Can't you be in a crappy place and fear persecution for not affiliating with a gang or the like? That seems like it would fall under political persecution. If that's happening, are your kids more or less safe at home than they would be in transit? That's why I'm questioning your blanket statement that they are all bad parents.
IMO, no. That wouldn’t pass muster for me as a reason for claiming asylum. This might just be where my nationalist tendency to be more focused on our country than on others biasing my viewpoint. If our house was clean, sure. Driving through Baltimore and DC regularly has focused my attention internally and makes me not want to import additional poverty. It’s not sustainable. I want to see us lock it down, control it to only what benefits us, and focus on fixing our inner cities and rural areas here. We can’t even do that yet we want to try and fix Central and South America? No thanks.
I’m not going to argue the parenting aspect, I’ve seen some of this first hand when I lived on the border in Az. I caught some of these folks stealing water out of my water hose one night and almost dropped their *** because it startled and scared me. I let them get some water, gave them some food, and sent them on their way and called ICE. Now, that was me being single and it worked out. Also know of people who were straight up robbed by these kinds of folks. If I was home with my kids, I don’t know that I’d have taken the risk of having my kids subjected to what “could” happen. I know of some horror stories from briefings I received at JTF HQ in El Paso. It’s not all people trying to better their lives. The stuff the cartels are doing to these people are horrific. I can’t believe people would subject their kids to this kind of stuff. It would be akin to letting them play with rattle snakes.