The Obama mega-magnet for aliens to enter the United States by any means necessary is drawing ever more unaccompanied minors. America! Now with even fewer deportations, so come on over! The DREAM Act, rejected by Congress, has been substantially enacted by Obama’s mighty pen all by his lonesome, so kids are particularly targeted.
But some don’t make it—like 12-year-old Ecuadoran Noemi Álvarez Quillay who hanged herself in a Juarez children’s shelter in March. She had gotten half-way on the journey earlier and didn’t want to go again. But her illegal alien parents insisted:
Noemi Álvarez Quillay took the first steps of the 6,500-mile journey to New York City from the southern highlands of Ecuador on Tuesday, Feb. 4, after darkness fell.
A bashful, studious girl, Noemi walked 10 minutes across dirt roads that cut through corn and potato fields, reaching the highway to Quito. She carried a small suitcase. Her grandfather Cipriano Quillay flagged down a bus and watched her board. She was 12.
From that moment, and through the remaining five weeks of her life, Noemi was in the company of strangers, including coyotes — human smugglers, hired by her parents in the Bronx to bring her to them. Her parents had come to the United States illegally and settled in New York when Noemi was a toddler.
Noemi was part of a human flood tide that has swelled since 2011: The United States resettlement agency expects to care for nine times as many unaccompanied migrant children in 2014 as it did three years ago.
For these children wandering thousands of miles, it is a grueling journey, filled with dangers. The vast majority come from Central America. Noemi's trip was about twice as long. She had already tried once, leaving home last May, but was detained long before she even made it halfway.
"I went with a coyote and spent two months in Nicaragua and came back from there," she wrote in a school information sheet.
She got a little closer this year. In March, a month after she left home, the police picked up Noemi and a coyote in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. The authorities took her to a children's shelter. She was described as crying inconsolably after being questioned by a prosecutor. A few days later, she was found hanged from a shower curtain rod in a bathroom at the shelter. Her death, ruled a suicide by Mexican authorities, remains under investigation by a human rights commission there.
A 12-Year-Old's Trek of Despair Ends in a Noose at the Border, By Jim Dwyer, New York Times, April 19, 2014. Emphasis added.
Obviously, something terrible happened to this little girl, But the New York Times doesn’t want to emphasize how dangerous the journey north is for women and girls. Rape, robbery and death are common. But policy causes are absolutely off the table for discussion.
Main Stream Media reports about child border jumpers routinely emphasize family reunification: kids summoned by their parents so they can be one big happy family getting a better life in America. That’s the implied backdrop for poor Noemi’s story.
But there are also kids who hop trains to reach the US, with no comfy home awaiting them. They hope to find jobs in America on their own. In The Oscar-nominated documentary Which Way Home, a film about illegal alien children, follows a group like that. The trailer notes: “Among the thousands that ride the trains, roughly 5% are traveling alone.”
A brief clip (watch) shows about a dozen young boys 10-14 (?) goofing around on top of a train they hopped to journey to the US—hanging off the side, flapping their arms and other silliness.
The video ends with a couple boys saying that two kids died when they didn’t duck for a tunnel.
So much for the vaunted Hispanic family values. How many of these boys were unwanted by their families? Youngsters under 14 or so usually don’t want to be shoved out of their homes, however humble, to make a solo living.
Whether the source of the kiddie border invasion is “family reunification” or kid dumping by unwilling parents, America provides a plethora of juvenile-friendly benefits for illegal newbies, attracting kids to cross the border illegally. Immigration agencies have been transformed into purveyors of welfare goodies rather than enforcement to protect the American people.
Last year, it was reported that DHS agents actually delivered illegal alien kids to their illegal alien parents in the US [Homeland Security helps smuggle illegal immigrant children into the U.S., by Stephan Dinan. Washington Times, Dec 19, 2013].
Another example: the US government’s program of promoting food stamp delivery to illegal alien Mexicans, so the little munchkins well always be well fed. Immigration detention facilities have been built that resemble hotels in order to be generally humane, punishment-free and family friendly.
This big enchilada of goodies beckons to aliens of all ages across the globe. As a result, the number of unaccompanied minors has grown from a trickle to a tsunami:
LOS ANGELES—A record number of minors traveling alone are entering the U.S. illegally, presenting a new humanitarian and fiscal challenge as Congress grapples with the fate of 11 million undocumented residents already here.
