Lauren Markham

What happens when immigrant-rights advocates reach a breaking point?

San Salvador’s upstart mayor, Nayib Bukele, has promised a new way forward for a city besieged by decades of violence. His biggest obstacle, however, may not be the city’s gangs, but the city’s idea of itself.

The second installment of #VQRTrueStory—our new social-media experiment in which stories and images cross platforms, from Instagram to the website to the magazine—features Lauren Markham reporting on migrants in Central America.

How chefs claim their creative turf on Instagram.

The surge in the number of unaccompanied minors crossing the US border is so alarming that President Barack Obama described it as “an urgent humanitarian situation.” Following the president’s comments, the federal government announced a $2 million legal-aid program to help provide legal assistance to these kids, who normally must navigate the immigration-court system without representation. Given the overwhelming number of these kids, how far can $2 million go?

In early June, President Obama declared the wave of unaccompanied minors crossing illegally into the US—a number expected to reach 90,000 this year—an “urgent humanitarian situation.” While FEMA now coordinates their basic care, the federal government announced a paltry $2 million legal-aid program to provide unaccompanied minors legal representation—something the vast majority of them do not receive. Last year, Lauren Markham reported from the Rio Grande Valley on the legal limbo in which thousands of these kids—many of whom might qualify for asylum—find themselves.

Children crossing the border alone are one of the fastest-growing and most vulnerable demographics of undocumented immigrants in the United States. In recent years, the number of unaccompanied minors transferred from DHS to the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) has more than doubled, from 6,560 in fiscal year 2011 to 13,625 in fiscal year 2012—and more than 14,000 transferred to ORR in the eight months since then.