Mexico deports unaccompanied minors

John Stanton has a Buzzfeed article about deportations:

Mexican officials have deported more than thirteen thousand of the fourteen thousand undocumented, unaccompanied minors who have been caught at Mexico’s southern border, a rate significantly higher than in the United States, according to government sources familiar with the situation.
Additionally, Mexican authorities have deported more than sixty-four thousand of the estimated sixty-nine thousand adults that have been detained along their southern border this year. Those numbers stand in stark contrast to the deportation of minor immigrants from the United States: none of the more than sixty thousand Central American minors detained this year have been deported.
According to a Department of Homeland Security spokesman, those minors— who are estimated to total as many as ninety thousand by year’s end— must first make their way through the legal system, which has seen significant backlogs, because they qualify to apply for asylum status. “They are subject to removal, and are all issued Notices to Appear in immigration court but, due to the current backlog in the courts, a minor encountered this year wouldn’t have yet had their day in immigration court. So all the minors encountered this year still have their cases pending,” the spokesman told BuzzFeed.
According to Mexican government sources, the vast majority of unaccompanied minors detained at the country’s southern border comes from Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador, the majority are between the ages of twelve and seventeen, and most are boys. Government officials provide the minors with temporary shelter, food, clothing, and medical treatment while in custody.
Most unaccompanied minors are returned to their country of origin by plane by Mexican authorities, while Central American children who are accompanied by an adult family member are also provided with bus tickets to their countries of origin.
Of the thousand minors who have not been deported from Mexico, some are applying for asylum in Mexico, while others have petitioned to be allowed to travel to the US border in order to be reunited with family in the United States.
A Mexican government spokesman declined to comment for this story. But a fact sheet prepared by the government on its efforts to stem the flow of minor immigrants notes that starting in July of 2014, Mexico began implementing a series of new measures focused on its southern border with Belize and Guatemala, including increased checkpoints, and additional immigrant shelters and medical services.
However, one Mexican official noted that the shift of emphasis by the government to its southern border comes as migration levels of Mexican nationals into the United States is a net zero, meaning the numbers of Mexicans immigrating into the country equal the number moving back to their home country.

Rico says he wonders why, if they can do it, why can't we? (But thankfully, they are, otherwise we'd have a million of 'em crossing the Rio Grande...