Los Angeles Times
By Cindy Carcamo and Molly Hennessy-Fiske
June 7, 2014
At
least 1,000 unaccompanied children who crossed illegally into the
United States through Texas are being taken to a makeshift emergency
shelter in Arizona over the weekend,
the latest effort by authorities scrambling to handle what has been
described as a humanitarian crisis.
Though
overall illegal immigration has declined in recent years, two waves —
one of unaccompanied children, another of parents with children — have
presented a challenge
for officials who say they don't have the facilities in the Southwest
to detain these groups.
The
presence of unaccompanied migrant children is not new, but the surge in
recent months has overloaded Border Patrol stations and detention
facilities, particularly
in Texas. Most of the children come from Central America, a region long
plagued with poverty but now having to grapple with escalating drug
cartel and gang violence.
On
Saturday alone, 367 children were taken from Texas to a processing
center run by U.S. Customs and Border Protection in Nogales, Ariz.,
Andrew Wilder, spokesman for
Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer, said Saturday.
A
day before, 432 unaccompanied minors were taken to the same facility
and another 367 are expected Sunday. "We fully expect this crisis to
continue because there is no
solution to fix it," Wilder said.
Brewer
blasted the transfers and, in a letter to President Obama, complained
that she learned of the operation through the media, not from his
administration.
She has yet to hear back from Obama, Wilder said.
In
a statement Friday, the Republican governor said: "This is a crisis of
the federal government's creation, and the fact that the border remains
unsecure — now apparently
intentionally — while this operation continues full-steam ahead is
deplorable."
The
unaccompanied children housed in Nogales are supposed to stay for up to
72 hours before they are sent to longer-term facilities at military
installations in California,
Texas and Oklahoma.
Last
week, immigration officials gave reporters a tour of the shelter at
Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio. The 1,015 youths at the facility
range in age from 12
to 17. Among them was a boy who appeared to be on the younger side,
with spiky black hair and a red T-shirt.
He
listened as a caseworker, her laptop propped on the table between them,
explained that she would help with his paperwork. The government would
attempt to place him
with relatives or an approved sponsor while his case made its way
through immigration court.
"You have to be patient," she said.
The
shelter first opened two years ago to cope with an earlier surge of
immigrant minors. The facility closed after two months as officials
found ways to more quickly
place youths. But two weeks ago, overwhelmed again by a new surge of
unaccompanied minors, officials reopened the shelter.
It's
already approaching its capacity of 1,200. Another shelter, capable of
housing 600 youths, opened Friday at Port Hueneme in California.
Immigrant
advocates say they understand that the government is pressed to house
young migrants, and that the shelters are stopgap measures. But they
fear the youths may
languish in the institutional settings.
The
young migrants' ranks have tripled in five years, and could reach a new
high of 60,000 this year — and more than double that the following
year. By then, the costs
of shelters and resettlement could reach $2.28 billion.
Last
week, the president directed the heads of the Department of Homeland
Security and Federal Emergency Management Agency to join in an
interagency Unified Coordination
Group to address the growing numbers of unaccompanied young migrants.
Administration officials characterized the trend as an "urgent
humanitarian situation."
At Lackland, the spiky-haired boy's identity and origins, like scores of others, remained a mystery.
Before
he arrived at Lackland, he was screened for potential mental health
issues, vaccinated and checked for lice and scabies. Once here, he was
assigned to a 60-bed
dorm. Each bed comes with a gray metal locker that occupants attempt to
personalize with drawings, paper lanterns and flowers.
Judith
Elena Mendez Rivera wrote her name on a sign attached to her bed, No.
46, along with "El Salvador" and "100% Guanaca," slang for Salvadoran.
"God is always with us in the good and the bad," said another handwritten sign nearby.
"Listen God," a third homemade sign exhorted in Spanish, "and let this torment end soon."
It's
not clear how quickly youth at the shelter will be released to be
placed with relatives and sponsors. Jesus Garcia, the federal Health and
Human Services official
leading the shelter tour Thursday, said youth are only released to
"vetted family or sponsors."
Maria
Woltjen, director of the Young Center for Immigrant Children's Rights
in Chicago, says she worries that the youths will miss out on the legal
assistance, counseling
and care they need.
"For
the ones fleeing violence, who have been harmed or legitimately fear
harm in their home country, how will we know?" she said. "Those kids
will fall through the cracks."
On
Friday, Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. announced the start of a new
effort, coordinated with the AmeriCorps community service program, to
provide about 100 lawyers and
paralegals to immigrant children.
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
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