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Mirabel was 16 when her alcoholic father attacked her with a machete. It was the latest incident of violence she and her family had faced at the hands of her father and the last straw for her. She left her home in Honduras and made her way to the United States. In an interview with Politico, she recalls her risky decision:
“We all know the stories of women who get raped or die in the desert,” Mirabel told me. “But I couldn’t stay. I had no life there.”
Like Mirabel, thousands of people try to cross the U.S. borders illegally to escape the horror and pain in their home countries. But if they get caught and detained by the U.S. Border Patrol—as Mirabel briefly was—they might end up facing an even more terrible fate than the one they’re running from, according to a new report by the U.S. Civil Rights Commission.
Here’s how the report puts it:
While these immigrants migrate to the United States to escape harsh living conditions, once they cross the U.S. border without authorization and proper documentation, the federal government apprehends and detains these individuals in conditions that are similar, if not worse, than the conditions they faced from their home countries.
In 2013, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials detained more than 400,000 people for varying amounts of time (below, top). This number has been climbing in recent years (below, bottom), in part because of tightening border security.