Kino Border Initiative

(1:11) Guest: Reverend Sean Carroll, Executive Director of the Kino Border Initiative  The Department of Homeland Security will run out of funding on Friday unless Congress can agree on a budget for the agency that secures our borders. The stand-off is tied to Republican trying to undo President Obama’s executive action on immigration. There’s ongoing political disagreement about how to handle the problem of people crossing into the U.S. illegally. After a decade’s decline in the number of illegal migrants begin apprehended at the U.S.-Mexico border, the department of Customs and Border Protection says 2014 saw a spike. They attribute that increase to unaccompanied children and families turning themselves in over the summer. Discussion on this side of the border often focuses on what to do with nearly half-a-million illegal migrants who were apprehended last year. Jail them? Send them back to Mexico? The side of the story we rarely hear about is what happens to those people once they’re dropped off on the side of the border.  “For many if not all, it’s the most traumatic experience of their lives,” says Carroll on deportation.  “We have a lot of mothers who are separated from their children who are in the United States. There are no words,” says Carroll, “to describe the experience of a mother who cannot be with her children.”