Lives at risk: Migrant children stranded at the Mexico-United States border and the lack of international protection

Guest post by Claudia Stephany León Ang. Claudia is a migration advocacy practitioner. Her work has focused on children's rights and people with international protection needs from a gender approach. She has worked with asylum seekers facing immigration detention in the Americas. She holds an MSc in Migration, Mobility and Development by SOAS, University of London. 

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) noted that in 2023 over 117.3 million people worldwide were forcibly displaced. 40% of this population were children under the age of eighteen. UNHCR has registered unprecedented complex mixed movements throughout the Americas, leading to growing humanitarian crises: the hemisphere's forcibly displaced and stateless population will reach 25 million people in 2024, twice what it was in 2018. 

This blog post highlights the situation experienced by migrant children stranded at the Mexico-United States border trying to access international protection. It outlines what forced them to undertake their journey, and the dangers they face while waiting at the border. In addition, it aims to show that despite their vulnerable condition, the lack of protection and the challenges migrant children face at the border when trying to access international protection, jeopardize their safety and wellbeing. These issues particularly impact unaccompanied minors from specific nationalities. 

The Mexico-United States border is one the largest and most hostile frontiers of the Americas. Here people in need of international protection are stranded under precarious and dangerous circumstances, as they wait in Mexico to begin their asylum claims in the United States. This as a consequence of policy changes under both, the Trump and Biden administrations, with the participation of the Mexican state. Asylum seekers are systematically exposed to institutional and criminal violence as they wait at the border. The situation worsens when it comes to children, especially those unaccompanied.  

Migrant children stranded at this border come from various locations of Mexico. Many have become asylum seekers following internal forced displacement. They also come from various countries throughout the Americas (mainly Central America); and as far afield as Africa, Asia and Eastern Europe. However, all of them are in need of international protection and have travelled precariously from areas affected by conflict, violence or severe humanitarian crises that forced their departure; either accompanied by their families or traveling alone. 

The goal for most of them is not only to reunite with relatives in the United States, but to escape different types of violence at home. These children are fleeing away from domestic abuse, and/or they are forced to leave their countries due to the criminal violence they face; along with the risk of being forcibly recruited by organized crime groups. In addition, they run away due to gender-based violence, generalized violence by the state, and poverty.  

Nonetheless, according to UNICEF, these children are at heightened risk of sexual and economic exploitation or trafficking during their displacement. Human rights advocates working with this population have documented the conditions in which these children have to live along both sides of the border while waiting to access international protection. They commonly end up sleeping under improvised tents in open-air camps, while deprived of food, sanitation, and access to health. And, if they are able to enter the United States, they are regularly subjected to the deprivation of their liberty and family separation (when accompanied) as well as to deportation; all which cause further physical and psychological harm. 

Despite this situation, according to the official figures reported by the United States Customs and Border Protection (USCBP), more than half a million children –a total of 555,532 unaccompanied children and accompanied minors- were apprehended at the southern border of the United States by immigration authorities  from October 2020 to September 2024 (FY2021 to FY2024). Out of these encounters, only 9,277 children were accompanied; meaning that approximately 98% of the children apprehended by the United States authorities are traveling alone.  

In November 2023, Appleseed Mexico released a report revealing that, despite the fact that the causes leading to the forced migration of Mexican children are varied, complex, and intertwined, their main reason to undertake the journey to the north has been to escape organized criminal violence. The report exposes how Mexican migrant children have suffered death threats, forced evictions, and harassment by members of criminal organizations -sometimes having experienced the murder or disappearance of one or both of their parents, or close relatives, at the hands of such groups-. 

Despite this, the report also notes that on average, 89% of Mexican unaccompanied children encountered by USCBP authorities are immediately repatriated, without being subjected to a proper assessment of their circumstances, nor an adequate evaluation of their best interest or protection needs. This contrasts with unaccompanied minors from non-contiguous countries, of whom only 1.2% are immediately returned, having a greater opportunity to be transferred to the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), and have their protection claims heard by a judge or a Unites States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) asylum officer.  Mexican children with international protection needs seem to be treated differently; despite the screening requirements set by the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (TVPRA), which seeks to augment the protection of these children since 2011.  

In addition, the National Immigration Institute of Mexico recorded an increase of 94% on the repatriations of unaccompanied Mexican children from the United States between 2020 and 2021, almost doubling from one year to another. The upward trend continued in 2022, and according to official data, the number increased by 60% from 2020 to 2023. In the first semester of 2024, a total of 13,737 repatriations of Mexican children have already been registered by the migration authorities in Mexico, surpassing the total registered during the whole of 2020.  

Mexican unaccompanied children that are repatriated from the United States are almost immediately allocated in closed-door institutions managed by the Mexican government. At times they are kept under conditions that jeopardize their human rights and their psycho-emotional wellbeing. In addition, Mexican authorities frequently end up returning these children to the very same locations and situations from which they are fleeing.  

After 35 years of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, migrant children stranded at the Mexico-United States border are still facing great risks that compromise their lives. In many cases, their access to international protection is applied in a discretionary manner, excluding thousands of children from this right due to their nationality.  

Greater joint efforts and commitments between the Mexican and the United States governments are imperative to guarantee effective protection for these children in both territories. Though the current political climate both in the United States and Mexico may aggravate the crisis faced by migrant children at the border, political will at the local level and for the implementation of children´s rights standards already in place, is still key for this vulnerable population to access international protection.