Hearings on July 3, 2014 of the U.S. House Homeland Security Committee in McAllen that there have been 52,000 unaccompanied children entering in recent weeks from Central America and held in a variety of often make-shift accommodations run by ICE once arriving in the United States. Some reports estimate that 1,000 daily are being apprehended and if so, there is a large number that are not apprehended. Since they are coming from Central America they are not deported back to Mexico. The most direct and least mountainous and remote route is along the east coast of Mexico through the Mexican state of Tamaulipas and into Texas cities such as Brownsville, McAllen, and Laredo. I would suspect that thousands have arrived or soon to be in Austin and unless matters are resolved thousands of more will come.

Years ago Mexico had active policies that controlled the entry of people from Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and other countries south of Mexico into Mexico’s southern states like Chiapas and Campeche. I conducted a research project in the 1980’s with the Mexican government and was in Mexico City monthly, had an office there and provided statistical and computer technology to help Mexico track and project population changes and health, education and welfare needs. Mexico kept a wary eye on its southern border as Central American wars were still active and health and welfare systems there were primitive and Mexico viewed large scale refugee influx as a serious threat to the stability of Mexico. Military units were stationed in Chiapas with the expressed responsibility of keeping people from entering from Central America.

With several powerful drug cartels in Mexico today, the nation’s territorial integrity is less than it was 30 years ago and in some cases as Randy’s article sent to us yesterday from the El Paso Times coverage of of Texas state committee hearing, cartels are known to bring people from Central America through Mexico to Texas. They require a payment of several thousand dollars but also likely know that the creation of a refugee crisis in Texas will deflect the efforts of federal, state and local law enforcement to control their crimes of drug and human trafficking.

The cartels’ interests are considerable as agencies like the DPS and the DEA estimate that somewhere between 18 and 50 billion dollars annually of illegal drugs are brought into the United States. Some very large percentage of that contraband flows through Austin on IH 35, the best and most direct land route to major cities of the heartland from Oklahoma City to Chicago. Three years ago DEA agent Greg Thrash told us that Austin now serves as a “command and control center” for cartel activities. In the last three years Federal prosecutions led by U.S. Asst. AG Robert Pitman have convicted members of several Mexican cartels including la Familia de Michoacan, the Zetas and the Gulf Cartel in Federal court in Austin. In these cases and other cases the Austin Police played important roles in developing the criminal prosecutions.

The Federal government has been caught completely unaware of this exploding number of children refugees from Central America this year and the Federal service is not trained or staffed to care for minors. Care of minor children without their parents are a state responsibility and in most states including Texas are in state and county agencies of child and family services and are handled in foster care. Unaccompanied minors, for example in Texas, are turned over by the police to child welfare services and intake workers place children in foster care. Most foster care is through contracts with families paid to care for the children and who continue to do so until they reach the age of 18 or are adopted. Texas has just under 33,000 foster care placements and cannot expand those placements to deal with 50,000 or more minors coming into towns like McAllen and made more complex with the need to find foster families and if possible where someone speaks Spanish. Beyond simply finding families that can serve as foster care parents, dependent children require clothing, health care, vaccinations and education. If they are not deported, they will need additional education through high school and at a level that will permit them as young adults to successfully enter the job market. Education and job development are challenges this year and in the future and if the numbers continue to grow they will run to the hundreds of thousands. Those costs will be paid through local taxes for public welfare workers, contracts with foster care families, some form of health care and schools and teachers paid by local and state funds.

Part of the reason, the motivation, for the costly and dangerous passage of minors through Mexico is the disaster that is enveloping countries like Honduras. That country has the world’s highest homicide rate and the economy of nearly 9 million provides only about 2,000 dollars per family per year. Drug cartels use Central American countries as staging grounds to move drugs there and then through Mexico to the U.S. The violence and the poverty and now the popular notion in those countries that if you can make it across the United States’ borders you can stay is the driving motivation. The 15 million people in Guatemala are not significantly better off than Honduras, nor the 6 million in El Salvador or the total of 40 million in those countries south of Mexico and several of those countries being far more failed states than Mexico. So the likelihood of hundreds of thousands coming to the U.S. via Texas this year and in the coming years is not an improbable situation.

Americans cannot ignore this situation. It will directly impact EMS and the Police. Medical care will be at hospital emergency rooms and the public schools will face huge challenges. Housing will be problematic and homelessness a significant factor.