“What kind of parent would send their unaccompanied child to the US?” ask those who flew the now-tattered Trump flags — the signage of conspiracy theorists, wall fetishists, white supremacists

That’s the question I’ve heard from locals here in Minnesota and from some Laredoans when discussing the increasing number of unaccompanied children crossing the southern border into the U.S. Many of us have seen the grainy video of an adult who straddles the top of the border wall, lifts two Ecuadorian toddlers over, drops them on the U.S. side, and leaves them there. Or of the boy standing alongside the road in some barren part of the Southwest, sobbing, his chin quivering, as he tells a Border Patrol officer that his group abandoned him, that he’s afraid, and that someone told him to turn himself in. Or of the overcrowded conditions in the Donna, TX, Customs and Border Protection facility, which has a pandemic capacity of only 250 but recently held 4,100 migrants—3,400 of whom were unaccompanied children.

What kind of parent would subject their young sons and daughters to these kinds of traumatic conditions and dangers? When people blurt out this question, the implied answer is an unforgiving judgment: “Only a heartless, abusive, incompetent one who shouldn’t have children in the first place.” When viewed through the narrow lens of social media’s politically toxic postings and from the perspective of our safe, comfortable lives far from the border and thousands of miles from the Central and South American countries from which many of these migrants flee, that response might seem obvious, even reasonable.

But people don’t flee their home countries and make a 2,000-mile trip over land because they want to or because they enjoy traveling or because they’re tempted by the idea of a comfortable life in the U.S., where accessible social services and welfare means they don’t have to work. Those are the lazy theories spouted and accepted by ignorant Americans who make assumptions based on their own narrow experience and obliviousness to life in neighboring third-world countries. People flee their homes because of circumstances most of us in the U.S. can barely comprehend.

Last November, for example, two powerful hurricanes — Category 4 Eta and Category 5 Iota — struck Central America, particularly Nicaragua and Honduras, just two weeks apart. The devastation that resulted from Eta—catastrophic flooding, deadly landslides, washed-out roads and bridges, severely damaged homes, power outages, and destroyed crops — was compounded only days later by Iota, packing 155 mph winds at landfall, all of which led to serious food shortages, unsafe drinking water, and increased illness. These problems were all further exacerbated by the pandemic. Normally, when crops are lost, people from rural areas find work in cities, but because of COVID and the shuttering of businesses and subsequent unemployment in urban areas, no jobs were available for those whose entire crops were lost to the hurricanes. 

And remember: farming in Central America is enormously different from that in the U.S. According to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization, the average farm size in Nicaragua in 2005 (the most recent year for which data is available) was 9.22 hectares (or 22.78 acres) and in Guatemala in 2006 the average farm was only 0.94 hectares (or 2.32 acres); these are primarily subsistence farms where most of what is raised is consumed by those who raise it. However, according to the USDA, the average U.S. farm in 2005 and in 2019 consisted of 444 acres (or 1,097 hectares). Unlike Central America’s subsistence farms, U.S. farms produce primarily cash crops to be sold, and only a small percentage of production is actually consumed by farmers’ own families. In the U.S., insurance usually covers a lost or failed crop; in Nicaragua or Honduras, desperation and even starvation are more likely consequences of this type of disaster.

However, even before these hurricanes struck, life in many parts of Central and South America was extremely dangerous. According to the U.S. Department of State, in parts of Honduras, “[v]iolent crime, such as homicide and armed robbery, is common. Violent gang activity, such as extortion, violent street crime, rape, and narcotics and human trafficking, is widespread.” The Department of State warnings for El Salvador are similarly ominous: “[v]iolent crime, such as murder, assault, rape, and armed robbery, is common. Gang activity, such as extortion, violent street crime, and narcotics and arms trafficking, is widespread.” On top of this, the Department of State warns that in both countries “[l]ocal police may lack the resources to respond effectively to serious criminal incidents.” In parts of Ecuador, ordinary people simply trying to survive often face mortal danger: “Transnational crime groups operating in Esmeraldas province have engaged in violent crime and killed local citizens in addition to carrying out bombings targeting Ecuadorian military and law enforcement.” And the consequences of Hurricanes Eta and Iota—food insecurity, evacuations, and relocations — make vulnerable people, especially women and children, still more likely victims of violent gangs and criminals.

