More than 114,000 Guatemalans were apprehended by the U.S. Border Patrol between October and April. Half of Guatemalan adults who travel to the U.S. bring their children, hoping to save their lives. But in the past six months, five Guatemalan children have died in U.S. custody. The most recent child migrant death was on May 20.
Why do parents expose their children to this treacherous journey? Desperation. The death, destruction and deprivation that people are fleeing is embedded in decades of U.S. foreign policy.
I first set foot in Guatemala in 1994 and lived there for two years as the civil war ended.