where citizens have the 

most contact with governing officials, IRI programs in El Salvador, Guatemala, and 

Honduras help strengthen the ability of municipalities to respond to citizen needs 

through a variety of best practices. These include opening budgets to public scrutiny, holding regular townhall meetings in each neighborhood or barrio to record 

and discuss citizen concerns, establishing community development offices to help 

start small businesses, and using digital media to increase contact with ordinary 

citizens as well as solicit feedback on policies and programs. All of this helps build 

57 

citizen awareness of what public officials are doing and what they are supposed to 

do, as well as establish trust. 

Regarding citizen security, IRI works at both national and local levels. In Guatemala, the national government has established a countrywide network of municipal 

security councils (MSCs) comprised of citizens and local government representatives 

charged to devise public safety recommendations under the national prevention 

strategy and serve as a bridge between citizens, municipal government and national 

police components. IRI runs workshops for these MSCs to help identify community 

safety problems and develop collaborative solutions. Peer exchanges encourage dialogue at the global level. As part of the IRI Rising Stars program, Guatemalan mayors have traveled to cities in Chile and Colombia to learn about innovative municipal security practices and ways to enhance citizen services. 

In Puerto Cortes, Honduras, IRI has coordinated with the municipal government 

to train neighborhood leaders called patronatos in promoting community safety in 

coordination with local authorities and the police. Puerto Cortes is renowned for 

building its own command center staffed by local citizens who receive emergency 

calls and then dispatch national police units where they are needed. In the 

‘‘Together for our CommUNITY’’ program, the local patronatos learn negotiation, 

trust-building and communication techniques to obtain more effective cooperation 

and information from citizens. IRI is hoping to replicate this practice in other Central American municipalities to help local authorities limit opportunities for criminal activities to flourish. 

CONCLUSION

That Central America is experiencing a security crisis is nothing new. But as this 

issue has grabbed U.S. attention again with the arrival of unaccompanied minors, 

it seems more urgent. In Central America, the United States has been working with 

willing societies to establish stable governments ruled by popular will and economies open to citizen participation for more than 30 years. Ongoing challenges suggest that progress will depend on long-term strategies and a commitment to partner 

in reform. 

Progress is being made. The U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of International 

Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs’ Model Precincts approach that was introduced in 2004 has helped lift standards in community policing and coincides with 

IRI’s focus on citizen inputs to local public safety plans. Coupled with municipalityby-municipality governance reform initiatives like IRI’s to build links of cooperation 

between citizens, local authorities and nationally administered police units, territory 

can be slowly recovered from criminal organizations and gangs. Beyond improving 

public safety, these efforts may have economic value. Not long ago, the World Bank 

published estimates of the economic cost of crime and violence in Central America 

in 2011 as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP). For El Salvador, the total 

costs amounted to nearly 11 percentage points. For Honduras, it was almost 10 percent and for Guatemala, it amounted to nearly 8 percent of GDP. If each country 

could reduce its homicide rate by 10 percent, the Bank estimated that GDP could 

potentially rise by almost a percentage point4—an economic boost that could facilitate a rise in employment prospects, perhaps further reducing migration incentives. 

Mr. Chairman, whatever actions the U.S. Government decides, it should take into 

account the partnership it entered into with Central American countries 30 years 

ago to turn dictatorship into democratic rule. Most of the heavy lifting has been 

done by our partners. But when it comes to governance, there is much work left 

to be done. 

———————— 

Notes 

1 Yearbook of Immigration Statistics: 2012, U.S. Department of Homeland Security. 

2 Ibid. 

3Stephen Johnson, Johanna Mendelson Forman, and Katherine Bliss, ‘‘Police Reform in Latin 

America—Implications for U.S. Policy,’’ Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington, DC, February 2012, pp. 27–32. 4 ‘‘Crime and Violence in Central America—A Development Challenge,’’ The World Bank, 

2011, pp. 7, 9. 

The CHAIRMAN. Well, thank you all very much for your testimony. 

We are at the end of the first vote, and so we will have about 

20 minutes before we will be able to return. I hope that you will 

be able to stay with us, because there are questions that we want 

58 

to ask of you. And I think each of you has a valuable contribution 

to make. 

So, the committee will stand in recess, subject to the call of the 

Chair. I expect it to be somewhere around 20 minutes. 

[Recess.] 

The CHAIRMAN. This hearing will come back to order. 

Let me both apologize to our panel and to thank them for their 

forbearance. There were more votes than I understood there were, 

so—we just had the last one. The good news, at this point, we do 

not have any more votes until much later. So—and I know that 

Senator Corker—I left him, on the floor—he is on his way back, as 

well. But, in the interests of the collective time of everybody, let 

me try to move forward with some questions. 

Ms. Nazario, you spent time in many of the communities from 

which the children are leaving. Some of my colleagues suggest that 

their parents’ decision to send their child to a 2,000-mile journey 

is purely opportunistic and a way to take advantage of American 

law. Are these parents indifferent to the dangers their children 

might face on this perilous journey? And is it just a question of opportunity, or is it a question of violence, some of which you described earlier? If you would turn your microphone on, thank you. 

Ms. NAZARIO. I think these parents make a valuation of: Is it 

safer to bring my child, despite the dangers of that journey, or is 

it safer to leave them in the home country? And parents who have 

come ahead of their children oftentimes, 10 years ago, would say, 

‘‘It is more dangerous to put my kid in south-central Los Angeles 

than leave them in a neighborhood in Honduras, where they are 

being taken care of by a grandparent or an aunt,’’ and that equation has shifted radically, given what is happening on the ground 

in Honduras. And so, these parents have decided that it is just too 

dangerous to leave their children there. 

I think, also, greater border enforcement has—is part of that picture, because, as we have ramped up border enforcement, we have 

made it—you know, a lot of parents come here honestly thinking 

they are going back quickly. They prefer to live in their home countries with everything they know and love, and with their families. 

So, when parents come here, they do not buy a bed, they do not 

buy furniture. These mothers say, ‘‘I am going to go back anytime.’’ 

I think now, with greater border enforcement, they are more clearheaded about, ‘‘It is going to be very hard to circulate back home. 

And so, I am going to go ahead and bring up my children more 

quickly than I would have, otherwise.’’ 

So, a decade ago, you know, half of Mexicans went back within 

a year. They want to circulate back home. Now, with greater border enforcement, fewer than a quarter circulate back home within 

a year, because they know that it is getting harder to get in, and 

that makes it more costly. So, that is been part of the dynamic, as 

well. 

The CHAIRMAN. But, in the first instance, is it fear or opportunity? 

Ms. NAZARIO. It is absolutely fear. 

The CHAIRMAN. Yes. 

59 

Ms. NAZARIO. It is absolutely fear driving this. And there has 

been much talk about 2012, but the actual surge of children began 

in 2011. That is when we started to see the numbers go up dramatically. 

The CHAIRMAN. Ms. Arnson, let me ask you. I know you have 

done a lot of work over the years in the hemisphere. I am wondering about whether or not, in addition to my arguments about 

the lack of resources and our disengagement since this—the wars 

in Central America—we fought to create the seeds of democracy, 

and then we did not nurture it for it to grow fully in all of its dimensions—citizen security, economic growth and opportunity, and 

all the other things we want to see in a democratic society. How 

would you assess the effectiveness of current U.S. assistance programs in Central America? And what steps could be taken to enhance the quality of programs and ensure a greater impact on 

these countries? 

Ms. ARNSON. Well, I think U.S. assistance has perhaps been 

most effective in El Salvador, where there is a formal Partnership 

for Growth. El Salvador is one of four countries globally. And these 

are shared objectives that are arrived at together between the government—between the U.S. Government and the Salvadorian Government, and there are regular reporting requirements, there is accountability, there are metrics, and they have identified strategic 

areas for investment. But, I do believe that the effort, to a certain 

extent, has been under-resourced, and therefore, what you have, 

certainly in the citizen security area, are many small little points 

of light, but they do not connect or necessarily build towards a 

much bigger national phenomenon. 

I know that there has been great frustration, in a country such 

as Honduras, with the lack of leadership in security institutions. 

And therefore, people start—from the various agencies that have 

created vetted units, start from the ground up, and, in many 

ways—and forgive me for saying this—bypassing the leadership 

structures. So, that is why I have tried to emphasize the need for 

transparency and accountability as a key ingredient of any programs that we would put in place. You cannot just throw money 

at this problem or this set of problems. As much as I do believe 

that greater resources are necessary, there have to be specific objectives and commitments from the recipient governments to adhere to certain standards. And the ability to give assistance ought 

to be contingent on the receiving country’s willingness to abide by 

those criteria. 

The CHAIRMAN. I agree with you on that, and I think those are 

very important. 

Let me ask you, as well, though, is it not the case that this is 

not a light switch? We are not going to suddenly turn on a certain 

amount of resources, with all the accountability, transparency, and 

conditionality, and find a change in Central America from one year 

to the other? 

Ms. ARNSON. No—— 

The CHAIRMAN. It is going to take some time. It took some time 

to get to where it is, a part of it from our own neglect, part of it 

from the weak and very often corrupt governments that have existed in the region. And you are just not going to turn this around 

60 

overnight. So, having a commitment, here, is going to be necessary 

in order to get it to a point where we can see citizen security, 

where we can see a greater movement towards institutions that are 

transparent, not corrupt, and that we will see the benefits of that, 

as we did, for example, in Colombia—different context, different set 

of circumstances, but, nonetheless, it took some time. Is that a fair 

assessment? 

Ms. ARNSON. I would certainly completely agree with that statement. We tend, in the United States, to focus on a crisis and respond to the crisis and then turn away once the immediate crisis 

has dissipated. The effort in Central America is going to take 

years. The aid programs to Colombia have evolved over almost 15 

years now, and it takes time to turn things around. And I think 

staying the course—but doing so with metrics and measurements 

in place, is the way to proceed, to take the long perspective. 

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Johnson, I would like to hear your views on 

it. 

The Johnson sitting at the table. We are going to get right to 

you. [Laughter.] 

Mr. JOHNSON. Well, in many respects, they are similar. I think 

our approach to the problems in Central America, to the extent 

that we do not want them on our doorstep, it is important to have 

a long-term view, that we have a comprehensive policy and that it 

is strategically driven and not quite as episodic. Very difficult for 

our country to do, because, in a democracy, we sometimes change 

our priorities, and, because of our position in the world, we have 

to look at other things that come upon our doorstep that we have 

to deal with. 

But, given that, and given the kinds of tools that we have that 

we can apply to these problems, I think consistency and a strategic 

vision is really important. 

Sometimes we do not appreciate the enormity of the change that 

is involved. For instance, in Colombia, the transformation of the 

Napoleonic code to an accusatorial criminal justice system seems 

like just a matter of changing the laws and retraining lawyers. 

