Only in May and June of 2021, 2.857 Brazilian children up to 6 years old illegally crossed the border between the United States and Mexico, and ended up being detained by the US immigration service.
These unpublished data from the United States Customs and Border Control Agency were obtained by journalist Mariana Sanches, BBC News Brazil correspondent in Washington.
The figures show that the total number of children under 6 years of age apprehended by US agents in just two months already exceeds the total accumulated in the seven Previous months .
Of these 2. 857 kids, 12 entered the country without the company of their parents or legal guardians and, at the time of enco Entering the U.S. authorities, they were temporarily in government custody.
One of them is baby Jo a or *, a year and a half old , who spent more than a month in a foster home in Virginia after entering the United States with her grandparents, whom she decided to deport.
Jo’s story to or
Mariana Sanches pointed out that the baby’s story reveals the dangers and sufferings of a trip that has become increasingly popular among Brazilians who want to try a new life in the United States but do not have a visa.
Joao arrived in the United States in the arms of his grandparents. The family first traveled to Mexico in a group of six: grandparents, parents, a teenager and a baby, reported the BBC News Brazil correspondent in Washington.
Before crossing the border they divided in two groups: the parents continued with their adolescent son and reached their final destination in the country. The grandparents stayed with the baby and could never complete the trip .
The family tried to use the so-called strategy “cai-cai” , as the policy “catch and release” or “apprehend and release” is known in Brazil.
Mariana Sanches explains how this mechanism works: one or two adults, legal guardians of a child, cross the border with the minor and appear before the authorities.
Minors cannot be deported immediately, so adults go to a detention center.
As the United States cannot detain under 19 years in the same adult detention centers nor families have been separated, in the May Most of the cases, adults are only notified to appear in court at a future date and are released on US soil. Most of them never appear in court and settle in the new country without documents.
Sent to a home to 3. 000 km
Joao’s grandparents tried to use the “cai-cai” strategy.
But the Immigration authorities became suspicious of the situation. The grandparents did not have any documentation proving that they were legally responsible for the baby and, when contacting the agents, they let this information escape, Sánchez said.
By law, only parents or persons expressly authorized by They, through documents with international validity, can move with children from one country to another.
Given the situation, the US authorities determined the separation of grandparents and grandchildren, and the former were referred to procedures of deportation.
The baby was sent to the Department of Health and Human Services, which in recent months has been overwhelmed by lack of space to accommodate the huge number of children unaccompanied by their guardians, who cannot be deported, Sanches recounted.
Joao, however, could not stay in children’s shelters. Learning to walk and talk, her condition was very fragile and vulnerable , and it was urgent to find a new temporary home for the Brazilian baby.
After of being tested for covid – 19, Jo a or was sent to the home of an American family in Virginia, about 3. 000 kilometers from the border with Mexico .
Now there is a shortage of places in temporary homes , and the housing for Joao was made possible thanks to the work of a religious NGO that has been recruiting volunteers across the country to house children from the border. The NGO did not want his name to be disclosed or to make statements about it to BBC News Brazil to guarantee the confidentiality of the identity of Joao and his family.
At the same time, Joao’s mother began her personal ordeal . When she discovered the baby’s whereabouts, it was necessary for her to present documents such as a passport, for herself and Joao, as well as a duplicate of the child’s birth certificate.
There was also the need for the Brazilian authorities to give him give the Americans their criminal history, which did not contain any crime, so that they would have the right to recover the baby.
Joao and his mother are already reunited, but Sanches points out that are still far from having a happy ending, as the boy’s parents still have to deal with the deportation process that could drive the entire family out of America.
Family units
The number The number of irregular Brazilian immigrants has increased every month and has increasingly attracted the attention of the US Immigration Service, according to Sanches.
Brazil is already the seventh most frequent source of visa-free migrants, ahead from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, Colombia and Venezuela.
The number of Brazilians detained in 2021 when crossing the US border without visa (29. 500) is the record recorded in the entire historical series , which measures these movements by nationality since 2007.
Does 10 years in 2011, only 472 Brazilians were detained under the same conditions.
The overwhelming majority of the almost 4. 976 Children up to 6 years old who arrived in the United States by this route since last October were accompanied by their parents.
This is what the US authorities call family units : two-thirds of the almost 30 . 000 Brazilians already detained by immigration in 2021 were in nuclear families, which includes parents and children.
This is due to the “cai-cai” practice, which encourages visa-free migrants to travel with their children. minors. In this way, adults seek to ensure that they are not deported immediately upon arrival in the United States when they present themselves to local authorities.
“I followed the recent case of a man who paid US $ 11. 000 to a coyote and was enraged when the mother of his daughter, to whom he was not married, refused to let the girl of 15 years will accompany him on the trip through Mexico, “he told the journalist. Mariana Sanches the sociologist Sueli Siqueira, specialist in migration of Brazilians to the United States from the University of Vale do Rio Doce.
“The father said that to make such a high ‘investment’, he needed to be sure that he would not be deported. And that would only be possible with the presence of the adolescent, who would not be deported or separated from her father. ”
From Trump to Biden
Both the Brazilian and US authorities affirm that the strategy of the “Cai-cai” had been practically abandoned during the Trump administration, when the then Republican president adopted practices such as the separation of parents and children, the summary deportation of minors and the obligation to wait for the response to the request for asylum in Mexican territory.
But all these restrictive measures were reviewed and, partially or totally, abolished during the Trump administration or already during the Biden administration, which led to the resumption of the “cai-cai”.
Ele I have promised to make the immigration system “more humane” and to create a path to obtain citizenship for 11 millions of migrants already living in the country without documents, Biden has faced a crisis in this matter, with the arrival of almost 1.3 million people who crossed the border only in 2021 . Of these, 73 1,000 were minors without parents or guardians.
The volume led the current president to entrust the vice president with handling the problem. In a recent visit to Guatemala, Kamala Harris was clear in her message: “Don’t come (to the United States).”
However, the warning is unlikely to have any effect on Latin Americans seeking a new life in the United States.
Mariana Sanches points out that, sunk in a mixture of economic crisis and uncontrolled pandemic, the region is experiencing a kind of new lost decade, reminiscent of the decade of 1980.
“It was not by chance that the first great wave of Brazilian migrants arrived in the US, h coming from unemployment and high inflation . Now, according to IBGE, unemployment in Brazil is close to 15% and inflation has shown strength, especially in basic items such as food, “said the BBC N journalist ews Brazil.
Sociologist Sueli Siqueira pointed out to Sanches that “despair with the politics and economy of Brazil” and the “belief that Biden will make life easier for those who come from abroad” have fueled the flow of Brazilians, which should remain high for many months.
He also states that the characteristics of this migration -mainly in the family- They also indicate that these people do not only plan to work and earn in dollars for a few seasons and then return to Brazil, but rather that they seek a permanent change of country, resettlement and a new beginning in life.
The child’s name was changed to preserve his identity.
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