Here’s the heartbreaking scenario: a mother and her child flee their home country in search of refuge from life-threatening violence. They complete a harrowing journey to the U.S. border, but when they reach the border, there’s currently no process in place for them to apply for asylum. So perhaps they cross illegally, are apprehended, and sent back to one of the border towns in Mexico. The mom knows there’s no way she can keep her child and herself safe in the dangerous conditions they encounter, and it’s impossible for her to survive if she returns to her home country.
“So the mother finds herself forced to make an incredibly heartbreaking choice,” said Casey Revkin, executive director and co-founder of Each Step Home, a non-profit organization that advocates for migrant children and works to help separated families reunite. “She knows children are not being sent back to Mexico if they arrive alone, and she makes the desperate choice to send her child across the border alone in the hopes of finding safer circumstances for her child at least.”
This decision is fraught with peril. “The mother can’t just walk with her child to a port of entry and surrender the child to authorities,” said Revkin. “She has to pay someone to smuggle her child across the border. And this, of course, is incredibly dangerous. But as horrifying as it is, this is her child’s best hope of reaching what the mom hopes is the relative safety of a detention facility in the U.S.”
Of course, it can be very difficult for a parent to find a child once the child has been designated as unaccompanied in the U.S. immigration system. Children are held by Customs and Border Protection, then transferred to one of the approximately 200 state-licensed facilities and programs in 22 states funded by the U.S. Health & Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement.
This harsh, horrible scenario repeats thousands of times at the U.S. border with Mexico every month. “And it will continue under the administration’s currently-proposed transit ban rule scheduled to take effect in May,” Revkin said.
Each Step Home is working to end the damage done to children by U.S. immigration policies. You can support their work by volunteering your time in a variety of capacities or by making a donation.