Over the past year, there has been a prevailing issue with immigration—particularly speaking about the children. Since late spring of this year, the detention centers holding migrant children have been nearly bursting at the seams. 
“Shelter capacities have hovered close to 90 percent since at least May, compared to about 30 percent a year ago. Any new surge in border crossings, which could happen at any time, could quickly overwhelm the system, operators say,” according to Caitlin Dickerson of The New York Times.
Despite the U.S.’ consistent negative overtones toward immigrants, these children, usually without any adult’s assistance, persist and illegally cross the border in hopes of escaping their countries and living a better life.
Here is the thing: the founding principles of our country were based on life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. This idea perpetuated, albeit hypocritically, by Thomas Jefferson applies to all people. 
Just to be clear, all people covers, you know, all people. No matter the gender, race, age, ethnicity or class, each individual should be guaranteed these inviolable rights. 
So, as illegal as it is, these children have the God-given right to pursue a life which is better for them outside of whatever country they came from. Our own Declaration of Independence even says these rights are “unalienable.” How ironic. 
But as peachy as this sounds, the life awaiting them while they travel is not the American life. These children, many who are teenagers, are at high risk of being taken advantage of by smugglers and human traffickers. Girls are at an especially high risk. These kids are considered fresh pickings–fresh meat to be crass. 
You could make the argument these detention centers function as a safe haven of a sorts for these children while they wait for their parents to go through the proper legal channels, which is an entirely different issue directly impacting these children’s lives. However, they operate as more of a junior prison.
Many of these kids have acquired PTSD from their experiences, a disorder which none of them have the ability to handle in a healthy manner, and likely do not possess the money nor resources to deal with it on a professional basis through therapists. Some children have even come forward about horrific abuse within the detention centers.
“(H)e was sometimes kept in handcuffs and then tied to a chair with a restraint placed over his face with holes so he could breathe. This punishment was described in at least five other declarations from children, including one who said he was left naked, strapped to the chair for more than two days,” according to Blake Ellis, Melanie Hicken and Bob Ortega of CNN, who detailed the experiences of anonymous migrant children. 
As a particularly traumatizing experience, these children are moved from one detention center to another under the cover of the night “because children will be less likely to try to run away. For the same reason, children are generally given little advance warning that they will be moved,” according to an anonymous center worker, as reported by Dickerson. 
These children are going through hell. They traveled away from hell, as some of the most dangerous countries in the world are in northern South America and Central America, only to come into an entirely new one.
Instead of the American dream, they have found their worst nightmare. These children traveled thousands of miles to pursue a better life, and our country, on the basis of human kindness and respect, should extend every helping hand we can.