EL PASO, Texas – A Catholic bishop whose Texas diocese is receiving many of the youths crossing the border into the U.S. illegally says many of them are fleeing violence in Central America.
El Paso Bishop Mark Seitz told ABC’s “This Week” that on a fact-finding trip he made late last year to Mexico and Central America, two teenagers from Honduras told him that gangs had threatened to kill them if they didn’t join. He said they were among many people who told him that their lives were directly threatened.
Seitz compared young Central American refugees to people jumping from a burning building and looking for a safe place to land. He said the U.S. should treat them as asylum seekers rather than people who have entered the country illegally.
