Category Archives: Central America

63 million people and a crisis of solidarity

Posted on June 21, 2016 by Mary Turck

A new UN refugee agency report shows 65.3 million people forcibly displaced from their homes around the world. Of that number, 21.3 million are refugees and 3.2 million are seeking asylum. Another 40.8 million internally displaced persons live inside their … Continue reading →

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Women at risk

Posted on May 24, 2016 by Mary Turck

Femicide. Killing women. That’s what is happening in the Northern Triangle countries of El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala. In Women on the Run, the UN refugee agency reports: “El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras rank first, third, and seventh, respectively, for … Continue reading →

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God help the refugees. God help us all.

Posted on May 15, 2016 by Mary Turck

Kenya announced last week that it will close all of its refugee camps, forcing more than 600,000 refugees to return to the violence they fled in their home countries of Somalia, Sudan, Ethiopia and other nearby countries. That’s terrible, but … Continue reading →

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Let’s jail the children and call it child care

Posted on May 8, 2016 by Mary Turck

Texas, leading the nation as always, granted a child care license to a jail on April 29. It’s a special, private jail, an immigration detention center in Karnes City run by the private, for-profit GEO Group. The Texas license comes … Continue reading →

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Three-year-olds, immigration law, and the presidential candidates

Posted on March 13, 2016 by Mary Turck

David Wilson and Jane Guskin explain what’s wrong with the mainstream immigration debate, including the Sanders/Clinton pseudo-discussion in their March 9 debate: “The media and the politicians treat the migration either as a natural disaster (‘flooding over the border’) or … Continue reading →

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Will raids inspire more sanctuary churches?

Posted on February 11, 2016 by Mary Turck

Back in the 1980s, a network of U.S. churches and synagogues offered sanctuary to Central American refugees and organized an “overground railroad” to take them to safety in Canada. Now the U.S. immigration raids directed at Central American women and … Continue reading →

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Immigration agents should not be above the law

Posted on February 2, 2016 by Mary Turck

No warrants, no consent, no lawyers — that’s the story told by the Southern Poverty Law Center’s first-person report on raids targeting Central American mothers and children in January. Here’s part of Ana Silvia’s story:

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Central American children in peril — inside the U.S.

Posted on January 31, 2016 by Mary Turck

I wrote about the placement of unaccompanied minors with traffickers and in abusive situations on Al Jazeera on January 30 — Central American children face new peril in U.S. This article summarizes findings of a bipartisan Senate investigation. If you’d like to … Continue reading →

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Deporting refugees is not the American dream

Posted on January 5, 2016 by Mary Turck

Ana Lizet Mejia’s brother was killed by gangs in Honduras, and she fled with her son to the United States. Hers was one of a wave of Central American families seeking refuge in the United States in 2014. Now she … Continue reading →

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Dangerous El Salvador: Bring Peace Corps home, send refugee kids back

Posted on December 16, 2015 by Mary Turck

El Salvador is dangerous. The murder rate last year was just over 100 per 100,000 residents — one per thousand. That’s even worse than Honduras, where the murder rate is 61 per 100,000. The Peace Corps suspended its program in … Continue reading →

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