The number of migrant children arriving in Mexico and hoping to enter the United States has increased ninefold from January to March this year, the U.N. Children’s Fund said Monday, with an average of 275 minors entering the country every day.
The number of migrant children reported in Mexico rose to 3,500 at the end of March from 380 at the start of the year, according to the Children’s Fund, or UNICEF. The number includes data from Mexico’s National Migration Institute and other official sources, and provides a detailed look into the crisis.
“I was heartbroken to see the suffering of so many young children, including babies, at the Mexican border with the U.S.,” said Jean Gough, UNICEF’s regional director for Latin America and the Caribbean, after wrapping up a five-day visit to Mexico, where she toured the northern border with the United States.
The flow of minors is part of a larger migrant crisis that has left American officials struggling to control the border, with the Biden administration expecting more apprehensions at the frontier this year than at any point in the last two decades.
The majority of migrants are coming from Central America, escaping poverty, violence and climate disasters, including two powerful back-to-back hurricanes that devastated parts of Honduras and Guatemala last fall.
The estimated 275 migrant children arriving to Mexico each day include both those coming from Central America and those who are being expelled from the United States into Mexico, according to UNICEF.
The U.N. agency found that children represented at least 30 percent of the migrant population in many Mexican shelters. Half of all children at the shelters traveled without their parents, one of the highest proportions ever recorded in Mexico, according to UNICEF.
“Most of the shelter facilities I visited in Mexico are already overcrowded and cannot accommodate the increasing number of children and families migrating northward,” Ms. Gough said.
Source: nytimes
