Texas: Kids get out

Just a few steps from the CareFree Inn, several hundred underage refugees have found shelter in grey barracks on the premises of the Lackland Air Force Base on the outskirts of San Antonio, the second-largest city in Texas.

A carefree image conveyed by kids playing soccer is misleading: The immigrants are cut off from a carefree life in the United States by guards and a high fence. Their only legal way out would be through legally approved adjustment of their immigration status.

Well-dressed in court

Today, a minibus is taking some of the youth to immigration court in downtown San Antonio. They're wearing shirt and tie, and they have applied gel to their short hair.

It's just another ordinary working day for Judge Anibal Martinez. For the young people, however, the five-minute interview could be a game-changer. Will they be allowed to stay in the United States? Or will they be deported to home countries they have fled due to inconceivable conditions there?

José (name changed) is also facing the judge today. He was in a camp before he was allowed to move in with relatives in nearby Austin. Unlike the boys from Lackland, he's wearing a t-shirt and sneakers.

Like almost all children and teenagers here, José speaks only Spanish. An interpreter translates when the judge asks him his name and age. Then his lawyer takes over. Proceedings are set for a date in fall - standard procedure for a first hearing.

Inconceivable violence

The 17-year-old is one of more than 57,000 minors who have entered the US via the border with Mexico since October 2013. Most of them are from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador.

Honduras - where José is from - has the highest murder rate worldwide. José says he's experienced the daily violence first-hand. He witnessed how policemen kidnapped his uncle under the pretext of illegal drug possession, and demanded ransom. Later he saw armed men break into his family's house, pulled him and his relatives out of their hiding places and brutally beat his uncle in front of them.

His mother told him he wasn't safe at home anymore. One morning, she sent him on the dangerous journey to the US. José refuses to say what happened on the way. But now he's happy, he added with a big smile.

Crossing the river

Siblings Maria and Carlos Vega are also from Honduras. Carlos, who is 16, described how he was repeatedly beaten and mugged on his way to school there. After a while, they both decided to leave - without telling their parents.

A smuggler took them and five other youngsters to the US border. They were forced to swim across the Rio Grande river to reach the US shore. Upon arrival, both were picked up by US border guards. They say they don't know what happened to the others.

Their lawyer, Felice Maria Garza, said the siblings were very lucky. She tells the story of a young mother who was forced into the water by smugglers, and lost both her babies while crossing the river.

Forced to freeze in the 'ice box'

Many children from Central America also fall victim to violent assault on the long journey to the US, said Jonathan Ryan, director of the non-governmental organization Raices, which is representing the children and teenagers from the camps in court.

The children often tell them stories that are so horrific that staff have to seek psychological help themselves.

But even for the lucky ones who do make it into the United States and are picked up by the Border Patrol, said Ryan, the horror doesn't end. Images have been released of "children who were packed like sardines into Border Patrol stations."

These stations are known as "ice boxes" in the US and Latin America because they're notorious for their low temperatures. The refugees say the temperatures are kept low for deterrent effect, so that the refugees agree to deportation quickly. Border patrol staff reject those claims.

Sometimes the refugees are kept there for more than a week, "without any additional clothing or blankets. The people are held in one box, where they eat, sleep, relieve themselves," Ryan said.

Administrative roundabout

Joe Romero, a US border guard, doesn't see the onus on Border Patrol to improve conditions for the migrants. "The government merely uses the building. External agencies with which the government has signed contracts are responsible for the buildings," he told DW.

Raices has sought legal action against this inhumane treatment - unsuccessfully so far. A different government agency runs emergency accommodation such as that on Lackland - which tends to be more humane, Ryan said.

He compares the Lackland facility to a kind of military boarding school: The children sleep in dormitories and can choose between different free time activities, and there's even television.

"The World Cup was a big issue - at least for as long as Honduras was still in the tournament," he said. There have been media reports on numerous cases of tuberculosis, although the government has not confirmed this.

Immigration debate

The new wave of underage migrants has been accompanied by a hardening of tone in the irreconcilable debate on immigration reform. Republican Party politicians are demanding the children and teenagers be immediately deported.

But that would require changing a law signed by George W. Bush, which guarantees underage migrants the right to a hearing. President Barack Obama has indicated a certain degree of "flexibility" toward Republicans on the issue. In return, he is expecting them to approve a special fund of $3.7 billion (2.7 billion euros) intended to tackle the "border crisis."

Resistance is beginning to form against that - also among Obama's Democrats, and in certain factions that are complaining openly about setting up emergency accommodation, calling it an "invasion."

"This is not simply an immigration issue of children in search of opportunity in the United States, on the contrary," said Ryan. "This is a humanitarian crisis, a refugee crisis," he asserted.