Recently, the US borders have been flooded by women and children who escaped crimes and gang violence in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. The UN is pressuring the US to change our immigration rules that determine asylum and refugee status, so that we will allow those Central American women and children to stay as refugees. The US has very peculiar rules for granting asylum and refugee status. In order to be granted asylum and permission to stay in the US, the refugee has to be persecuted in her country for one of these five reasons: her race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or her political opinion. Targeted group-specific (i.e., discriminated) prosecution is the key here. The US do NOT grant asylum or refugee status for "general" violence that indiscriminately affect everyone in the home country, (e.g., war, crimes, or gang violence.) Specific examples: During WWII, Jews were granted asylum and permission to stay in the US because they were targeted by Nazi for their race and religion. After the Vietnam War, Vietnamese targeted Chinese, Laos and Khmer (Cambodians) in Vietnam for cleansing. That was why those particular groups were granted asylum in the US. They were targeted by Nazi/Vietnamese based on their races, religion and/or nationalities. The recent immigrants and children from Central America escaped gang violence that affects everyone in their countries, indiscriminately, and not just specific groups. Therefore under current rules in the US, those children certainly would NOT be eligible for asylum or refugee status in the US. When they appear in the immigration court and make their cases to immigration judges, they would most certainly be deported.
I just want to clarify because there seems to be some confusion as to whether those children are refugees or not. Under our current rules, they are NOT.