But, what it also entailed was the building of courthouses, which 

Colombia never needed before, criminal justice tracking systems for 

cases, evidence warehouses, and forensic laboratories, which they 

never had. So, it ended up being much more than what was originally anticipated. And when you multiply that over something like 

1,100 municipalities for the various installations and facilities that 

had to be built, it ended up being quite an investment. And I think 

we have to appreciate that dimension as much as the dimension of 

changing certain kinds of behaviors. 

In Central America, we do not have the luxury of having all the 

criminal elements, say, out in the rural areas, as much as that was 

the case in Colombia. In Central America, you have criminal elements that are in the neighborhoods, that are out in the rural 

areas, as well, but also in the capital and in, you know, the very 

dense urban areas, in the form of drug-trafficking organizations, 

some human traffickers that penetrate into those areas, as well as 

criminal youth gangs. This is very difficult to deal with, especially 

when you are dealing with drug traffickers that have a lot more 

resources, that—in many cases, than the government does to try to 

61 

deal with them and try to apprehend them. And so, very difficult 

to go up against this. The corrupting power that they have is tremendous. 

And again, it is going to take time. But, one of the things that 

we feel is key, at least in my organization, where I work now, is 

that citizen participation in citizen security is very important, because people in their own neighborhoods know some of the things 

that need to happen and need to change, in terms of leadership, for 

their authorities to begin to react in a proper way that will deal 

with the problems that they actually feel. And the top-down kind 

of leadership, of governance that has been the experience in Central America, long before the transformation to democratic rule, is 

something that is still there and still impedes, to a great degree, 

the ability for citizens to have a voice. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much. 

Senator Johnson. 

Senator JOHNSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I know that Senator Corker asked for unanimous consent to include in the record Table 39 from Department of Homeland Security, Enforced Alien Removal Module. I would ask for unanimous 

consent to have my summary of that table. 

The CHAIRMAN. Without objection. 

[The information referred to can be found on page 83.] 

Senator JOHNSON. I would like to speak to it, because I would 

like to provide the full and complete picture, in terms of removals 

and returns, which is what I think the American people would really view as deportation. 

So, while it is true, in terms of formal removals, which is what 

I believe the Chair was referring to when he said that President 

Obama is sometimes referred to as the ‘‘Deportation King,’’ formal 

removal—as President Obama is ahead of the pace of President 

Bush’s both first and second term—and removals are defined as the 

compulsory and confirmed movement of an inadmissible or deportable alien out of the United States based on an order of removal. 

An alien who is removed has administrative or criminal consequences placed on subsequent reentry owing to the fact of the removal. That is what a removal is. 

A return, on the other hand, is the confirmed movement of an 

inadmissible or deportable alien out of the United States not based 

on an order of removal. 

Now, I think what we are really trying to do, if we are trying 

to speed up the process, is to get more returns, as opposed to removals, which take a whole adjudication process; removals are taking years and creating even more incentives for people to come. 

So, let me just lay out the facts, in terms of President Obama’s 

record on removals and returns, which is what I think most Americans would view as total deportations. 

In his first term, President Obama had about 1.58 million removals, 1.6 million returns, for a total of 3.2 million, what I would consider, deportations as a broadly viewed term. 

President Bush, on the other hand, in his second term, had about 

1.2 million removals, compared to President Obama’s 1.6. But, in 

terms of returns, he had 3.8 million, versus President Obama’s 1.6. 

62 

So, total removal and returns of President Bush’s second term, 4 

years versus 4 years, was 5 million removals and returns under the 

Bush administration, 3.2 million returns and removals under President Obama. In President Bush’s entire two terms, there were 

about 10.3 million removals and returns. 

So, I just do not think we are being totally complete in our description of what President Obama has actually done, because if 

you combine the two, his record is definitely lagging President 

Bush’s and previous administrations, in terms of actual removals 

and returns. Again, 5 million for President Bush’s second term, 3.2 

million for President Obama’s first term. But, again, I think that 

just provides a more complete record of what the problem is. 

I am not sure whether you were here during my first line of 

questioning, but I would like to give the witnesses the exact same 

opportunity. Please, in a sentence, maybe two—I have a little bit 

more time—What should be the achievable goal of U.S. policy? 

Achievable goal. I will start with Mr. Johnson. 

Mr. JOHNSON. Our goals in foreign policy are to protect our country, to defend our Nation and defend our citizens, and protect our 

borders. In doing that, we have a foreign policy that works with 

other countries to encourage reforms and develop alliances and—— 

Senator JOHNSON. Okay, let me just stop you there. Let me define an achievable goal on unaccompanied children. We have this 

humanitarian crisis on the border, 57,000 currently in this fiscal 

year. Secretary Johnson said it could be 90,000 by the end of this 

fiscal year, so by September 30; over 100,000 by 2015. So, again, 

what I am talking about is, What is the achievable goal to solve 

the problem of unaccompanied children? Keep it brief, because I 

think this can be described pretty briefly. 

Mr. JOHNSON. Well, with due respect, Senator, immigration policy and border policy are beyond the scope of my current responsibilities, and so I will defer—— 

Senator JOHNSON. Okay. 

Mr. JOHNSON [continuing]. That question to the other witnesses. 

Senator JOHNSON. Okay. 

Ms. Arnson. 

Ms. ARNSON. Yes. The achievable goal. One would be to speed up 

the process by which children who might have legitimate cases for 

asylum or refugee status are heard, so that that waiting time in 

the hundreds of thousands of cases that are in the docket is rapidly 

gone through, and to speed up the process without violating U.S. 

law and international law regarding the claims of people who potentially have requests. That is the very short term. 

The longer term, of course, is to contribute to a more stable and 

prosperous and safe Central America. And that is the long-term 

goal, I think, that has to be the focus of this committee, but also 

an important objective of U.S. foreign policy. 

Senator JOHNSON. But, based on your answer, what you are telling me is that long-term goal is probably not achievable in the 

short term. And let me just ask you, What is the speeding up of 

the process of adjudication doing? That is a goal to achieve what? 

Why do you want to speed up the adjudication process? 

Ms. ARNSON. To speed it up so that the backlog does not exist 

and send a message that is, therefore, exploited by traffickers to 

63 

play on people’s fears and hopes, that once they get to the country, 

they will stay for some number of months or, you know, stretching 

into years, so that those cases can be speeded up, that there is an 

expanded process of hearings—an expanded process, and a more 

expeditious process. 

Senator JOHNSON. So, you are saying the goal would be to send 

a message to the smugglers so that they no longer send children 

to America unaccompanied. So, again, I am just trying to focus in, 

would not the goal, in that case, be to stop the flow? 

Ms. ARNSON. I think the goal is to contribute to conditions that 

no longer serve as incentives to the flow. The principal cause, I believe, is not, you know, the misimpression, although the rumors are 

certainly spread by these unscrupulous trafficking groups. The critical driver is violence. And if you look at the places of origin of the 

children that have come as part of this 52,000 this fiscal year, and 

you look at the levels of violence in the sending areas, those are 

the most violent places in Central America. 

Senator JOHNSON. I did point out, earlier in questioning, that the 

murder rate in both New Orleans and Detroit are comparable to 

one or two of those countries in Central America. I do not have the 

graph right here. We have violence as well. 

Just really quickly, Ms. Nazario, what would you say is the goal, 

our short-term, achievable goal, to address the unaccompanied children problem? 

Ms. NAZARIO. I think the short-term, achievable goal is to protect 

children from being sent back to death. And I think there is a humane, practical approach that is not being discussed by the Senate. 

I am concerned and—that children are released, and too many of 

them do not show up for their court hearings. And if you were a 

7-year-old child and did not have an attorney, you would not show 

up for your court hearing, either. I think you can hold these children for 60 to 90 days—A limited amount of time would be humane—in refugee facilities, or even the facilities we currently have, 

bring in immigration judges, spend money on that, and adjudicate 

their cases quickly. Give them a full, fair hearing with someone 

who knows how to bring out—do child-sensitive interviewing techniques, provide that child with an attorney, so it is not a sham 

process. And if they do qualify—and, to answer your previous question, 40 to 60 percent of these children do qualify for some existing 

relief to stay in this country. Very few of them are getting that, because they do not have attorneys. But, if they do qualify, then let 

them into this country and increase the number of refugees and 

asylees that we take. 

Senator JOHNSON. So, your—— 

Ms. NAZARIO. And if they do not qualify, if they are economic migrants, then deport them immediately, and that message will get 

back to those countries, ‘‘If you are coming for economic reasons’’— 

and there are parts of Honduras, and there are people who are 

doing that—then send them back, and that will send a message. 

And that option is—and I am not popular in some human rights 

groups for saying, ‘‘Keep these kids in detention,’’ but that will 

force them to go through the process and not simply be released 

and sometimes show up to court. And, by the way, they are much 

more likely to show up to court if they have an attorney, and these 

64 

cases go much more quickly if they have an attorney. But, if they 

are a refugee, I think we are a compassionate country, and we will 

let people in. And if they are not, then deport them quickly. And 

that will send a message. 

Senator JOHNSON. I agree, we are compassionate. We want to 

treat these kids with real humanity. But, I am also highly concerned about parents making that decision, sending their kids on 

that very dangerous journey. I am concerned about those kids, as 

well. And from my standpoint, our primary goal has to be to stop 

the flow, deter parents from making that choice. If we have asylum 

cases, those should be requested in the home countries. And if we 

need to beef up resources, I would say, let us do it in the home 

countries. Let us not incentivize people to come here, take that 

very dangerous, very awful journey. 

Ms. NAZARIO. I think we need to do both. We need to have more 

in-country processing, the ability to apply for refugee status in 

these three countries, so those children—I mean, I spent 3 months 

making that journey, and I had post-traumatic stress; and, believe 

me, many children die and lose arms and legs on that journey. You 

do not want that. So, you do need to beef up that ability to do that 

in those three home countries. 

Senator JOHNSON. Okay. 

Ms. NAZARIO. And we have not done that. 

Senator JOHNSON. Well, thank you. 

Again, it is very important that we define the goal, define an 

achievable goal, so we can design policy to actually make that 

goal—— 

Ms. NAZARIO. What I have defined is achievable. 

Senator JOHNSON. Okay, thank you. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. 

Ms. Arnson, I see you—— 

Ms. ARNSON. Just a quick followup, Senator Johnson. 

I have spoken with a lot of people—U.S. officials and others—in 

preparation for this hearing, but also over the length of this crisis. 

