For the first day of the week, US President Barack Obama has issued a memorandum that highlighted the increasing number of children unaccompanied as they cross the country's border. Calling the issue "an urgent humanitarian situation, Obama reportedly tasked the Federal Emergency Management Agency to ensure that the unaccompanied minors get proper housing and care in the country, Buzzfeed said.
According to the prediction of the Obama administration and immigration advocates, over 60,000 unaccompanied children will cross the border this year, which is a sharp increase from the annual 10,000 a few years ago. Advocates credit the rise due to the violence and poverty in their native Honduras, El Salvador, and other Central American countries.
In a statement, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said, "We must, and we will, address this situation. (The agency will work with a host of other federal agencies, including the Department of Health and Human Services to) ensure a coordinated and rapid government-wide response in the short term and to undertake broader, longer-term reforms to address the root cause behind these recent migration trends."
Obama's director of domestic policy, Cecilia Munoz, also told reporters during a conference call that the volume of children apprehended had substantially increased in the last month, particularly in the Rio Grande Valley in South Texas. On the other hand, she stressed that the ongoing debate on immigration reform has got nothing to do with the increase of children migrants.
She said, "They're crossing the border alone. Their reasons as we understand them that contribute to this dramatic increase have to do with economic conditions in those countries, increase in sustained violence in those countries, as well as the desire to be reunited with their families in the United States."
To address the needs of the children prior to the memorandum issued on Monday, officials had been sheltering the you migrants at an air force installed near San Antonio. Buzzfeed said that the seized children are transferred to the custody of the Department of Health and Human Services.
