Immigrant children pose humanitarian crisis for US

A massive wave of immigrant children flooding into the United States across Mexico's border is posing a growing humanitarian crisis, and escalating into a political one.
      
More than 52,000 minors, the youngest only three or four years old, have been detained since October after crossing the border illegally, hoping that getting a foot on US soil will win them the right to stay.
      
The process of deporting a child who has arrived illegally and without any family members is long and complicated. So many take a chance on being allowed, eventually, to remain in the country.
      
Despite US President Barack Obama's best efforts to persuade them not to try their luck, on the basis that they will eventually be thrown out, hundreds of children keep arriving daily across the Mexican border, most from Central American countries plagued by gang violence and poverty.
     
In Texas and Arizona, the epicenter of the crisis, detention centers and military bases are full up, a border guard source told AFP, requesting anonymity.
      
Children are piled up waiting for authorities to start the process of sending them back to their home countries, or at least to give them a better conditions until they do.        

The American Red Cross told AFP it is providing blankets and basic hygiene kits to US authorities for detained children, who often arrive exhausted and famished after dangerous trips of thousands of kilometers from Central America.   
    
According to Californian non-governmental organization (NGO) Hermandad Mexicana, Washington should have foreseen the current crisis "given the tide of children (without parents) who have arrived in the country in recent years."...