And one of the things that sticks in my mind is the comment of 

a senior official from the U.S. Government—I will not say more, so 

as not to identify him—but, he said that if, as a parent, you face 

the choice of your child joining a gang, being killed because they 

are not joining a gang, or sending that child to the United States, 

regardless of the perils of the journey, it is pretty obvious, you 

know, why many parents make that choice. And those sending conditions have to be addressed. 

The CHAIRMAN. Well, look, I appreciate all the information and 

the views. 

You know, as I understand it, Honduras is the—per capital, is 

the murder capital of the world. That beats Detroit. If you are the 

murder capital of the world, you are the murder capital of the 

world. And I understand that two other countries are third and 

fifth in that category, as well. So, it is—that is globally—so, that 

is pretty signature, in terms of citizen security and why people flee. 

The way you stop the flow is to change the realities on the 

ground in Central America so that people will stay in their country 

and not flee out of fear, or even a belief of fear of opportunity. If 

65 

I have no fear for my life and if I have opportunity, then I am not 

going to flee. I have visited those Central American countries. They 

are quite beautiful. So, I think that if we really want to stem the 

flow, we have to change the realities on the ground, because, if not, 

this will be a reoccurring problem. It will have its spikes, and it 

will have its lows. But, the goal is to ultimately change the dynamics so we do not have any of this flow coming to the United States, 

other than through normal legal procedures. 

Ms. Arnson? And then I will invite any other final comment and 

we will have to close the hearing. 

Ms. ARNSON. Great. Senator Menendez, you rightly focused on 

the statistics, the homicide statistics in Honduras, about 90 or 91 

per 100,000. I think it is worth recalling that the distinction of the 

most violent city of the world in the early 1990s went to Medellin, 

Colombia. And in the last year or two, Medellin was identified as 

the most innovative city in the world. Those homicide rates are still 

serious, but they have gone way down, and they have gone down 

as a result of a sustained investment, the participation of a broad 

swath of society, of the private sector, of the church, and of the 

local government in investing in human welfare and really transforming that city. So, it is possible to go from, you know, a very 

bad place to a much better, if not a good, place. 

The CHAIRMAN. Any other final comments, to give you the opportunity? Ladies first. 

Ms. Nazario. 

Ms. NAZARIO. Just that when I was just in Honduras, I saw very 

few children bringing up the issue of, you know, ‘‘Is there some avenue to stay legally in the United States?’’ What they all talked 

about, first, second, and third, was the violence. And until that 

changes—and I recognize that is a very difficult prospect, given the 

corruption and—the corruption that has really affected the economy, when 7 in—the Chamber of Commerce says that 7 in 10 small 

businesses have shut down in Honduras because of extortion 

threats on businesses. Can you imagine that happening in the 

United States? 

So, it is a very long-haul process, but I have long said that, to 

stem this exodus, whether it is children or adults, you have to deal 

with these issues—the root causes, these issues at its source. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. 

Mr. Johnson. 

Mr. JOHNSON. I would just say that, in addition to the work that 

is being done in our capital and in the capitals of the Central 

American countries, that we focus on citizens, involving their participation, because, ultimately, the policies that are being debated 

are ones that should impact them and affect their decisions as to 

whether they can stay in their countries or whether they have to 

look elsewhere to be able to lead predictable, safe lives. I think 

their voice is very important, and I hope that we can keep that in 

mind as we decide what actions to take, hopefully moving forward 

on this issue and the overall matter of our relationship with allies 

in Central America. 

Thank you. 

The CHAIRMAN. Well, all very valid points, and we will certainly, 

as we try to deal with what we are going to do on the cause side, 

66 

think about many of the suggestions that you have, collectively, 

had. 

I want to thank you all for your testimony and for hanging in 

here with us through the votes. 

This record will remain open until the close of business tomorrow. I would say that as the record remains open, we also will permit outside organizations to submit statements for the records. 

And, with the thanks of this committee, this hearing is adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 1:30 p.m., the hearing was adjourned.] 

ADDITIONAL MATERIAL SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD

RESPONSES OF AMBASSADOR THOMAS SHANNON TO QUESTIONS

SUBMITTED BY SENATOR ROBERT MENENDEZ

Question. What type of long-term funding would the State Department and 

USAID and other agencies need to address the current crisis comprehensively? 

Answer. The $300 million supplemental request for the Department of State and 

USAID in the administration’s supplemental request is a downpayment on a new 

strategic approach. We are working to include governance, economic prosperity, and 

security funding for the region in our out-year budget requests. The $300 million 

requested, of which $295 million is foreign assistance and $5 million is for public 

diplomacy, will be tailored to the absorptive capacity of Central America in a comprehensive manner. To address the principal drivers of migration, such as violence, 

the lack of economic opportunity, corruption, and weak public institutions, the 

administration is developing a comprehensive strategy for Central America. This 

strategy will prioritize expanding existing successful programs and new programs 

that will advance economic prosperity, governance, and security in El Salvador, 

Guatemala, and Honduras that demonstrate our commitment to a sustained engagement in Central America. 

Question. Over the past 5 years, have we had the right balance in our approach 

for Central America? What can be done to increase our emphasis on building governance and prosperity in the region? What are the specific elements we need to 

develop a comprehensive and long-term strategy for addressing the root causes of 

this crisis? 

Answer. We are seeking to rebalance our approach to Central America to emphasize security, economic prosperity, and governance. In this effort, we must build 

upon and expand proven programs that address the economic and educational deficiencies in the region and will improve the public’s trust and confidence in government institutions. We envision an economically integrated Central America that 

provides economic opportunities to its people; more democratic, accountable, transparent, and effective public institutions; and a safe environment for its citizens to 

build their lives in peace and stability. 

Through our Central America Regional Security Initiative (CARSI) approach we 

have been working with interagency partners, including USAID, to address the 

security problem using a holistic approach designed to create opportunities for atrisk youth and their communities, strengthen the rule of law through building the 

capacity of police, the judicial sector, and other critical governmental entities, and 

strengthen democratic institutions. 

We know that violence is only one of the underlying factors contributing to the 

surge of unaccompanied children arriving in the United States from Central America. Weak governance and lack of economic opportunity are other factors that contribute to out-migration, and we are working to enhance our cooperation with Central American countries. 

Question. Isn’t the violence ultimately what is driving these kids to leave? And 

if that’s not the driving factor then why aren’t we seeing those same pull factors 

causing a surge from other Central American countries such as Nicaragua and 

Belize, where economic deprivations are as acute but where there isn’t the same 

gang problem? 

Answer. Unaccompanied Central American children migrate to the United States 

for a number of reasons. High levels of violence in El Salvador, Guatemala, and 

Honduras are certainly one of the drivers of migration as are the pursuit of ecoVerDate Nov 24 2008 11:29 May 15, 2015 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00070 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 S:\FULL COMMITTEE\HEARING FILES\113TH CONGRESS, 2ND SESSION\2014 ISSUE H
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nomic and educational opportunities, and the potential for family reunification. 

These push factors also exist in other Central American countries, including Belize 

and Nicaragua, but there has not been a similar spike in numbers of unaccompanied 

children leaving either country for the United States. 

Like their neighbors, Nicaragua and Belize suffer from lack of economic growth 

and high levels of violence, respectively. Nicaragua remains the poorest country in 

Central America based on per capita GDP. Given the economic situation a substantial number of Nicaraguans emigrate each year; however, they mainly are destined 

for neighboring Costa Rica and not to the United States. Belize suffers from high 

levels of violence—in 2012 recording a homicide rate of 44.7 per 100,000. While 

gangs are present in both Nicaragua and Belize, they are more locally based with 

fewer transnational ties than those found in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. 

Despite these similarities, there are key differences in Nicaragua and Belize compared to El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras that help explain why emigration 

to the United States is not as high in the former two countries. Nicaragua, with 

a homicide rate of 11.3 per 100,000, remains significantly less violent compared to 

El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras which have rates of 41.2, 39.9, and 90.4, 

respectively. Belize’s economic situation is much brighter than its Northern Tier 

neighbors, with significantly higher wages in agriculture and other fields. As a 

result, Belize often attracts migrants from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. 

The potential for family reunification is not the same for Nicaragua and Belize 

as it is for the other Northern Tier countries. A 2011 study by the Pew Research 

Center cites less than 400,000 Nicaraguans living in the United States compared 

to an estimated 2 million Salvadorans, 1.2 million Guatemalans, and over 700,000 

Hondurans. We estimate there is an even smaller number of Belizeans present in 

the United States—significantly reducing the pull factor of family reunification for 

these two countries. 

Question. Considering that many of these children do not have safe home environments to return to and come from countries with virtually no child welfare systems 

in place, how will the administration ensure that those children who do not qualify 

for any type of protection or immigration status here in the U.S. will be returned 

in a safe, humane way? How can we ensure that these children, who are sent back 

to their homes with maybe only a bus ticket, don’t go back into the hands of smugglers and traffickers? What are the administration’s plans to fund reception and 

reintegration programs to make sure that doesn’t happen? Does the United States 

currently support reintegration programs for returned children? What, if any, new 

programs will address this issue? 

Answer. To respond to the immediate need to increase Central American governments’ capacity to receive returned migrants, we will work to expand and improve 

existing centers for repatriated migrants. On June 20, Vice President Biden announced $9.6 million of Department of State and USAID funds that will be used 

to immediately increase the capacity for Central American governments to receive, 

reintegrate, and care for repatriated migrants, including unaccompanied children. 

USAID’s $7.6 million program, implemented by the International Organization for 

Migration (IOM), is already underway. Program elements include improvement and 

expansion of existing repatriation centers and training and capacity-building for 

personnel involved in repatriation efforts in each country. The Department of State, 

led by the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration, will use $2.0 million, in 

coordination with IOM, to expand the capacity of governments and NGOs to provide 

services to returned migrants and to identify, screen, protect, and refer unaccompanied child migrants to appropriate services throughout the migration process. Our 

FY 2014 supplemental request includes an additional $20 million for repatriation 

assistance to be implemented by USAID. 

Question. Can you provide additional details about the response you have seen 

from Central American governments thus far? What else are we asking of these governments and what additional commitments will we want to see moving forward? 

Answer. President Obama and the Presidents of El Salvador, Guatemala, and 

Honduras issued a joint statement following their recent meeting in Washington 

reiterating a ‘‘commitment to prevent families and children from undertaking this 

dangerous journey and to work together to promote safe, legal, and orderly migration.’’ They pledged to pursue the criminal networks associated with child migration, 

to counter misinformation about U.S. immigration policy, to work together to 

humanely repatriate migrants, and to address the underlying causes of migration 

by reducing criminal activity and promoting greater social and economic opportunity. 

