Dangerous Journey From South of Border : Alien Children Find Grown-Up Terrors

Childhood ends somewhere south of the Rio Grande for young immigrants who slip into the United States without their parents.

Border Patrol agents in South Texas have found children as young as 4 traveling without adults, some abandoned by “coyotes” to fend for themselves on the crime-infested river bank that marks the Mexican border.

By the time they find temporary refuge at government-sponsored shelters, many of the children carry with them stories of rape, robbery, physical abuse, intimidation and extortion at the hands of the alien smugglers or corrupt officials of the countries along their route.

“They become men and women by the time they get here,” said Alejandro Flores, director of the International Emergency Shelter in Raymondville, about 45 miles north of the border. “It’s a trip that takes a lot of responsibility, a lot of adapting to situations.”

The exodus of thousands of Central Americans seeking political asylum in the United States has caused a crisis in South Texas, where the immigrants have filled a detention camp and Red Cross shelters to overflowing and have overwhelmed medical and legal aid systems.

Since July, when the first special shelter for child immigrants opened in Los Fresnos, more than 600 children have been housed there and at Raymondville. In addition, Red Cross shelters for immigrants house 60 to 80 unaccompanied children any given week and the Justice Department is planning a third special shelter for child immigrants in a former seminary near Mission.

Most stay in the shelters an average of 15 days until U.S. officials can reunite them with their families or find them foster homes.

“Most of them come with some address or something--of a cousin, brother, sister, mother, aunt, uncle, grandparents, you have it,” said Ernie Stallworth of the Justice Department’s Community Relations Service, which is paying a Harlingen contractor more than $1.5 million this year to run the nonprofit shelters. “Some of the kids lose addresses and telephone numbers.”

In many cases, the parents already live in the United States. Others have sent their children north to protect them from war or military conscription.

Alicia, 17, and her sister, Lorena, 15, said their mother sent them away from El Salvador’s Usulutan province, where they lived in constant fear of warfare between the government and leftist guerrillas.

They paid an alien-smuggling service $600, traveled for more than a month in a group of 40, were arrested by the Border Patrol shortly after crossing the Rio Grande at Brownsville, and were placed in the Los Fresnos shelter, a converted house complete with swimming pool.

“After seeing the problems we suffer in my country, I don’t plan to return,” said Alicia.

Lorena agreed, but added: “We miss our mother very much.”

The two recently left the shelter to join their stepfather in Miami while they wait for the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service to decide whether to grant them asylum. The INS has rejected most Salvadoran cases.

Beyond the uncertainty about their future, some of the young people need time to recover from traumatic journeys and life in a strange country, said Homer Tamez, director of the Los Fresnos shelter.

At times, the night staff finds children cowering under their beds, he said. And Stallworth said some do not know to sleep between sheets: “Some kids have never had two sheets or one blanket.”

Few stay more than three weeks, so the staff concentrates on teaching basic skills, particularly survival-level English.

Tamez, a former juvenile probation officer, said the motivation of the young Central Americans often keeps him at the shelter 12 hours a day. “These kids have an appreciation for what the United States is about that we wish our kids had. They don’t want a handout. They want to work.”