One of the first warnings about the migration crisis in Central America was known in 2013 when a group of researchers from the State Universities of San Diego and California in Santa Barbara, in California, warned the United Nations (UN) of an exodus It was growing by leaps and bounds.
The warning was transferred to the government of Barack Obama, but the authorities at that time were confident and did not increase the response capacity to attend the arrival of thousands of migrants on the border with Mexico who arrived after fleeing their countries in search of a resource. legal available: asylum.
It was not until June 2, 2014, months after the notice issued by the UN, that Obama recognized the crisis after the arrest of more than 46,000 minors and a similar number of families on the border with Mexico so far this year. fiscal.
One of the main researchers who prepared that first report, Elizabeth Kennedy, said a year later that the crisis was not on the border between the United States and Mexico, as is still maintained, but that it arose and remains in Central America, an area where eight years later the causes worsen and become more complex.
During the first year of the exodus, from October 1, 2013 to September 30, 2014, the number of Unaccompanied Minors (UAC) from Central America who entered the United States without papers and were arrested, was 57,478. The following year the figures fell to 26,685, a decrease of 54%, according to data from the Immigration and Customs Office (ICE), but this was not synonymous with that the crisis had subsided, but rather that the government demonstrated its ability to contain it.
And what happened to the deportees? Kennedy said in 2015 that most “try again and will try again. There are several reasons: family, they have paid a lot for three chances (opportunities that human traffickers give them to bring them to the southern border of the United States), violence, fear and high unemployment rates. That is why they persist ”.
In turn, the living conditions in Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras, the three main countries that export asylees, were not the same as those prevailing in 2014 and are not the same as those in 2021. “They have worsened,” Kennedy points out now. . “And this situation generates a greater flow of migrants to the United States,” and she reiterates once again that the crisis is not on the border with Mexico, it is in Central America.