68 

Ongoing host government-led efforts in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras 

include media campaigns, law enforcement investigations targeting organizations 

engaged in human smuggling, and programs to combat poverty and provide educational alternatives to youth. The Central American Presidents indicated to President Obama that they are working on a comprehensive plan to address the underlying causes of the humanitarian situation on the border. 

Question. If they stay, they face persecution and possible death. If the administration attempts an expedited hearing process for these children, many of the children 

were trafficked or face in extreme violence in their communities and may face death 

if deported. Do you believe that many of these children are refugees and deserve 

protection? 

Answer. Under U.S. law, a refugee is someone who has fled from his or her 

country of origin and is unable or unwilling to return because he or she has a wellfounded fear of persecution based on religion, race, nationality, political opinion or 

membership in a particular social group. 

An unaccompanied child who has arrived in the United States may seek asylum, 

although most do not. Many, but not all, UACs appear to be leaving for reasons 

related to situations of violence, lack of opportunity, and other conditions. 

Whether any of them will qualify for refugee protection under U.S. law is ultimately a case-by-case determination dependent on the specific facts of each case, 

after a hearing before a trained asylum or immigration judge—something all of 

these migrants will have an opportunity to present, regardless of the removal procedure they undergo. 

The Department of Homeland Security screens children to determine the validity 

of their asylum claims consistent with our domestic law and international obligations. 

Question. What can the United States do to think beyond free trade agreements 

and employ a more comprehensive strategy of economic statecraft? How can we 

better partner with the region to increase investment, encourage U.S. businesses to 

be more engaged, drive down energy costs, and expand infrastructure in these 

countries? 

Answer. The administration is committed to a comprehensive, sustained approach 

to create economic growth and shared prosperity. The President’s July 25 meeting 

with the Presidents of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras demonstrated the 

shared responsibility to address the underlying causes of migration, including promoting greater social and economic opportunity. The $300 million supplemental 

request for Department of State and USAID includes $295 million of foreign assistance for specific programming to bolster the source countries’ economic prosperity. 

The United States has already laid the groundwork for a broader effort to promote 

regional economic growth. Millennium Challenge Corporation Compacts in Honduras and El Salvador focus on improving infrastructure, market access, and transparency in public services. USAID provides ongoing support in important areas like 

education, agricultural development, natural resource management and workforce 

development. Furthermore, our existing programs, such as Connect the Americas 

2022, Small Business Network of the Americas, Women’s Entrepreneurship in the 

Americas (WEAmericas), and Pathways to Prosperity, already have a positive 

impact, but they are limited in scope and size which requires broader appreciation 

to have more impact in these underlying factors. 

El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras each have very low tax revenue to GDP 

ratios which constrain their ability to provide basic services, including strong social 

safety nets, high quality education, or transportation infrastructure. As a result, 

many citizens lack faith in the effectiveness of government institutions. A lack of 

confidence and trust in public institutions contributes to informality at the lower 

rungs of the economy. Working with a wide cross-section of government entities 

(e.g., tax authorities, prosecutorial and justice systems, customs, and security forces) 

will be essential to creating a growth-oriented economic environment. Finally, helping to establish uniform standards for trade, investment, and customs across the 

entire Central American region would foster a larger, more attractive market for 

investors and traders. 

These challenges are not as intractable as they seem and we have successful models in the region and globally. The governments in the region have acknowledged 

that addressing the current migration situation is a shared responsibility, and we 

expect them to be willing and transparent partners in programs dedicated to promoting greater social and economic opportunity. 

Question. How is State—as it seeks to stand up new programs—addressing the 

scourge of gender-based violence? 

69 

Answer. The Department of State and USAID address gender-based violence 

(GBV) in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras through assistance programming 

for survivors of gender-based violence and those at risk. 

In FY 2013, USAID El Salvador established and supported two assistance centers 

for juvenile and adult survivors of gender-based violence. USAID Guatemala has 

provided technical assistance, training, and equipment to operationalize a specialized 24-hour court located in the Attorney General’s Office in Guatemala City for 

cases related to violence against women, exploitation, sexual violence and human 

trafficking. The FY 2014 Supplemental Request for the Department of State and 

USAID includes funding that would be used to expand the 24-hour specialized court 

model to Honduras and El Salvador. 

The Secretary’s Office of Global Women’s Issues has two Global Women, Peace, 

and Security grants for nongovernmental organizations in Guatemala. One grant 

supports Fundacio ́n Sobrevivientes, which works to protect women, children, and 

teenagers from violence by providing free access to legal, social, and psychological 

services to support survivors of physical and sexual violence. Funding also goes to 

the Myrna Mack Foundation, which works to monitor and measure the implementation of Guatemala’s 2008 Law Against Femicide. In Honduras, a program through 

the Bureau of Combat and Stabilization Operations funds the Peace and Justice 

program which provides psychosocial support to survivors of gender-based violence 

and other forms of violent crime, and works to combat impunity by assisting Honduran law enforcement in the investigation and prosecution of these crimes. In 

March, we partnered with the Government of Chile to offer a course at the International Law Enforcement Academy in San Salvador, El Salvador designed to teach 

law enforcement officers how to prevent and respond to incidents of gender-based 

violence. 

High levels of impunity, weak institutions, lack of police capacity and training, 

corruption, the effects of narcotrafficking and sociocultural attitudes toward women 

and girls contribute to high levels of gender-based violence, including intimate partner violence, rape, and homicide, in El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala. In 

2013, the Guatemalan National Institute of Forensic Sciences reported 758 murders 

of women; however the conviction rate for the murders of women has hovered 

around 2 percent. The Salvadoran National Civil Police reported 216 killings of 

women in 2013, and in Honduras, the National Observatory on Violence reported 

that violent deaths of women increased by 263 percent between 2005 and 2013. 

Despite laws criminalizing rape, domestic abuse, and gender-based violence, including femicide, in all three countries, implementation and enforcement is often 

lacking. 

Question. How can we best expand efforts to engage at-risk youth and help governments in the region create new educational and employment opportunities? 

Answer. The Central American governments recognize the need to promote additional economic and social opportunities for their citizens. Honduran President Hernandez started a jobs program called ‘‘Con Chamba Vivı ́s Mejor,’’ in which the Honduran Government partners with businesses and pays half of new workers’ salaries 

for a short time period. We seek enhanced partnerships in these areas with the Governments of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, recognizing that educational 

and economic opportunities are key elements to improving life in Central America. 

Both the State Department and USAID have programs targeting at-risk youth, 

especially in some of the region’s most violent communities, to provide alternatives 

to gangs and criminal lifestyles. Expanded efforts to engage youth must be comprehensive, including deterring at-risk youth from turning to crime in the first place 

and reinserting young people who have been involved with gangs into their communities through juvenile justice programs. To increase economic opportunity, we seek 

to expand existing programs that link small businesses to larger markets and 

contribute to business enabling environments, starting at the local level. By engaging with local educational and private sector actors, we will continue to target job 

skills programs toward specific vulnerable populations, such as at-risk youth, with 

in-demand skills for local markets. 

Question. Is the administration developing any plans for ‘‘orderly departure’’ programs for the children and families who are at risk inside these countries, similar 

to the refugee admissions program or the in-country refugee processing that exist 

in a few other countries? 

Answer. The administration is considering taking additional steps to further deter 

unlawful and dangerous migration to the United States. 

To stem the flow of migrant children attempting to go to the United States, we 

are considering a small pilot project to explore whether children could go through 

70 

a process to determine if they are eligible to come legally to the United States before 

they leave their home countries. Our goals remain twofold in the United States as 

well as in the region: provide an effective deterrent for illegal migration through 

criminal smuggling networks, while protecting legitimate humanitarian claims. Any 

in-country program would be governed by these goals. 

This is a pilot project and we expect this to be very modest in size. The standard 

to achieve refugee status is very high, and will not be changed. This will not be an 

avenue to reunite children with undocumented family members in the United 

States. 

RESPONSES OF AMBASSADOR THOMAS SHANNON TO QUESTIONS

SUBMITTED BY SENATOR TOM UDALL

Question. Long-term regional cooperation between destination and source countries will be required to ensure programs focused on stopping criminal syndicates, 

supporting reintegration of returnees, and sustaining economic growth and governance reforms are effective and take hold. 

♦ a. How will the supplemental request support high level, and sustained regional 

cooperation? 

Answer. The Governments of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras have reiterated their shared responsibility on this issue and desire to coordinate a response 

with the United State. The Presidents of the three governments expressed their 

political will to invest in the futures of their own countries; therefore, this supplemental request responds to the short-term humanitarian situation on the border 

and repatriation needs. It also addresses the underlying factors of migration to deal 

with the issue over the longer term. Of the total $300 million FY 2014 Supplemental 

Request, $295 million of Economic Support funds are distributed for economic prosperity, governance, and security of borders and in sending communities. The request 

focuses not only on bolstering security, but also on efforts to improve governments’ 

capacity to govern, to promote economic growth, and to create jobs. These funds will 

help provide opportunities these three Central American economies currently lack. 

This supplemental request is a downpayment on our comprehensive approach in the 

region, which includes the sending nations, other regional partners, and international financial institutions. Our partner countries in Central America need to 

address the pressing citizen security, economic and social development issues that 

are the underlying causes driving irregular migration. The remaining $5 million of 

the request will increase our public diplomacy outreach in the region to counter the 

false messages of smuggling networks that there are immigration benefits in the 

United States for those who risk the dangerous journey north. 

♦ b. How will the State Department coordinate efforts to address these issues and 

ensure that the ground work is laid for a more comprehensive long-term 

approach to the region? 

Answer. The migration of these children is the result of the economic and social 

conditions in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. A combination of poverty, ineffective public institutions, violence, and crime have combined to push these children from their homes and to begin an arduous and dangerous journey. These issues 

cannot be solved overnight. The administration, led by the Department of State, is 

working with the Governments of El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Mexico 

to develop a comprehensive, long-term strategy to address these underlying factors. 

The Department of State works closely with the interagency to ensure each agency’s 

expertise and experience is utilized to develop this strategy. 

The United States cannot solve these problems alone. The Presidents of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras discussed plans for addressing long-term issues in 

Central America during their visits to Washington the week of July 21, including 

meeting with both Chambers of Congress. Their engagement is essential to address 

factors giving rise to migration. On July 8, President Obama submitted a supplemental budget request of $3.7 billion to respond to the surge in unaccompanied 

minors arriving at the U.S. Southwestern border. Of this, $300 million was requested for the Department of State and USAID to address the security, economic 

prosperity, and governance issues contributing to this situation. This request is only 

an initial down payment on a broader strategic effort to address underlying factors 

in Central America. Our embassies are already implementing plans to ramp up 

proven programs in the region. The Department of State is committed to working 

with the interagency, Congress, and our regional partners to develop and implement 

a long-term strategy for the region. 

