The happenings at the US border with Mexico ....

are not just events to do with minors seeking refugee status, they are also to do with drug trafficking and human trafficking. And, worst of all, potential terrorists also coming through ... I used to keep track of  this long, long, ago. Not any more....if our North American governments don't give a damn, why should we? 

Paolo Mastrolilli writing at LaStampa:
At U.S.-Mexico Border,Children’s Lives On The Line.

Juan Castro is trying to keep it together as he tells me this story, but the tears well up in his eyes. “There was this 11-year-old girl from Guatemala who had been raped. I had to ask her how, where, by whom, why and every single detail that could help build her case to stay in America,” he recalled. “As I brought up all the terrible memories with my questions, I looked into her eyes in search of any ounce of hope or a sign that her life hadn’t been broken.” 

Juan is the director of legal services for Catholic Charities, San Antonio’s Caritas. His job is to visit the detention centers that house the minors who come to America alone, and help look for a way to keep them in the country. 
Since the beginning of this year, 52,000 children have arrived, with a total of 90,000 forecast by December — and more than 120,000 expected for next year. Many of them arrive sick, with at least two confirmed cases of swine flu, scabies, lice, and some are now even saying AIDS. This is a humanitarian emergency which has now prompted President Barack Obama to ask for nearly $4 billion from Congress to try and contain it.  

“They come for two reasons,” says Antonio Fernandez, head of Catholic Charities. “The first is that they are escaping violence in their countries, and the second is that they think the U.S. immigration laws have changed and they will be allowed to stay. It’s a wrong perception, because Obama signed the DACA amnesty bill, which prohibits the expulsion of those who have resided in the States since they were young children — not those who come today.” 

And Castro notes the major change in the recent wave of arrivals is how few are Mexico natives, because the U.S. has an agreement with the Mexican government to quickly expel those illegals. Instead, these immigrants are coming from El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Peru. Their families entrust them to the so-called coyotes — the traffickers — paying around $8,000 for their trips, usually knowing that they have relatives already living in the U.S. The coyotes get half of the money straight away, and the second half when they get to their destination. 

“For these poor families, $8,000 is a fortune — years and years of hard work,” Castro notes. “If they can’t afford this amount, the children are obliged to pay their way in one of two ways: sex or drug trafficking.” 
And Castro adds a grim statistic: “We know that the same number of boys and girls leave, but 75% of boys arrive, and 25% of girls.”  

Along the road  
What skews these figures? “Many don’t make it and they die. For the girls, however, they can end up in the hands of traffickers who get offered up to $20,000 for them — a lot more than the $4,000 that the child’s family has given them before they set out. Unfortunately these girls then get sold to the highest bidder and end up in prostitution.” .........

........At La Joya police station, Detective David Ortiz confirms that the situation is beyond control. He says it is the narco gangs, like Los Zetas, who are calling the shots. “Often the coyotes leave the children on one side of the river to let the Border Patrol agents be distracted and not notice the drugs being smuggled somewhere else. One evening I saw a suspicious-looking van so I began to follow it. Two other cars quickly arrived and sandwiched me in, trying to force my car off the road. They were trying to make me stop them for a ticket so I would let the van drive off. I ignored them though, and ended up finding 80 kilograms of marijuana in the van.”  
But the postscript to the story is that Ortiz couldn’t prosecute the suspects. ...........