The roots of the problem – spurred by poor economic conditions and violence in Central America, weak enforcement of Mexico’s borders, powerful smuggling networks and a campaign of misinformation about U.S. immigration policies – will likely demand years of American engagement in Central America. In the meantime, U.S. officials must follow laws that demand that the government consider the best interests of the children once they cross the border and get processed into an already overburdened system.“It is almost an impossible mission” for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP), W. Ralph Basham, who was the CBP commissioner from 2006 to 2009 is now a founding partner of the Command Consulting Group, told CBS News. “You have parents who are willing to allow their children to be turned over to, in many cases, total strangers, sometimes coyotes, transporting them through multiple countries in order to dump them on the doorstep of the United States. It’s a very difficult thing for the United States to turn them away.”Legally, the United States cannot turn away many of the 52,000 children who have crossed the U.S.-Mexico border alone since the beginning of last October. Border patrol agents can turn back any Mexican children at the border but those from non-contiguous countries – mostly Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala – are taken into custody and must be transferred into the care of the Office of Refugee Resettlement (an agency within the Health and Human Services (HHS) Department). They will care for the children while they seek to place them with relatives or guardians within the United States as they await deportation proceedings.