71 

RESPONSES OF AMBASSADOR THOMAS SHANNON TO QUESTIONS

SUBMITTED BY SENATOR JOHN BARRASSO

Question. On June 15, 2012, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) 

announced the rollout of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) policy. 

This new policy would allow individuals under the age of 31 who were brought to 

the United States illegally, that meet a certain criteria, to remain here legally. 

♦ Was the State Department briefed by the White House or Department of Homeland Security prior to the rollout of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals 

policy? 

♦ Prior to the Department of Homeland Security rollout of the DACA policy, was 

the State Department consulted or involved in an interagency process to mitigate misperceptions? If the State Department was involved, who was the State 

Department representative(s) that participated? 

♦ Has the State Department been involved with the interagency working group 

that has been working on Unaccompanied Children (UAC) issue over the past 

year? If so, who was the State Department representative(s) that participated? 

Answer. The administration announced the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program in 2012 following an extensive interagency process that included the Department of State. 

Eligibility under DACA is based on guidelines developed by the U.S. interagency, 

including the requirement that applicants must have been present in the United 

States on or before June 15, 2012. Before the announcement of DACA, these 

requirements were carefully discussed within the interagency. Following the rollout 

of DACA, the Departments of State and Homeland Security publicly reiterated that 

potential migrants would not benefit from this program. 

The Department of State—led by representatives from the Bureau of Western 

Hemisphere Affairs and the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration—has 

actively participated in the stakeholders meeting on unaccompanied children since 

2012. These meetings bring together interagency colleagues, faith-based organizations, and nongovernmental organizations to discuss the latest developments and 

potential engagement and coordination opportunities for children already in the 

United States. 

Question. According to Customs and Border Protection, the surge in unaccompanied children started in 2012, the same year that the administration rolled out 

the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy. 

2009—6,000 children; 

2010—7,000 children; 

2011—6,500 children; 

2012—13,000 children; 

2013—24,000 children; 

2014—43,000 (approximately to date from Central America). 

♦ Given this trend, how did the State Department not see this crisis coming? 

♦ Did DHS engage the State Department in 2013 after the number of unaccompanied children quadrupled to 24,000 children? 

♦ If these engagements did occur, what actions did the State Department take to 

mitigate the flow of unaccompanied children? 

♦ Do you believe the State Department should have been engaging the Central 

American governments and media outlets after the surge of unaccompanied 

children in 2012? 

Answer. The Department of State regularly participated in the interagency stakeholders meeting on unaccompanied children with the Department of Homeland 

Security since 2012. The stakeholders’ meeting includes U.S. Government agencies 

as well as nongovernmental and faith-based organizations in order to develop a comprehensive perspective and response to this issue. As part of our engagement to promote more economically viable and safe communities, the Department of State 

works closely with our Central American partners to address the complex and systemic challenges these countries face. Slow economic growth, poor job creation, low 

investment in vocational education and training, increased violence, declining rural 

incomes, and ineffective use of limited public sector resources are among the various 

factors encouraging families and unaccompanied children to migrate. 

We recognized these factors as early as 2008 when we requested U.S. assistance 

to first and foremost address the security crisis in Central America through the 

Central America Regional Security Initiative (CARSI). Through CARSI, the United 

States works with partner nations to strengthen institutions to counter the effects 

of organized crime and street gangs, uphold the rule of law, and protect human 

rights. CARSI prevention programs dissuade at-risk youth from turning to crime 

72 

and community policing programs facilitate trust between police and community 

members to enhance neighborhood safety. 

The United States promotes regional economic growth, infrastructure modernization, and collaboration. Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) programs in Honduras and El Salvador focused on improving infrastructure and market access. In 

addition, Honduras is engaged in an MCC threshold program to improve its efficiency and transparency in providing public services. Pathways to Prosperity in the 

Americas, the Small Business Network of the Americas, Women’s Entrepreneurship 

in the Americas (WEAmericas), La Idea, 100,000 Strong in the Americas, and Feed 

the Future are Department of State or USAID initiatives designed to provide critical 

economic, educational, and commercial opportunities. 

Public affairs officers at U.S. embassies in the region continuously communicate 

direct messaging about the facts of U.S. immigration policy, and consult with host 

governments on public service announcement campaigns to stem the flow of unaccompanied minors to the United States. 

Question. State Department’s Consultations with Central American Countries.— 

In 2012 and 2013, did the State Department engage the governments Honduras, El 

Salvador, and Guatemala in a campaign to inform Central American families that 

their children will not qualify for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy? 

Answer. When the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) policy was announced in 2012, the U.S. Government continually publicized the requirements for 

eligibility. Specifically, the administration emphasized the essential requirement 

that applicants must have been present in the United States on June 15, 2012. In 

addition to U.S.-based statements on DACA eligibility, the Department of State— 

through our embassies in the region—continuously communicates direct messaging 

about the facts of U.S. immigration policy and consults with host governments on 

public service announcement campaigns to stem the flow of unaccompanied minors 

to the United States. The Department of Homeland Security led two sessions in 

2012 on DACA with foreign embassy staff based in Washington. 

Question. This week, an El Paso Intelligence Center (EPIC) intelligence assessment dated July 7, 2014, was leaked to press. The report cites a U.S. Border patrol 

survey from May that interviewed 230 migrants. This assessment concludes that the 

driving factor behind the surge in unaccompanied children crossing the border is the 

‘‘misperception of recent U.S. immigration policies’’ such as the Deferred Action for 

Childhood Arrivals policy. Meanwhile this administration has been primarily blaming the border crisis on gang violence in Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala. 

♦ Do you agree with the El Paso Intelligence Center assessment that the 

misperception of DACA is a principle factor in the increase unaccompanied children migration? 

♦ Does the State Department have a presence at the El Paso Intelligence Center? 

♦ Do you believe the State Department has achieved its mission of promoting U.S. 

policy? 

Answer. We are aware of the El Paso Intelligence Center (EPIC) assessment 

regarding the impact that misperception of U.S. immigration policies and benefits 

has on potential migrants. EPIC houses a number of different U.S. agencies, including the Department of State. 

The majority of the children who arrive at the U.S. southern border reports 

migrating for more than one reason. Violence is one of the underlying factors that 

contributes to the surge of unaccompanied children arriving in the United States 

from Central America. Weak governance and lack of economic and educational 

opportunity are other contributing factors to out-migration. The prospect of family 

reunification and misinformation spread by smuggling organizations about potential 

immigration benefits in the United States are also factors that can influence parents’ decisions to send their children to the United States as well as the minor’s 

decision to emigrate. Smuggling organizations have spread false messages that 

incorrectly promise immigration benefits. 

Public messaging campaigns, led by our embassies in coordination with the Governments of El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Mexico, have helped create a 

dynamic debate about illegal migration that undermines efforts by smugglers to 

entice young people and their parents into migration through misinformation. The 

messages of these campaigns have been reiterated in public comments from U.S. 

officials—including the President—urging parents not to send their children on this 

dangerous journey and underscoring that they will not be eligible for DACA or 

DREAM Act benefits if they reach the United States. 

Question. Violence in Central America is not a new phenomenon but yet this 

administration continues to blame the surge of unaccompanied children on gang vioVerDate Nov 24 2008 11:29 May 15, 2015 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00076 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 S:\FULL COMMITTEE\HEARING FILES\113TH CONGRESS, 2ND SESSION\2014 ISSUE H
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lence in Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala. There is no question that violence 

in Central America is a contributing factor but it is not the root cause for the crisis 

on our border. Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala have all decreased their murder rates. 

♦ If the Honduran murder rate went down from 91.4 per 100,000 in 2011 to 80 

per 100,000 in 2013, why does the surge of UACs continue? 

♦ Do you agree with the El Paso Intelligence Center assessment that murder 

rates in Central America are not the principle factor increasing Unaccompanied 

Children migration? 

♦ What is the assessment of the State Department Bureau of Intelligence and 

Research on the root cause for the spike in Unaccompanied Children crossing 

the U.S. border? 

Answer. The Department of State shares your belief that violence is only one of 

the underlying factors that contribute to the surge of unaccompanied children arriving in the United States from Central America; there is no one primary cause driving the flow. Weak governance and lack of economic and educational opportunity are 

among other factors that contribute to out-migration. U.S. foreign assistance can 

enhance our cooperation with Central American countries in these areas. Many 

migrants are also motivated by the potential prospects of family reunification and 

better education or drawn by misinformation about United States immigration policy. The Department is engaged with governments and media outlets in El Salvador, 

Guatemala, and Honduras on public service announcement campaigns and public 

diplomacy outreach to correct these misperceptions about immigration policy. 

Although homicide statistics in Central America decreased slightly, the rates continue to be among the highest in the world. According to United Nations statistics 

from 2012—the latest figures publicly available—the murder rate faced by 

Hondurans citizens is 14.6 times the global average of 6.2 per 100,000. In addition 

to high homicide rates, gangs, extortion, poverty, food insecurity, and impunity are 

pervasive in these countries and contribute to the flow of migrants. 

Question. Media Campaigns.—The State Department as part of the supplemental 

appropriations request has asked for only $600,000 for media campaigns in Mexico, 

Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras. This campaign will focus on the dangers 

of the journey for unaccompanied children. We know the major pull factor for unaccompanied children is the misperception that they will be able to stay here legally. 

♦ Why is this media campaign not focusing on the fact these children cannot stay 

here legally? 

♦ Of the $5 million requested by the President, how much money is actually going 

toward a media campaign? 

♦ Is this enough money to effectively deter parents from sending their children 

across the border? 

Answer. Our public awareness campaigns promote facts about deportation proceedings and U.S. immigration laws to dispel the belief children can benefit from 

misinformation about U.S. immigration policies, and to inform parents who are considering sending their children, that their children will not be allowed to remain in 

the United States. 

U.S. Ambassadors, Embassy public affairs officers, and other U.S. officials are 

active in local media to discuss the facts and emphasize both dangers of the journey 

to the United States and the lack of legal immigration benefits for those making 

the trip. To augment that media activity with widely disseminated U.S.-branded 

public service announcement campaigns, including in indigenous languages, we 

would dedicate $1.6 million of the supplemental request to increase targeted messaging, focusing on Facebook (bought ads and content placement), leveraging the 

U.S. Customs and Border Patrol-produced public service announcements, host country government campaigns, and locally produced, U.S.-branded messaging. 

The supplemental request is a downpayment on a more comprehensive, longer 

term Central America strategy keyed to our vision of an economically integrated 

Central America that provides economic opportunities to its people; is more democratic, accountable, transparent, and has effective public institutions; and offers a 

safe environment for its citizens to build their lives in peace and stability. The 

United States cannot solve these problems alone. We expect the Central American 

governments to provide complementary financial and political commitments to 

address the factors driving migration. 

