Deported Central America child migrants face threats, death at home: U.N.

By Anastasia Moloney BOGOTA (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Thousands of children entering the United States illegally from Central America might qualify for refugee status but are being deported to their own country where they face persecution by gangs, the United Nations Refugee Agency has warned. The arrival of nearly 70,000 children traveling alone at the U.S. border last year – mostly from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala – sparked a row in Washington over how to handle a crisis President Barack Obama called “an urgent humanitarian situation”. Many children are making the dangerous journey from Central America – a region with the world’s highest murder rates – through Mexico to the United States to escape rampant drug-fuelled gang violence at home.