In a report to be released Thursday, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops forecasts that 60,000 unaccompanied minors from Central America will cross the Southwest border into the U.S. this year. That is up from less than 25,000 the year before, and just 5,800 a decade ago. Border-watchers say it highlights violence and unrest in several Central American countries. Minors who cross from Mexico are almost always repatriated.
Flow of Unaccompanied Minors Tests U.S. Immigration Agencies, By Joel Millman and Miriam Jordan, Wall Street Journal, January 29, 2014
One might not readily believe a sob story report from the Catholic bishops, but ICE Union Director Chris Crane agrees. He appeared on Fox News’ Huckabee show February 1 with a message from the front lines of immigration enforcement. I transcribed part of his remarks from a video included in a blog report:
CRANE: One thing I would like to tell them, Governor, is that at this moment we have a humanitarian crisis on our southern border. Our southern border is being overrun right now in certain areas by people coming here people seeking the DREAM Act, seeking amnesty, and we're just talking about it at this point, and most problematic, most troubling and alarming is the number of children coming across our border all by themselves, seeking the DREAM Act, being turned over to members of drug cartels and human traffickers.
Children that are infants — nine months old, 14 months old — again, put in the arms of drug cartel members to carry them across the border, and it's so out of control, just one office is averaging over 2000 of these unaccompanied children each and every month. We're anticipating on the southern border this year that we're going to apprehend approximately 50,000 of these unaccompanied children, and they're coming across the border by themselves. Everyone up on Capitol Hill and these special interest groups that say what we're doing right now is the humane thing to do or the right thing to do or even the Christian thing to do are dead wrong.
Border Chaos Now Includes Thousands of Unaccompanied Children, Feb 2, 2014
Why has this influx increased to such a degree so rapidly?
Some liberal outlets opine that criminal gangs in Central America harass kids about joining up and the youngsters flee to El Norte. [Why Are More and More Children Walking Across the Border? By Ian Gordon, Mother Jones, December 23, 2013]
But Central America has been enormously violent for years, as shown by the murder rates of Honduras, El 
Salvador et al (see UN chart starting in 1995).
More likely: the Obama magnet affect, enhanced by the new ease of claiming asylum, which has enticed thousands of Central Americans to flock north in droves. [NYT: Illegal Immigrants Crossing Into South Texas 'in Droves',By Drew MacKenzie, April 11 , 2014]
One MSM report, U.S. seeing a surge in Central American asylum seekers, by Cindy Chang and Kate Linthicum, LA Times, December 15, 2013, featured a spectacular chart showing a dramatically steep incline of claimants. Obviously these claimants have heard that a sob story with a “credible fear” of violence or persecution is the ticket. Being “targeted by criminal gangs” is a popular theme.
In fact, the surge in squirrely claims prompted a House Judiciary Committee investigation last December: Asylum Fraud: Abusing America’s Compassion?[February 11, 2014] Even Chairman Bob Goodlatte, no immigration patriot hero, acknowledged in his opening statement
Unfortunately, however, because of our well justified reputation for compassion, many people are tempted to file fraudulent claims just so they can get a free pass into the United States.
Cartel gangsters have made use of our asylum system to set up business in the U.S.—including hit squad assassins who claimed they feared retribution after getting on the bad side of their employers. [Mexican drug cartels exploit asylum system by claiming ‘credible fear’, By Stephen Dinan, Washington Times, November 21, 2013]
All this anarchy is profoundly destabilizing. It is transforming the U.S. from a nation of laws into a state based on brute political power of whatever the chief executive can get away with.
Of course, the death count of children is a disregarded detail in the big Democrat scheme to Elect A New People and transform America into a permanent Leftist state via immigration of various legalities. Even Lefty feminists don’t seem very interested in the collateral damage of train-splattered kids who would be alive if not for the evil machinations of Democrats.
This process of getting the future Democrats relocated from big-government homelands to America is indefensible. The mass movement of millions removed from the morality of the home community is a trail of crime and misery. ['Death map' of deserts aims to save lives of desperate Mexican migrants, By Edward Helmore, The Observer, June 1, 2013]
The Left likes to say that open borders are “humane.” They are anything but.
Brenda Walker lives in northern California and publishes the blog LimitsToGrowth.org.
