Behind the global furor over America’s “zero tolerance” immigration policy are tens of thousands of adults and children — most of them from Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras — who have risked extortion and sexual violence along the journey, and now separation from their families upon arrival. So why take those risks to reach the U.S.?

The big picture: This is not just a U.S. immigration crisis —it’s a Central American refugee crisis which started around 2013 and has continued to this day. In these countries, fear is often the primary motivator, rather than economic incentives.

---

By the numbers

• Families: Nearly 200,000 parents and children have been apprehended crossing the Southern border from Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras in under three years, according to Customs and Border Protection data.
• Unaccompanied minors: Beginning in 2013, the number of children apprehended at the border without a parent has spiked, with more than 200,000 coming from the three countries since that time. This year, the vast majority have come from Guatemala.
• As these numbers have risen, there has been a dramatic decline in apprehensions of Mexicans, both among children and adults. In 2000, 98% of those apprehended at the southern border were Mexican. Last year, just 42% were.
• For the first time last year, the U.S. received more asylum claims than any other country in the world, according to new UN data, with 43% coming from Central and North America. However, the U.S. only made decisions on one-fifth of those applications, leaving hundreds of thousands in limbo.

Behind the numbers

• El Salvador has by far the highest murder rate in the world. Rates of violent death there are higher than in every war-torn country except Syria, according to a recent study.
• Honduras is second, just above Venezuela, which is in the midst one of the world’s largest migrant crises.
• Guatemala is 11th, with a rate that is still 30 times higher than those of countries like Germany and the U.K.
• There are more than 50,000 members of violent gangs across the three countries, per the International Crisis Group. Extortion is a fact of daily life in cities like San Salvador and Tegucigalpa, and carries with it the threat of violence. Turf wars between two Salvadoran gangs have displaced some 300,000 people, per the AP.

What it looks like: A Salvadoran woman waiting in Tijuana with her husband and three children, one of whom is just ten months old, told El Pais that the family fled after she was repeatedly threatened by a gang member who had become obsessed with her. She said the child separation policy “hasn’t changed my mind” about trying to cross into the U.S. and seek asylum.

From The New York Times:

The Department of Health and Human Services on Thursday asked the Pentagon to make preparations to house as many as 20,000 unaccompanied migrant children on American military bases, a United States official said.

“Zero-tolerance” policies never work well. These preparations bode a humanitarian nightmare — something like a junior version of Guantanamo Bay.

Wednesday’s order does not revoke the “zero tolerance” policy, does not apply to children already separated from family and will drastically expand the number of people detained in immigration internment camps.

Your coffee cups are costing us.

President Trump has signed an executive order intended to end the child migration crisis he created, only five days after telling Fox News that he was powerless to use an executive order to fix it.

The bottom line: Despite Trump's deflections — that his administration was simply enforcing existing law, or that any change would have to be enacted by Congress — by signing this executive order, Trump is ending a crisis created entirely by his own administration.

---

The original law

• In 1997, the Clinton administration agreed to The Flores Settlement, which removed unaccompanied minors from child immigration shelters and placed them with their parents or relatives, or the "least restrictive" shelter.
• In 2008, the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act enacted rules on how unaccompanied children should be treated after crossing the border in order to avoid them being trafficked.
• In 2015, the 9th Circuit Appeals Court set a general standard that, under the Flores Settlement, the government cannot hold accompanied or unaccompanied minors in custody for more than 20 days. However, the ruling did not apply to their parents. Therefore, immigration enforcement could either release the whole family into the U.S. or release the children and keep the parents in detention.

Go deeper: How Trump can separate migrant families.

The Trump administration's family separation policy

• Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced the administration's "zero tolerance" policy, which aggressively enforced an existing law that makes illegal border crossing a federal misdemeanor, with the goal of criminally prosecuting 100% of immigrants that violate the law.
• With every adult immigrant being turned over after crossing the border for federal prosecution, children were then separated from their families and sent elsewhere while their parents were criminally charged.
• The "zero-tolerance" policy is not law, and could be changed by the executive branch at any time.

Go deeper: What happens when families cross the border.

Trump's days of deflection

• President Trump kicked the issue to Congress. A former GOP leadership aide told Axios' Caitlin Owens: "It's the legislative strategy of rolling a grenade into the room."
• Trump has also tried to blame Democrats for the policy, saying they are "PROTECTING MS-13 THUGS," and "won't give us the votes needed to pass good immigration legislation."
• He praised Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen for her appearance before the press — in which she defended the policy as upholding laws passed by Congress — as "recommending changes to obsolete & nasty laws, which force family separation."
• He started turning on it, but still didn't want to look weak. A senior administration official told Axios' Mike Allen and Jonathan Swan that Trump "feels boxed in, is frustrated and knows it's bad politics — but also understands it's not a fight he can back down from."

The state of play

After days of backlash — from top Republicans, the Pope, Republican and Democratic governors, former First Lady Laura Bush, and even some in the tech industry — Trump signed an executive order aimed at halting the family separation portion of the "zero-tolerance" policy, which has been his policy from day one, and which he had the power to change all along.

Tale note: At the end of the day, Trump's order doesn't touch Sessions' "zero-tolerance" policy.

Inside the room with Axios' Jonathan Swan:

• "As with so many Trump decisions, this one has been a moment-by-moment proposition, driven by, and reactive to, the media."
• "Sources who've been in the room with Trump tell me he realizes the overwhelming weight of the imagery of the children means he can't just ride this out as he might have originally thought he could. Anybody saying Trump thinks the family separation issue is a political winner hasn't been talking to him."
• "He's being whipsawed between his instincts to want to be 'tough' on the border — and not be seen to be retreating from that — and the pressure coming from all corners: Republicans and Democrats in Congress, his wife Melania, his daughter Ivanka, and the TVs that are constantly playing in his White House residence and in the dining room adjoining the Oval Office."