Trying to fill a book, obvs

Two interesting, unsettling pieces from the Washington Post and the Atlantic about what happens to unaccompanied minors after they get to the US, how they relate (and sometimes contribute to) gang violence in the US, and the ongoing debate about whether it's better to let some 'bad' ones in to protect the majority good, or to just close the door on all of them. Particularly disturbing are findings from several investigations into the Office of Refugee Resettlement at DHS, which include children being placed with human traffickers and people convicted of child molestation, as well as a total lack of follow-up care and services.   MS-13 gains recruits and power in U.S. as teens surge across border (WaPo) What Trump Doesn't Understand about MS-13 (The Atlantic) Additionally, there is the murder of a girl in Northern Virginia earlier this year.  This story is truly hair-raising.  I'm only sharing because the details of how/why both the girl and her mother left El Salvador (10 years apart),the girl's journey to the US with a coyote (including time in a Mexico detention center), and how she ended up as a statistic in the US illuminate the need for stronger protection systems and services in both El Salvador and the US.  Protecting human rights is not just a question of law and law enforcement, it is also a matter of providing assistance -- social services, trauma treatment, accompaniment, etc.  The US has laws, it has strong law enforcement, but it often drops the ball with the more human aspect of human rights, something to consider in our own programming. She thought she’d saved her daughter from MS-13 by smuggling her to the U.S. She was wrong. (WaPo)