HOUSTON (AP) – When authorities pulled them from a detention center near the U.S.-Mexico border and on a bus last month, the 12-year-old Honduran and her 9-year-old sister thought they were going to a shelter..so they can get their mom in the Midwest.
They were told to point to a document that they said would tell the shelter they didn’t have coronavirus, the boy said. The English way, a language he and his sister don’t speak. The only thing he identified were the letters “COVID.”
Instead, the bus drove five hours to an airport where young people were invited to board a plane.
“They lied to us, ” he said. They didn’t tell us we were going back to Honduras.”
More than 2,000 unaccompanied youth have been deported since March under an emergency statement issued through the Trump administration, which cited the coronavirus through a referral to provide coverage under federal anti-trafficking and asylum laws. Lawyers and advocates have strongly criticized the management of the global pandemic as a pretext for deporting young people to dangerous places.
No U.S. agent saw the video the boy had recorded on his mobile phone showing a guy hooded with a gun, saying his call and threatening to kill him and his sister, weeks after the guy who cared for them shot him dead in June.although they were deported under an emergency statement mentioning the virus, they were never tested for COVID-19, the child said.
Three weeks after his uncle’s death, the young men fled Honduras, crossing the U.S.-Mexico border alone; as part of the general procedure established by US law, they would have been referred to a government facility for youth and eventually placed with their mother., they were deported on July 24 after three days of detention in the United States and now live in Honduras with some other uncle who is leaving the country himself.
U.S. Customs and Border ProtectionBut it’s not the first time He rejected requests for comment on the boy’s history, and U.S. immigration and customs police.But it’s not the first time He also refused, saying that the youth had been placed in border patrol custody until they boarded an ice-operated deportation flight.
Spokespersons for any of the agencies refused to answer top questions about how they treat some 70,000 adults and youth deported under the emergency declaration issued in March; refused to say how to deport the young people or where to stop them before deportation, and added in hotels where at least 150 unaccompanied young people of just one year old were arrested.
Much of what is known about evictions comes from the stories of young people like the 12-year-old, who told The Associated Press about his revelry last week with a reminder of the main points that make him look older.
The AP does not identify the child, her sister, her mother, or her mom’s position in the United States because of concerns that young people will continue to be attacked by those who killed their uncle.
Dr. Amy Cohen, executive director of the defense organization Every Last One, interviewed the child several times and said she found out it believable in her conversations with many other immigrant children.
“When you have a chance to exaggerate or embroider your story, you don’t do it at all,” Cohen said.”And it’s consistent with everyone he spoke to.There’s no point in history repeating itself.”
Six young people have died since 2018 after being detained through the Border Patrol, many in situations that have raised questions about the company’s remedy for young people The company says it has instituted new medical checks and makes the decision to want more care for a hospital.
Mark Morgan, the acting commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, said Thursday that deportations under a segment of the U.S. Public Health Act known as Title 42 were mandatory for his agents.Morgan said 10 CBP workers died after contracting COVID-19.
“There is no doubt that Title has avoided more tragic losses among our own people,” he said.
In court, meanwhile, Trump’s management argued that young people seeking deportation were entitled to coverage of the Flores Regulation, a two-decade judicial settlement that sets criteria for the detention of young immigrants.
The children’s uncle took them three years ago after his mother fled with his older sister because of gang threats, according to the family.
We don’t know who killed the guy. But the boy said he remembered that members of the family circle made the decision not to take his uncle to the hospital because they feared they would simply not take his body out of the morgue.
The murder scared the family. According to the boy, he went alone in his uncle’s space with his sister to manage on his own.The boy said he had ready-made food with the beans and eggs left in the space.
Then, one day, he said, a guy came up to him outside the house, turned off to see his phone and returned it with a recorded video.In the video, noticed through the public address, a masked guy shouted the names of the brothers and warned, “Register and start running with us” or end up like his uncle.That same day, someone left a note outside his house threatening them, he said.
“It reminded me of my uncle’s death, ” he said. I was so scared.”
They joined an organization of migrants leaving Honduras in the hope of reaching the United States, he said.After the organization was divided into Guatemala, a man took him and his sister across Mexico and the border.
Matching comments say MS-13 and other gangs take death threats into account verbally, and that migrant teams and routes in Mexico and Central America are known to be controlled through traffickers who value thousands of dollars according to their children.I think her son or any other relative paid a smuggler.
The brothers crossed the border around July 21 and were arrested by Border Patrol agents, the boy said. According to his description, he and his sister are believed to have been detained at the Border Patrol Central Processing Center in McAllen, Texas, where youth and adults are separated into giant wire mesh cages.Inaugurated by the Obama administration, the same means of remedy was used two years ago to detain many separated parents and youth through the Trump administration’s zero-tolerance policy.
The boy said he was in a cage with 20 other children his age and older, separated from his sister, but may see her from afar in another corral.
Once a day, someone was taking his temperature, but the child says he never underwent a medical examination or a checkup to see if he had the virus, he said he was wearing a mask he brought from Honduras.
He was able to call his mother on duty once before he and his sister were deported.The phone call he won came from a McAllen number.
The next call from a civil servant’s mother in Honduras a few days later, asking her to send a father to look for her children from a shelter for deported youth, so she learned that they had been deported, she said.
He recently sat in the caravan where he lives with his family, his eldest daughter, now 16.
“I looked for anything to do and be able to be calm, to know that my young people are with me,” she says in tears.”No component of Honduras is Array”.