Immigrant children in Nogales, Ariz. shelter use the phone.Listen:
Thousands of Central American immigrant families not granted asylum in the U.S. will be deported beginning in January, the Department of Homeland Security has announced.
A surge of Central Americans fleeing violence and economic hardships in that region in 2014 caused a humanitarian crisis on the U.S.-Mexican border, including in Arizona. Most of the families were made up of women and their children.
Hundreds of families and unaccompanied minors from Central America were processed last year in Arizona and elsewhere, and were released to join other family members already living in the country.
Now Homeland Security officials said they plan to begin deportating those who were not granted asylum.
Human rights advocate Joanne Williams of the Kino Border initiative in Nogales said families will be going back to the same violence they were fleeing.
“We respect the U.S. government's right to protect its borders, but we are concerned that the government’s actions will cause families to be returned to places where they will suffer harm,” Williams said.
In Arizona and elsewhere, Central American women and children picked up by the Border Patrol were held, sometimes for several days, before being released at Greyhound bus stations, where they could catch rides to be with relatives across the country.
At one point, the Border Patrol was dropping a dozen or more families daily at the Greyhound station in downtown Tucson.
Social service groups, including Catholic Community Services of Southern Arizona, set up a network of volunteers to feed, clothe and temporarily house the immigrants before helping them contact family members, arrange to have money wired for bus tickets and board their buses.
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