74 

STATEMENT SUBMITTED BY AFL–CIO PRESIDENT RICHARD TRUMKA

(Washington, DC) The humanitarian crisis of families and children fleeing violence in Central America and turning themselves in to U.S. Border Patrol agents 

has brought out both the best and the worst in our nation. 

Alarmingly, in places like Murrieta, California, and Vassar, Michigan, we have 

seen ugly reminders of racism and hatred directed toward children. The spewing of 

nativist venom, the taking up of arms and the fear-mongering about crime and disease harken back to dark periods in our history and have no business taking place 

under the banner of our flag. 

On the other hand, around the country we have also seen a tremendous outpouring of compassion and concern for the plight of these women and children. We 

are proud to say that local unions have joined with faith and community groups to 

collect needed supplies, provide shelter and support, and call for humane treatment. 

The situation along the border is a refugee crisis that requires a humane, lawful 

response and must not be politicized. The labor movement calls upon national and 

community leaders to respond to the crisis in a manner that meets our obligations 

under U.S. and international law, and comports with basic human rights and American values. This means ensuring full due process and providing the additional 

resources necessary to ensure the well-being and fair treatment of children and 

refugees. It also requires taking an honest assessment of the root causes of the crisis, including the long-term impact of U.S. policies on immigration, trade, and foreign affairs. 

We cannot lend credibility to Republican assertions that a refugee crisis is proof 

that we should continue to deport hard working people who have been contributing 

members of our society for years. These are simply new excuses to justify failed policies. Lifting the pressure on immigrant workers was needed before the child refugee 

story developed, and it is no less urgent today. The Administration must act now 

to keep all families together, uphold our standards as a humanitarian nation, and 

advance the decent work agenda necessary to improve conditions both at home and 

abroad. 

CHILD MIGRANTS, ALONE IN COURT

[The New York Times, Apr. 10, 2013] 

(By Sonia Nazario) 

LOS ANGELES—Belkis Rivera, 14 years old, sat in the Los Angeles immigration 

courtroom, in a black coat and purple scarf, shaking with fear. 

When Belkis was 6, the gang that controlled her neighborhood in San Pedro Sula, 

Honduras, killed her grandmother and then her uncle, and demanded that her 

brothers join as lookouts. Belkis’s mother took the boys and fled to the United 

States, leaving Belkis behind with family. When the gang started stalking and 

threatening Belkis, then 13, she followed, making the terrifying six-month journey 

across Mexico by herself. She was caught by the Border Patrol last September, 

while crossing into the United States. 

Now she faced one more trauma: America’s judicial system. 

In a nation that prides itself on the fact that everyone accused of a crime—murderers, rapists—has the right to a lawyer, undocumented immigrants, even when 

they are unaccompanied children, are not entitled to a public defender. Although 

some children are represented by pro bono lawyers or, for the few whose families 

can afford it, private lawyers, it’s estimated that more than half of them go to court 

alone. These children—some as young as 2 years old—have no one to help them 

make the case that they should not be deported. 

The issue is gaining urgency. While the overall number of apprehensions of immigrants unlawfully entering the country is at a 40-year low, the number of children 

coming illegally and alone is surging, largely as a result of increasing drug-fueled 

violence in Central America, particularly Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. 

One in 13 people caught by the Border Patrol last fiscal year were under 18. Seventeen percent of them were 13 or younger. Close to 14,000 minors, twice as many 

as the previous year, were placed in federal custody. (This figure doesn’t include an 

equal number of Mexican children who were quickly deported.) 

Many of these children have a legitimate fear of what could happen to them if 

they are sent back to their home countries. A recent study by the Vera Institute 

of Justice, a nonprofit group, showed that 40 percent of unaccompanied children potentially qualify for statuses that exempt them from deportation. Among the most 

75 

likely possibilities: asylum, because they fear persecution in their home country, or 

a special immigrant juvenile status for children abused or abandoned by a parent. 

And yet, while more recent legislation has improved the odds, only around 7 percent of those who were placed in federal custody between 2007 and 2009, and who 

had received a ruling by mid-2010, were winning their cases. Not surprisingly, those 

with legal representation were nearly nine times more likely to win. 

In court, these children are up against trained government lawyers. They must 

testify under oath, file supporting documents and navigate the complexities of immigration law, with no knowledge of the country’s language or customs, and often with 

only the help of a translator. Children in the courtroom often seem confused and 

frightened. Staff members with Kids in Need of Defense, or KIND, a group whose 

board I serve on and the principal provider of pro bono lawyers for these children, 

told me of a boy in Los Angeles who carried his teddy bear for comfort and a toddler 

in a Texas courtroom who wet his pants when he faced the judge. 

Most immigrant children come to reunite with family members, and are released 

to those families while their hearings proceed. But many are also fleeing harm. 

Take Estefany Aracely Climaco Acosta, who left El Salvador at 12 to join her 

mother in Los Angeles. When Estefany was 10, an uncle arrived one morning at the 

mud hut the girl shared with her grandmother and other relatives. The uncle knew 

that only Estefany was home at that hour. He tied her hands behind her back and 

raped her. She screamed, but the hut was in an isolated spot. ‘‘No one could hear 

me,’’ she said, of the rapes she endured for two years. A KIND pro bono lawyer took 

her case and she was granted asylum last August. 

Wilmer Villalobos Ortiz was orphaned in Honduras when he was 8. He was left 

with an abusive aunt, who whipped him with an electrical cord and forced him to 

quit school in the seventh grade. She put him to work 17 hours a day at her pool 

hall and bar, where the patrons included members of the 18th Street gang, who targeted him as ripe for recruitment. When he was 14, they asked him to join, and 

then they threatened him. ‘‘We will kill you,’’ one of them said, putting a knife to 

Wilmer’s stomach. ‘‘You are either with us, or against us.’’ They did worse things 

to him that Wilmer won’t discuss. 

In 2008, when he was 15, Wilmer escaped, heading to the United States. He spent 

a month and a half riding on top of freight trains to get through Mexico. He saw 

members of the Zeta narco-traffickers stop his train, club a woman unconscious and 

snatch her young son from her arms. Another time, he saw a boy his age stumble 

getting on a moving train and heard his screams as the boy’s legs were cut off by 

the wheels. 

He was caught by the Border Patrol after crossing the Rio Grande into Texas. He 

spent a year in two detention centers for children before landing in a group foster 

home in Arlington, Mass., where he attended high school while his deportation case 

proceeded. 

His case was taken on by Daniel White of Goodwin Procter, a volunteer lawyer 

with KIND who normally handles transactional corporate law. He showed Wilmer 

what would happen in court, what questions would be asked, what to say. Last 

spring, Wilmer got his green card, after winning the right to stay in the United 

States. 

Wilmer is luckier than most—each day, immigration courtrooms are filled with 

children who have no lawyer to represent them, and whose stories we rarely hear. 

These children share one constant: their suffering doesn’t end when they cross the 

border. 

UNDER normal circumstances, the Border Patrol is supposed to transfer captured 

children out of its holding cells and into the custody of Health and Human Services’ 

Office of Refugee Resettlement within 72 hours. But last year children were held 

for up to two weeks in Border Patrol cells with no windows to the outside, showers 

or recreation space, according to a report by the Women’s Refugee Commission 

based on interviews with 151 detained children. Some complained of inadequate 

food and water. One described a cell so crowded the children had to take turns lying 

down on the concrete floor to sleep. The lights were never turned off. 

These children need our help. In recent years KIND has recruited more than 

5,000 lawyers. But they are still only able to triage their limited resources; we need 

far more volunteers, and more law firms willing to count pro bono work toward lawyers’ billable hours. 

Pro bono lawyers are only part of the solution. These children need public defenders who are experts in immigration law. Congress should include money to hire lawyers for all unaccompanied minors as part of any comprehensive immigration reform. Yes, these children broke the law coming to this country, but if deporting 

them will put them in danger, they deserve a fair hearing in our courts, something 

anyone, especially a child, cannot get without a lawyer. 

76 

Ana Suruy wants every child to have the help she believes saved her life. In Guatemala, a drug trafficking cartel targeted Ana’s mother for extortion. When the cartel threatened to kidnap her family, Ana’s mother agreed to pay. But it wasn’t 

enough; the cartel poisoned the family’s dog and cat, and twisted the necks of their 

flock of ducks. A man left a threatening note one day under their door, singling out 

Ana, then 13 years old, for harm. Her mother, terrified, called the police, and then 

put Ana in the hands of a smuggler to take her north. 

Ana made six attempts to cross into the United States. She was robbed at gunpoint, abandoned by a smuggler, saw dead migrants in the Arizona desert, and 

spent two days walking with no food or water, before the Border Patrol caught her 

and put her in a detention center in Phoenix. After three months, she was released 

to a cousin on Long Island. He went with Ana to her first court hearing. People had 

warned Ana that without a lawyer she didn’t stand a chance, but her relatives, 

landscapers making minimum wage, had no money to spare. 

‘‘I had so much fear,’’ Ana said. ‘‘I didn’t want to go back to Guatemala.’’ The man 

who wrote the threatening note had somehow obtained her cellphone number and 

was calling, saying he knew where she went to school in New York, and making 

sexually suggestive sounds. As she waited in the hallway of the Manhattan courtroom for the judge to summon her, KIND’s local pro bono coordinator came up and 

asked if she needed a lawyer. 

Five lawyers from the firm Paul Hastings in New York would tag-team her representation over four years. They obtained Guatemalan police reports, hired an expert to testify on narco-threats and prepared Ana for what felt to her like a sustained grilling. 

Last December, Ana, then 19, was granted asylum. Without a lawyer, she would 

most likely have been deported, like so many others. That could be the fate of Belkis 

Rivera, who has to return to court in Los Angeles this summer. Her mother works 

at a nail polish factory, and can’t afford $3,500 for a private lawyer. Now a seventh 

grader, Belkis will have no one to stand beside her. 

On Wednesday, thousands of supporters of immigration reform rallied in Washington, while opponents of the measure tried to shout them down. People can be of 

different minds on the immigration issue and how to handle it, said Justin Goggins, 

one of Ana’s lawyers. But this is one aspect we ought to be able to agree on. Federal 

officials are predicting that the number of unaccompanied minors crossing the border illegally will jump by around 70 percent in this fiscal year. ‘‘At the end of the 

day,’’ Mr. Goggins said, ‘‘no kid should be out there to defend themselves in this 

situation with no voice.’’ 

