Rights group: Mexico not advising child migrants of rights

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexico does not comply with its own laws in how it handles unaccompanied child migrants who arrive in the country fleeing violence in Central America, a Human Rights Watch report said Thursday.

Since the United States pressured Mexico to step up detentions of migrants in recent years to reduce a surge reaching the U.S. border, the number of children detained in Mexico has risen dramatically.

"If the interest is enforcement, which it is, meaning arrest, detention and deportation, it is clearly in the interest of individual officials, agents, to make that as easy as possible," said Michael Bochenek, senior counsel to the children's rights division of Human Rights Watch and the report's author.