Kirsten Powers: (Border) children's stories

Has America lost its humanity? I have to wonder after spending time with some of the Central American children at the center of our latest loud and ugly immigration debate.

While people throughout our country are demanding these tens of thousands of children be turned away at the border or flown back to some of the most violent countries in the world, the voices of the children involved are rarely heard. Federal rules, intended to stop the children from becoming political pawns, have backfired.

As long as journalists are blocked from learning the children's true stories, the debate will be dominated by caricatures as partisans fill in the blanks with their hopes and fears instead of the facts.

The kids who talked to me

The children I met are being temporarily housed on the campus of an East Coast Christian organization that serves at-risk youth. (I have agreed to keep their names private along with identifying details of the group caring for them.)

I met about 60 kids who arrived in the past three months — ranging from age 11 to 17 — in an auditorium where they shared their stories. They said they had all fled their home countries alone or with a sibling. They described perilous journeys that included clinging to the top of trains and riding in flatbed trucks, mostly in the dark of night. Five of the girls had traveled with their infants, and told harrowing tales of crossing the Rio Grande clutching their babies. Some came with the help of "coyotes" or smugglers, some not. Two 15-year-old boys said they walked from El Salvador alone.

These weren't rehearsed stories from children who have been coached on what to say to serve some agenda. If you were there, you could feel how real they were.

Their stories were accompanied by heart-wrenching sobbing. One 17-year-old Honduran girl shakily recounted how on the trip to the U.S., she watched a leader of the infamous Zeta cartel murder a man who didn't have enough money for the trip. Then, she said, the Zeta leader raped the murdered man's wife.

This kind of violence and horror unfortunately is not new for these children. The countries from which they are fleeing — Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador — are some the most dangerous regions in the world.

They shared story after story of being terrorized by gang violence.

One 16-year-old Honduran boy could barely speak through tears as he told how "gangsters said my cousin and I had to sell drugs with them and we said no. They took us to a cemetery and put a bullet through my cousin's head. They let me go and said the same thing would happen to me if I didn't sell drugs."

So he and his brother fled.

Not limited to U.S.

While Republicans claim that President Obama's immigration policy is luring these children to the United States, this is detached from reality:

First, countries in the region that are not beset by gang violence or staggering murder rates, such as Nicaragua, are not seeing a mass exodus of children.

Second, it's not just the U.S. that is experiencing an influx. There has been a 712% increase since 2008 in asylum applications from people from El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala to Mexico, Panama, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Belize.

The administrators housing the children told me that the hundreds of unaccompanied minors they've held since 2012 were uniformly well behaved. They've seen no issues with gangs, drugs or runaways.

One said, "The children are so grateful to be in America, to have clean clothes and beds and food."

The Bible studies and church services the organization provides aren't mandatory, but there is full attendance.

Grant asylum

Yet protests against the children have erupted across the country, including demands that these children not be provided housing in particular communities, as if they are dangerous criminals.

Many political leaders are arguing they should be sent back to the country they escaped. Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer said, "They should be sent home. They are illegal."

But it's not illegal to request asylum. What we are dealing with here is not an immigration problem, but a refugee crisis. The additional border agents or National Guard troops the GOP is screaming for make no sense because the children surrender as soon as they cross the border. They aren't trying to sneak in; they are trying to gain asylum. They've chosen the United States because about 90% of them have a family member or family friend here with whom they can live.

They also might have heard that the United States is a refuge for the persecuted and a beacon of hope to those who yearn to breathe free.

Or, at least, we used to be.

Kirsten Powers writes weekly for USA TODAY.

In addition to its own editorials, USA TODAY publishes diverse opinions from outside writers, including our Board of Contributors. To read more columns like this, go to the opinion front page or follow us on twitter @USATopinion or Facebook.