By IPS Correspondents
MEXICO CITY, Sep 16 2004 (IPS)

“I had a really bad time on the trip to Tijuana, because the people (smugglers) who were taking us didn’t give us food, and there were also problems with some Mexican police who treated us badly and wanted to detain us,” said Erika, a 16-year-old Mexican who recently tried to make it into the United States.

“But with the ‘migra’ (U.S. border agents) nothing bad happened, just the detention itself,” she added in a telephone interview with IPS from a shelter in the northern Mexican city of Tijuana, where she was taken after her unsuccessful attempt to cross the border.

Erika is just one of more than 40,000 Mexican children and adolescents who fail to make it across every year. And many, like her, have unpleasant stories to tell.

“I was with two young guys, we crossed the border and ran, but some ‘migra’ agents on motorcycles followed and cut us off. I don’t have any documents, so I couldn’t get in,” said Erika, who was deported.

Some 25,000 vehicles and 50,000 people cross the border between Tijuana and San Diego, California every day. But with the increasingly strict controls put in place over the past decade, and especially the last three years, thousands who attempt to make it across without visas are detained, including an average of 12,000 minors a year.

At the border posts located along the 3,200-km shared frontier, a total of 40,000 teenagers and children are detained every year. But many more attempt to cross the border in remote areas that are less heavily guarded – and much more dangerous.

More than 3,000 Mexicans have died in the past decade, lost in deserts, drowned in river crossings, or abandoned by people smugglers in locked trucks or train cars, in their attempt to reach a U.S. city. Many of them were under 18.

“Minors suffer the brunt of the migration situation, because they are exposed to abuses and other major problems, especially young girls, who are often raped,” Oscar Escalada, director of the YMCA shelter for young migrants in Tijuana, told IPS.

“We have found kids 10 years old or younger trying to make it into the United States on their own with fake documents or simply without documents. But most are between the ages of 14 and 17,” said Escalada by telephone.

In June 2003, the London-based rights watchdog Amnesty International reported that around one-third of minors in the custody of U.S. immigration authorities spent time in prison-like facilities designed to hold young offenders, where some were subjected to shackling, strip searches and solitary confinement.

But according to Escalada, the treatment received by Mexican immigrants at the hands of U.S. immigration agents has changed significantly over the past year.

“It’s true there is mistreatment sometimes,” he said. The agents mainly “threaten the immigrants to discourage them from trying to cross the border again. But in general they’re careful, they coordinate the deportations with the Mexican consulates,” and minors are no longer handcuffed or beaten, he added.

Francisca, who is also 16, told IPS by phone that her trip to Tijuana from her home state of Guerrero in southern Mexico was “perfect,” because that part of the journey was by plane, and she was accompanied “by relatives.”

But they were stopped at a border post as they sought to drive across by car.

“They spoke to us in English and we didn’t understand. Then they asked us for our papers in Spanish, and we gave them what we had, but they didn’t let us by,” she said. The documents carried by Francisca and her companions were false.

“They asked me where I got the documents, where I was from and other things,” she said. Francisca was held for eight hours in the United States before she was returned to Mexico, where she was taken to a shelter.

But like Erika, she plans to try again.

Most of the children and teenagers who try to cross the border into the United States on their own are Mexican, but others are from the Central American countries of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, and some come from as far away as China.

Escalada explained that almost all of the minors are accompanied by people traffickers, who have previously negotiated the fees and conditions of the trip with the youngsters’ families.

The coyotes charge around 5,000 dollars for a complete journey, including a trip by plane and a certain level of comfort.

But for merely crossing the border, the price ranges around 500 dollars, he said.

Many of the youngsters go in search of their parents who emigrated before them. Erika’s mother and father, for example, have been living in San Diego for two years.

“I’ll find a way to reach my parents, because I want to go and live there with them,” she said. For now, her home is in the state of Michoacán on the Pacific coast, where she lives with her uncle, aunt and two younger brothers.

Other adolescents who try to cross the border are seeking a job, or fleeing situations of domestic abuse.

Every year, an estimated 390,000 undocumented Mexicans make it into the United States, many of them with the help of people traffickers. But more than one million are deported annually.

Up to 1993 it was possible to make it across at points near border cities. But since then, the roads and border areas have been closed off with high walls and fences, and the strict controls were further stepped up after the Sep. 11, 2001 terror attacks on New York and Washington.

A total of 38.8 million “Latinos” live in the United States, including 25.4 million people of Mexican origin or descent.

Although the United States and Mexico have signed agreements to crack down on people trafficking, migrants continue to turn to coyotes to help them make it past the border controls.

At the hands of people traffickers, minors suffer the worst abuses, including rape, lack of food, and threats and subterfuges to force them to smuggle drugs or other illegal goods into the United States.

When they are deported, minors are usually sent to shelters run by the Mexican state or non-governmental organisations like the YMCA.

There they are given a roof over their heads, meals and, if necessary, counselling. The length of their stay depends on how long it takes to contact their families.

“There are cases in which they stay in our shelters for just a few hours. But some stay for months, especially if they have no family in Mexico and need more time to get settled in Tijuana, or travel to another city for a job. And some remain in state custody,” said Escalada.

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