I-Team: Border crisis being felt in the Triangle
DURHAM (WTVD) -- President Barack Obama's visit to Texas to talk about the humanitarian crisis on the southern border is being watched closely here in the Triangle, where local agencies are starting to feel the impact of the growing surge of unaccompanied minors crossing into the country.
When ABC11's sister station in Houston last week asked a pregnant Honduran immigrant where she planned to go after entering the U.S. illegally, her destination was Durham. She's not alone.
"We are going to see more, yes, this is just the beginning", says Consuelo Kwee, director of the Hispanic Family Center at Raleigh's Catholic Charities.
Many of the unaccompanied minors, with family members in Durham and Raleigh, end up here. Kwee believes the young immigrants are trying to escape a new wave of gangs and violence in Central America.
"If the child rejects an offer to belong to the gangs, [gang leaders] just kill them", Kwee explains.
Since the new crisis began, Kwee has assisted a 17-year-old Honduran girl who arrived in the U.S. alone, and a 22-year-old mother carrying her two-year-old child, and nursing a gunshot wound suffered at the hands of Honduran gangs. Both have been reunited with family in Raleigh.
Durham is feeling impact from the crisis as well, but it's been slow to unfold.
"It's coming", says Francisco Duque with El Centro Hispano.
Duque says his non-profit social service agency is fielding a growing number of calls from local immigrant parents whose children are now stuck in "immigration limbo" at the border.
"They are moms and fathers that are [in Durham]. And in some cases they know their kids were on their way to America, and in some cases they didn't even know," Duque explains.
There is no end in sight to this crisis and no guarantees for those immigrants who make it out of the shelters on the border to family in the Triangle. They simply hope they can stay, but deportation is a real possibility.
