U.S., Latin America: Child Immigration, risk of death

Nathalie Cely/Ecuador’s Ambassador to the U.S. wrote: In March, a little girl died scared and alone in a shelter in Mexico, lost on a perilous journey from the mountains of Ecuador to join her family in New York, more than 3,000 miles away. The death of 12-year old Noemi Alvarez Quilloy puts a tragic, human face on the U.S. failure to adopt meaningful immigration reform.

It also underscores how needlessly dangerous it has become for families living on either side of the U.S. border to be “whole”. Sadly, Noemi’s death is not the first, nor the last, we will see. According to the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement, the number of unaccompanied minors caught entering the United States is expected to reach 60,000 for the year ending Sept. 30, 2014, an increase from 6,560 in 2011. Read Article