Debunked.
The source: On Monday, Brendan Darby of Breitbart published unclassified but significantly redacted "leaked documents" from the El Paso Intelligence Center (Epic), a DEA-run intelligence gathering and coordination group focused on drug enforcement. They baldly state underage migrants are fleeing El Salvador, Honduras or Guatemala not so much because of drug- and gang-violence as they are influenced by "traditional migration factors" (i.e., economics) and misperceptions about their ability to remain in the US.
The Epic analysis broadly mirrors earlier statements by Guatemala's first lady denying that there are no gangs in the municipalities from which children are fleeing (which were largely debunked).
The ensuing hysterics: While Darby's report got Drudged, it didn't see wide pick-up even on conservative outlets, possibly because it's so stupid.
The reality: The Department of Homeland Security reports that the surge in minor refugees is due to widespread violence. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees reports that 50% of the minors it interviewed "reported experiencing violence or having received threats from gangs, drug cartels, or state actors, such as the police."
Guatemala has one of the highest violent crime rates and one of the highest murder rates in Latin America, according to the US State Department.
El Salvador's murder rate hit an all-time high in May 2014, it's got the second-highest murder rate in Latin America, and the US State Department even issued a travel warning for Americans considering going there.
Honduras, from where a significant proportion of the migrant children come, has the world's highest murder rate, child murders are up 77% from just a year ago, and many child murders are thought to be gang-related.
Oh, and the crime reports Epic used to underscore its conclusions are from 2012 – before the current crisis of child migrants started, and while a gang truce was still in effect. That truce officially collapsed earlier this year, but may never really have affected the murder rate – the discovery of a mass grave in early 2014 indicated the increase in "disappearances" may have simply offset the supposed murder rate decline.
And none of that takes into account Epic's long history of distributing outdated "intelligence" information or its well-documented coordination and analysis problems that have led law enforcement agencies to ignore its data for at least five years. —Megan Carpentier
Illegals and gangsters and Ebola, oh my! 5 conservative immigration myths of the moment, made sane | Comment is free | theguardian.com
