Experts are anticipating that another wave of unaccompanied minors from Central America will make their way northward to illegally enter the United States.
“The situation in Central America has not changed, we have the same problems of insecurity and violence, the lack of governability continues and jobs are still a problem – there is no work for young people who are members of cartels or street gangs,” Carl Meacham, the director of the Americas Program of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told the Spanish language publication EFE on Thursday and Fox News Latino reported in English.
According to Meachum, the recent decline in illegal entries by unaccompanied minors in the summer after months of massive influxes “won’t last long.”
“The president has not acted, Congress has not acted and the circumstances of the situation have not changed. There has been no legislation or change from the executive branch to eliminate the reasons why these children come to the United States,” Meacham added according to Fox News Latino.
Politico Huddle reports that the commissioner of Customs and Border Protection Gil Kerlikowske made a similar prediction that more minors could migrate northward Monday during a talk at the Migration Policy Institute.
According to the brief report, Kerlikowske said that drought, gang violence, and poor economic conditions could reinvigorate the migration to the U.S. that wavered during the hot summer months when illegal immigration traditionally sees a lull.
“All of those things would tell me that we should be very prepared for an influx,” Kerlikowske said according to Politico Huddle.
He added the caveat that “It may not be anywhere near the levels that we saw.”
The crisis of unaccompanied illegal immigrant minors entering the U.S. and straining government resources captured headlines and lawmaker’s attention during the spring and summer.
Republicans pointed to the lack of immigration enforcement and Obama’s program that shields certain childhood arrivals from deportation as a draw factor, Democrats argued that the minors and family units are fleeing dangerous countries. Congress however failed to pass an additional funding package before the August recess to deal with the crisis.
From October to August more than 66,000 unaccompanied minors and more than 66,000 family units have been detained illegally entering the U.S.
The predictions echo a recent press conference reported by the Washington Examiner in mid-August in which an immigration group warned that a second wave of 30,000 unaccompanied illegal immigrant minors would make their way to the U.S. in October and September.
“Right now it’s just too hard for them to cross, but we expect when it cools down a little bit in August or in September, October, we’ll see another surge again,” the Washington Examiner quoted the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants’ Tiffany Nelms.