The United States is set to overhaul how it handles illegal migrants after a young boy and girl, both from Guatemala, died while in US custody in December. Their deaths coincided with a spike in the number of young migrant families apprehended at the border. Many of them come from Guatemala.
To find out what is driving young families to the US, the BBC’s Patricia Sulbarán went back to the village of one of those children, Felipe Gomez Alonzo. Of all of Central Americans trying to cross the border to the US, Guatemalans are the ones doing it the most. There has been a vast increase in the number of women, children and families from Guatemala migrating to the US. Most people from Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, travel in caravans.
The BBC’s Patricia Sulbarán has been to remote Guatemalan indigenous communities where people are using people smugglers to make it to the US