But even when these migrants escape the deadly conditions in their home countries, survive the difficult and dangerous journey across Mexico to our southern border, and have valid claims to asylum in the U.S., they still have been denied entrance and told to wait in Mexico until their case can be heard in court. According to Human Rights Watch (HRW), “The Trump administration, under its Remain in Mexico program, sent more than 71,000 asylum seekers to Mexico to await asylum hearings. Additionally, since March 2020, the US has expelled migrants more than 400,000 times, many to Mexico, including asylum seekers who were denied the chance to make their claims, under travel restrictions purportedly to prevent the spread of Covid-19.” And while Republicans want to win political points by calling current events on the border a “crisis” or a “surge” and to blame the influx of migrants, especially minors, on the Biden administration’s change in policy, the current situation is primarily a result of the last administration’s immigration policy, which created a huge bottleneck of asylum seekers waiting in Mexico.

Eventually, something had to give. According to a 5 March 2021 statement from Human Rights Watch, “Asylum seekers sent to Mexico by the administration of former US president Donald Trump have suffered violence and extortion by Mexican police, immigration agents, and criminal groups” as well as being “exposed to rape, kidnapping, extortion, assault, and psychological trauma.” HRW isn’t alone in these findings. The U.S. Department of State also warns that in Tamaulipas state, “[o]rganized crime activity — including gun battles, murder, armed robbery, carjacking, kidnapping, forced disappearances, extortion, and sexual assault — is common along the northern border.”

If you’re a parent with children, and if you fled Nicaragua or Honduras or Ecuador because of the threat and reality of starvation, physical violence, disease, extortion, and poverty and now find yourself in a tent camp in Mexico where you and your family are exposed to the elements and again vulnerable targets of criminals and corrupt police, what would you do? Turn back and make the perilous trip back to a dangerous country where you and your children face mortal threats? Or would you risk sending your sons and daughters to the U.S. side, where they’re much more likely to be fed and safe from overt violence? I think we both know the answer to that question.

One last thing: what’s occurring today on the border simply isn’t a “crisis” but a continuation of a problem unaddressed since the early years of the Reagan administration. From 1983 through 2006, the “Southwest Border Apprehensions / Inadmissables” reported by the U.S. Border Patrol averaged 1,190,461 per year (or 99,205 per month). Compare that to 2007 through 2020, when “Southwest Border Apprehensions / Inadmissables” averaged 553,172 per year (or 46,098 per month), less than half the 1983-2006 average. In fact, during the period from 1983 through 2006, Border Patrol reported more than one million annual apprehensions / inadmissables in nineteen of those twenty-four years whereas in the most recent fourteen years (2007-2020), this annual number never exceeded one million and ranged from a low of 327,577 in 2011 to a high of 977,509 in 2019. While 2021 will likely see a higher-than-average number of migrants apprehended on the southwest border, it’s unlikely to exceed the highest “crisis” totals from the 1980s, 1990s, or early 2000s. What’s also worth noticing, however, is not which political party was in power when those numbers spiked but that twenty-two current U.S. senators who were elected between 1975 and 2006 have been unable or unwilling for decades to solve the immigration “crises” that have occurred on their watch over regular intervals during the past forty years.

Last Monday I drove through Cottonwood and Watonwan Counties in southern Minnesota. High overhead, a jet’s contrail arced eastward. On Red Rock Ridge, a cluster of wind turbines spun synchronously in the warm spring breeze. The cold water of the Des Moines River twisted around clumps of budding trees, through wetlands, and under narrow bridges on its way to Iowa. And five months after the election and less than three months after the insurrection at the Capitol, the landscape is still infected by wind-tattered Trump flags and fading signs touting Trump-Pence — no doubt the signage of conspiracy theorists, wall fetishists, white supremacists, and those who ignorantly disparage and condemn the parents of children al otro lado.