THE CHILDREN OF THE DRUG WARS—A REFUGEE CRISIS, 

NOT AN IMMIGRATION CRISIS

New York Times, Sunday Review/Opinion, July 11, 2014 

(By Sonia Nazario) 

CRISTIAN OMAR REYES, an 11-year-old sixth grader in the neighborhood of 

Nueva Suyapa, on the outskirts of Tegucigalpa, tells me he has to get out of Honduras soon—‘‘no matter what.’’ 

In March, his father was robbed and murdered by gangs while working as a security guard protecting a pastry truck. His mother used the life insurance payout to 

hire a smuggler to take her to Florida. She promised to send for him quickly, but 

she has not. 

Three people he knows were murdered this year. Four others were gunned down 

on a nearby corner in the span of two weeks at the beginning of this year. A girl 

his age resisted being robbed of $5. She was clubbed over the head and dragged off 

by two men who cut a hole in her throat, stuffed her panties in it, and left her body 

in a ravine across the street from Cristian’s house. 

‘‘I’m going this year,’’ he tells me. 

I last went to Nueva Suyapa in 2003, to write about another boy, Luis Enrique 

Motin ̈ o Pineda, who had grown up there and left to find his mother in the United 

States. Children from Central America have been making that journey, often without their parents, for two decades. But lately something has changed, and the predictable flow has turned into an exodus. Three years ago, about 6,800 children were 

detained by United States immigration authorities and placed in federal custody; 

this year, as many as 90,000 children are expected to be picked up. Around a quarter come from Honduras—more than from anywhere else. 

77 

Children still leave Honduras to reunite with a parent, or for better educational 

and economic opportunities. But, as I learned when I returned to Nueva Suyapa last 

month, a vast majority of child migrants are fleeing not poverty, but violence. As 

a result, what the United States is seeing on its borders now is not an immigration 

crisis. It is a refugee crisis. 

Gangs arrived in force in Honduras in the 1990s, as 18th Street and Mara 

Salvatrucha members were deported in large numbers from Los Angeles to Central 

America, joining homegrown groups like Los Puchos. But the dominance in the past 

few years of foreign drug cartels in Honduras, especially ones from Mexico, has 

increased the reach and viciousness of the violence. As the United States and 

Colombia spent billions of dollars to disrupt the movement of drugs up the Caribbean corridor, traffickers rerouted inland through Honduras, and 79 percent of 

cocaine-smuggling flights bound for the United States now pass through there. 

Narco groups and gangs are vying for control over this turf, neighborhood by 

neighborhood, to gain more foot soldiers for drug sales and distribution, expand 

their customer base, and make money through extortion in a country left with an 

especially weak, corrupt government following a 2009 coup. 

Enrique’s 33-year-old sister, Belky, who still lives in Nueva Suyapa, says children 

began leaving en masse for the United States three years ago. That was around the 

time that the narcos started putting serious pressure on kids to work for them. At 

Cristian’s school, older students working with the cartels push drugs on the younger 

ones—some as young as 6. If they agree, children are recruited to serve as lookouts, 

make deliveries in backpacks, rob people and extort businesses. They are given food, 

shoes and money in return. Later, they might work as traffickers or hit men. 

Teachers at Cristian’s school described a 12-year-old who demanded that the 

school release three students one day to help him distribute crack cocaine; he brandished a pistol and threatened to kill a teacher when she tried to question him. 

At Nueva Suyapa’s only public high school, narcos ‘‘recruit inside the school,’’ says 

Yadira Sauceda, a counselor there. Until he was killed a few weeks ago, a 23-yearold ‘‘student’’ controlled the school. Each day, he was checked by security at the 

door, then had someone sneak his gun to him over the school wall. Five students, 

mostly 12- and 13-year-olds, tearfully told Ms. Sauceda that the man had ordered 

them to use and distribute drugs or he would kill their parents. By March, one 

month into the new school year, 67 of 450 students had left the school. 

Teachers must pay a ‘‘war tax’’ to teach in certain neighborhoods, and students 

must pay to attend. 

Carlos Baquedano Sa ́nchez, a slender 14-year-old with hair sticking straight up, 

explained how hard it was to stay away from the cartels. He lives in a shack made 

of corrugated tin in a neighborhood in Nueva Suyapa called El Infiernito—Little 

Hell—and usually doesn’t have anything to eat one out of every three days. He 

started working in a dump when he was 7, picking out iron or copper to recycle, 

for $1 or $2 a day. But bigger boys often beat him to steal his haul, and he quit 

a year ago when an older man nearly killed him for a coveted car-engine piston. 

Now he sells scrap wood. 

But all of this was nothing, he says, compared to the relentless pressure to join 

narco gangs and the constant danger they have brought to his life. When he was 

9, he barely escaped from two narcos who were trying to rape him, while terrified 

neighbors looked on. When he was 10, he was pressured to try marijuana and crack. 

‘‘You’ll feel better. Like you are in the clouds,’’ a teenager working with a gang told 

him. But he resisted. 

He has known eight people who were murdered and seen three killed right in 

front of him. He saw a man shot three years ago and still remembers the plums 

the man was holding rolling down the street, coated in blood. Recently he witnessed 

two teenage hit men shooting a pair of brothers for refusing to hand over the keys 

and title to their motorcycle. Carlos hit the dirt and prayed. The killers calmly 

walked down the street. Carlos shrugs. ‘‘Now seeing someone dead is nothing.’’ 

He longs to be an engineer or mechanic, but he quit school after sixth grade, too 

poor and too afraid to attend. ‘‘A lot of kids know what can happen in school. So 

they leave.’’ 

He wants to go to the United States, even though he knows how dangerous the 

journey can be; a man in his neighborhood lost both legs after falling off the top 

of a Mexican freight train, and a family friend drowned in the Rio Grande. ‘‘I want 

to avoid drugs and death. The government can’t pull up its pants and help people,’’ 

he says angrily. ‘‘My country has lost its way.’’ 

Girls face particular dangers—one reason around 40 percent of children who 

arrived in the United States this year were girls, compared with 27 percent in the 

past. Recently three girls were raped and killed in Nueva Suyapa, one only 8 years 

old. Two 15-year-olds were abducted and raped. The kidnappers told them that if 

78 

they didn’t get in the car they would kill their entire families. Some parents no 

longer let their girls go to school for fear of their being kidnapped, says Luis Lo ́pez, 

an educator with Asociacio ́n Compartir, a nonprofit in Nueva Suyapa. 

Milagro Noemi Martı ́nez, a petite 19-year-old with clear green eyes, has been told 

repeatedly by narcos that she would be theirs—or end up dead. Last summer, she 

made her first attempt to reach the United States. ‘‘Here there is only evil,’’ she 

says. ‘‘It’s better to leave than have them kill me here.’’ She headed north with her 

21-year-old sister, a friend who had also been threatened, and $170 among them. 

But she was stopped and deported from Mexico. Now back in Nueva Suyapa, she 

stays locked inside her mother’s house. ‘‘I hope God protects me. I am afraid to step 

outside.’’ Last year, she says, six minors, as young as 15, were killed in her neighborhood. Some were hacked apart. She plans to try the journey again soon. Asking 

for help from the police or the government is not an option in what some consider 

a failed state. The drugs that pass through Honduras each year are worth more 

than the country’s entire gross domestic product. Narcos have bought off police officers, politicians and judges. In recent years, four out of five homicides were never 

investigated. No one is immune to the carnage. Several Honduran mayors have been 

killed. The sons of both the former head of the police department and the head of 

the national university were murdered, the latter, an investigation showed, by the 

police. 

‘‘You never call the cops. The cops themselves will retaliate and kill you,’’ says 

Henry Carı ́as Aguilar, a pastor in Nueva Suyapa. A majority of small businesses 

in Nueva Suyapa have shuttered because of extortion demands, while churches have 

doubled in number in the past decade, as people pray for salvation from what they 

see as the plague predicted in the Bible. Taxis and homes have signs on them asking God for mercy. 

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees recently interviewed 404 

children who had arrived in the United States from Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala and Mexico; 58 percent said their primary reason for leaving was violence. (A 

similar survey in 2006, of Central American children coming into Mexico, found that 

only 13 percent were fleeing violence.) They aren’t just going to the United States: 

Less conflicted countries in Central America had a 712 percent increase in asylum 

claims between 2008 and 2013. 

‘‘If a house is burning, people will jump out the window,’’ says Michelle Brane ́, director of the migrant rights and justice program at the Women’s Refugee Commission. 

To permanently stem this flow of children, we must address the complex root 

causes of violence in Honduras, as well as the demand for illegal drugs in the 

United States that is fueling that violence. 

In the meantime, however, we must recognize this as a refugee crisis, as the 

United Nations just recommended. These children are facing threats similar to the 

forceful conscription of child soldiers by warlords in Sudan or during the civil war 

in Bosnia. Being forced to sell drugs by narcos is no different from being forced into 

military service. 

Many Americans, myself included, believe in deporting unlawful immigrants, but 

see a different imperative with refugees. 

The United States should immediately create emergency refugee centers inside 

our borders, tent cities—operated by the United Nations and other relief groups like 

the International Rescue Committee—where immigrant children could be held for 

60 to 90 days instead of being released. The government would post immigration 

judges at these centers and adjudicate children’s cases there. 

To ensure this isn’t a sham process, asylum officers and judges must be trained 

in child-sensitive interviewing techniques to help elicit information from fearful, 

traumatized youngsters. All children must also be represented by a volunteer or 

government-funded lawyer. Kids in Need of Defense, a nonprofit that recruits pro 

bono lawyers to represent immigrant children and whose board I serve on, estimates 

that 40 percent to 60 percent of these children potentially qualify to stay under current immigration laws—and do, if they have a lawyer by their side. The vast majority do not. The only way to ensure we are not hurtling children back to circumstances that could cost them their lives is by providing them with real due process. 

Judges, who currently deny seven in 10 applications for asylum by people who are 

in deportation proceedings, must better understand the conditions these children 

are facing. They should be more open to considering relief for those fleeing gang recruitment or threats by criminal organizations when they come from countries like 

Honduras that are clearly unwilling or unable to protect them. 

If many children don’t meet strict asylum criteria but face significant dangers if 

they return, the United States should consider allowing them to stay using humanitarian parole procedures we have employed in the past, for Cambodians and HaiVerDate Nov 24 2008 11:29 May 15, 2015 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00082 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 S:\FULL COMMITTEE\HEARING FILES\113TH CONGRESS, 2ND SESSION\2014 ISSUE H
79 

tians. It may be possible to transfer children and resettle them in other safe countries willing to share the burden. We should also make it easier for children to apply 

as refugees when they are still in Central America, as we have done for people in 

Iraq, Cuba, countries in the former Soviet Union, Vietnam and Haiti. Those who 

showed a well-founded fear of persecution wouldn’t have to make the perilous journey north alone. 

