This year, the number of minors under 18 years of age who have been found on the border of Mexico and the United States triples that of 2022.
General photograph showing migrants in a camp next to the border wall, in Tijuana, Baja California (Mexico).
The number of Ecuadorian children and adolescents trying to cross the border between Mexico and the United States alone has increased significantly, despite the risks they run and changes in immigration policies.
Between January and August 2023, a total of 2,458 children and adolescents under 18 years of age crossed the border alone. That figure triples that registered in the same period of 2022: 738, according to data from the United States Border Patrol.
This year, the highest number of minors found alone at the border was recorded in August, with 440 children and adolescents, a month that is usually more difficult due to the high temperatures in the desert.
The hundreds of children and adolescents crossing the border are part of an unprecedented migration crisis that Latin America is experiencing, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM) warned last week.
In the case of Ecuador, this year 64,000 compatriots left by land and did not return, according to data from the Ministry of the Interior.
The Mexican president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, assured that 16,000 migrants daily arrive at the northern and southern borders of the country in the latest migratory wave.
