At the Wall Street Journal, "Hondurans in Dire Straits Pulled North by Rumors" (at Google):
SAN PEDRO SULA, Honduras—Busloads of deportees from Mexico roll into this industrial city near Central America's Caribbean coast three afternoons a week, disgorging hundreds of women and children who had striven and failed to leave desolate lives behind.
The poor, violent neighborhoods of San Pedro Sula have led Central America in a surge of unaccompanied minors traveling illegally to the U.S., according to the Department of Homeland Security. U.S. Border Patrol agents have detained more than 52,000 children since October, creating a humanitarian crisis and sparking a bitter debate in Washington about the reasons for the exodus and how to stop it.
President Barack Obama has asked Congress for $3.7 billion in funding to stanch the flow with tougher border enforcement, faster deportations and more effective warnings to would-be migrants that they have little chance of staying in the U.S. Mexico has stepped up enforcement on its own southern border, and Honduras and other Central American governments have begun to actively discourage children from setting out.
The success of those efforts hinges on whether people on the meaner streets of cities such as San Pedro now judge the journey north futile or still worth a chance. Early indications from migrants and community activists in this city—one of the world's most crime-ridden—suggest the efforts will fall short.
"We are going to think about it for two or three months and then probably try again," Edras Pineda, a sparrow-like 17-year-old, said recently to the nods of half a dozen other teen deportees at a government reception center here.
"You study and study and there isn't any work," said Mr. Pineda, who set off for the north with a friend from their farm town as soon as school recessed in June.
Lenient handling of unaccompanied minors dictated by a 2008 U.S. law fed rumors earlier this year—spread by gossiping neighbors and business-seeking smugglers alike—that minors traveling alone, or with an adult, can somehow obtain a permit to stay in the U.S. In fact, such permits don't exist. But because the flood of minors has overwhelmed immigration courts, some minors are being released to relatives already in the U.S. to await hearings months, sometimes years, away.
"I believed it would be easy for my son to obtain papers in the North. It wasn't true," reads a poster being distributed in Central America as part of the new U.S. campaign to dispel that notion. "Our children are our future. Let's protect them."
Past information campaigns—by the U.S. and Mexican governments as well as private and public aid groups—have similarly warned of the danger of illegally migrating. They have had scant impact, said Salvador Gutiérrez, an official with the Central America regional office of the International Organization for Migration in San José, Costa Rica.
"As long as the economic and violence situation doesn't change, it's going to be very difficult," Mr. Gutiérrez said of hopes of immediately stopping the flow of minors.
"The impact on migrants is going to be very limited."
Mr. Gutierrez said his organization believes the rush to the border was sparked by a rumor that began in Guatemala and spread quickly through Central America. Such rumors have arisen in the past and have taken months or even years to debunk, he said.