Of course, many migrant children come for economic reasons, and not because 

they fear for their lives. In those cases, they should quickly be deported if they have 

at least one parent in their country of origin. By deporting them directly from the 

refugee centers, the United States would discourage future non-refugees by showing 

that immigrants cannot be caught and released, and then avoid deportation by 

ignoring court orders to attend immigration hearings. 

Instead of advocating such a humane, practical approach, the Obama administration wants to intercept and return children en route. On Tuesday the president 

asked for $3.7 billion in emergency funding. Some money would be spent on new 

detention facilities and more immigration judges, but the main goal seems to be to 

strengthen border control and speed up deportations. He also asked Congress to 

grant powers that could eliminate legal protections for children from Central America in order to expedite removals, a change that Republicans in Congress have also 

advocated. 

This would allow life-or-death decisions to be made within hours by Homeland 

Security officials, even though studies have shown that border patrol agents fail to 

adequately screen Mexican children to see if they are being sexually exploited by 

traffickers or fear persecution, as the agents are supposed to do. Why would they 

start asking Central American children key questions needed to prove refugee status? 

The United States expects other countries to take in hundreds of thousands of refugees on humanitarian grounds. Countries neighboring Syria have absorbed nearly 

3 million people. Jordan has accepted in two days what the United States has received in an entire month during the height of this immigration flow—more than 

9,000 children in May. The United States should also increase to pre-9/11 levels the 

number of refugees we accept to 90,000 from the current 70,000 per year and, unlike in recent years, actually admit that many. 

By sending these children away, ‘‘you are handing them a death sentence,’’ says 

Jose ́ Arnulfo Ochoa Ochoa, an expert in Honduras with World Vision International, 

a Christian humanitarian aid group. This abrogates international conventions we 

have signed and undermines our credibility as a humane country. It would be a disgrace if this wealthy nation turned its back on the 52,000 children who have arrived 

since October, many of them legitimate refugees. 

This is not how a great nation treats children. 

80 

ELIGIBILITY FOR DEFERRED ACTION, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY

81 

FEW CHILDREN ARE DEPORTED

Wall Street Journal, July 11, 2014 

(By Laura Meckler and Ana Compoy) 

Thousands of children from Central America are undertaking a perilous journey 

to the U.S. border despite warnings from the U.S. that they will be sent back. In 

fact, many will get to stay. 

Data from immigration courts, along with interviews with the children and their 

advocates, show that few minors are sent home and many are able to stay for years 

in the U.S., if not permanently. That presents a deep challenge for President Barack 

Obama and lawmakers as they try to shore up an overburdened deportation system. 

In fiscal year 2013, immigration judges ordered 3,525 migrant children to be 

deported, according to Justice Department figures. Judges allowed an additional 888 

to voluntarily return home without a formal removal order. 

Those figures pale in comparison with the number of children apprehended by the 

border patrol. In each of the last five years, at least 23,000 and as many as 47,000 

juveniles have been apprehended. Those totals include Mexicans, who often are sent 

home without formal deportation proceedings and so may not be among those 

ordered removed last year. 

There are many reasons children end up staying. Some see their cases linger in 

backlogged courts and administrative proceedings. Some win the legal right to remain in the U.S. And some ignore orders to appear in court. 

Children who enter the U.S. illegally often are trying to reunite with family members or escaping gang violence and poverty. The U.S. has been overwhelmed finding 

shelters for them, and Mr. Obama has repeatedly said that they won’t be allowed 

to stay. But the reality on the ground—that so few are returned to their home countries—will continue to encourage more to make the journey north, said Doris Meissner, director of the Immigration Policy Program at the nonpartisan Migration Policy 

Institute. 

‘‘They’re here, and they’re staying, and whatever else might happen to them is 

at least a year or more away,’’ said Ms. Meissner, a former Immigration and Naturalization Service commissioner. ‘‘Until people’s experience changes, more are going 

to continue to come, because they’re achieving what they need: safety and reunification with their families.’’ 

Last fiscal year, immigration judges reached a decision in 6,437 juvenile cases, 

according to the court data. About two-thirds of the minors were ordered deported 

or allowed to leave the country voluntarily, and 361 were given legal status. In most 

other cases, the judge terminated the case, meaning the child wasn’t ordered out 

of the U.S. but wasn’t given explicit permission to stay, either. 

Separate data from the Department of Homeland Security show that in fiscal 

2013, about 1,600 children were actually returned to their home countries—less 

than half the number who were ordered removed—suggesting that some are evading 

deportation orders. 

The head of the immigration court system told a Senate hearing this week that 

46% of juveniles failed to appear at their hearings between the start of the 2014 

fiscal year last Oct. 1 and the end of June. And court figures show that last year, 

more than 2,600 out of about 6,400 orders were entered without the juvenile 

present—in absentia. 

Simply reaching a decision in these cases can take years, and the backlog is growing worse. As of June 30, there were 41,832 pending juvenile cases, up from about 

30,000 nine months earlier. In some jurisdictions, it is common for court dates to 

be set two or three years out. 

Most illegal border crossers are adults, children traveling with adults, or juveniles 

from Mexico. Their cases tend to be heard quickly, and most are immediately sent 

back to their home countries. 

The current crisis at the border is due to a different set of illegal immigrants, unaccompanied minors from Central America. The long delays largely can be traced 

to a 2008 federal law that requires cases involving children traveling alone from 

countries other than Mexico and Canada be heard in immigration court. The wait 

can stretch to several years for a decision, even in a straightforward case. 

The vast majority of these children are placed with family members in the U.S. 

while the proceedings unfold, but first they must travel through facilities run by two 

different government agencies, which further extends the process. 

On top of that, judges often delay cases repeatedly to give the children time to 

find legal representation. Just 15% of some 21,000 children sheltered by the DepartVerDate Nov 24 2008 11:29 May 15, 2015 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00085 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 S:\FULL COMMITTEE\HEARING FILES\113TH CONGRESS, 2ND SESSION\2014 ISSUE H
82 

ment of Health and Human Services between August 2012 and July 2013 were 

matched with attorneys while in government custody, an HHS spokesman said. 

Helen Cruz, 16, said gang violence in her home of Tegucigalpa. Honduras, pushed 

her to make the 1,900-mile trek to the Texas border with her 17-year-old sister. 

More than seven months after she arrived, Ms. Cruz’s legal proceedings have 

barely begun. Her first court appearance is scheduled for August, and it could take 

another year or more for her case to be adjudicated, said Wendi Adelson, a professor 

at the Florida State University College of law who is representing her pro bono. 

Her August hearing will likely be a short affair to inform the judge she plans to 

apply for special immigrant juvenile status, a process that could take many months. 

That will require Ms. Cruz to obtain an order from state juvenile court stating that 

she has been abandoned by her father and it isn’t in her best interest to return to 

Honduras. She then will need to file an application with the U.S. Citizen and Immigration Service, where the number of pending special immigrant juvenile status 

cases ballooned to 702 in the year ending September 2013 from 47 during the same 

period in 2011, agency statistics show. 

‘‘Sometimes I feel like going back, but I’m in danger over there’’ from gang violence, Ms. Cruz said. ‘‘If I can stay here, I will get a chance to get an education 

and be able to help the people I love back home.’’ 

Under U.S. rulings, threat of gang violence by itself doesn’t qualify someone for 

asylum. Nor does economic hardship at home qualify someone for legal status in the 

U.S. 

At the same time, the U.S. sometimes is unable or unwilling to return children 

who have been ordered removed. So far, that is a small problem, one official said, 

but it is likely to grow as the U.S. seeks to return many more youths to their home 

countries. ‘‘We just want to make sure that kids don’t fall through the cracks,’’ a 

senior administration official said. ‘‘You can’t send them back without making sure 

there’s a system in place that makes sure they don’t wind up in an unsafe environment.’’ 

Because of court backlogs, most of the 2013 court and deportation data represent 

cases of children who arrived in earlier years. One explanation for the low deportation figures is that people apprehended as juveniles turn 18 during the course of 

court proceedings and so become counted as adults. Deportation figures also don’t 

include Mexican youth who are turned around at the border each year. 

Some children are able to stay because they qualify for asylum or special visas 

given to victims of crime or human trafficking. Advocates say that a robust court 

system is necessary to be sure those claims are properly considered. 

The White House has proposed modifying the 2008 law to speed up deportation 

cases for Central American children. This week it sent Congress a $3.7 billion plan 

that would add more detention facilities and immigration judges, and help Central 

American countries repatriate children. 

83 

Number of Aliens Removed and Returned During 

the Bush and Obama Administrations 

Year Removals1 Returns2 Total 

2001 189,026 1,349,371 1,538,397 

2002 165,168 1,012,116 1,177,284 

2003 211,098 945,294 1,156,392 

2004 240,665 1,166,576 1,407,241 

Bush First Term 805,957 4,473,357 5,279,314 

2005 246,431 1,096,920 1,343,351 

2006 280,974 1,043,381 1,324,355 

2007 319,382 891,390 1,210,772 

2008 359,795 811,263 1,171,058 

Bush Second Term 1,206,582 3,842,954 5,049,536 

Bush Total 2,012,539 8,316,311 10,328,850 

2009 391,932 582,648 974,580 

2010 383,031 474,275 857,306 

2011 388,409 322,164 710,573 

2012 419,384 229,968 649,352 

Obama First Term 1,582,756 1,609,055 3,191,811 

2013 368,644 N/A 368,644 

2014 N/A N/A N/A 

Obama Second Term 368,644 N/A 368,644 

Obama Total 1,951,400 1,609,055 3,560,455 

Bush and Obama Total 3,963,939 9,925,366 13,889,305 

N/A = Not Available 

1 Removals are the compulsory and confirmed movement of an inadmissible or deportable 

alien out of the United States based on an order of removal. An alien who is removed has administrative or criminal consequences placed on subsequent reentry owing to the fact of the removal. 2 Returns are the confirmed movement of an inadmissible or deportable alien out of the 

United States not based on an order of removal. 

Sources: 2012 Yearbook of Immigration Statistics, Office of Immigration Statistics; Annual 

Report, Immigration Enforcement Actions: 2012, December 2013, Office of Immigration Statistics, 

Policy Directorate; Annual Report, Immigration Enforcement Actions: 2013, September 2014, Office of Immigration Statistics, Policy Directorate; ERO Annual Report, FY 2013 ICE Immigration 

Removals. 

84 

STATEMENT SUBMITTED BY JANA MASON, SENIOR ADVISOR FOR GOVERNMENT

RELATIONS, UNITED NATIONS HIGH COMMISSIONER FOR REFUGEES

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