New York Times
By Kirk Semple
June 17, 2014
For
more than a month, 16-year-old Cristian threaded his way from his home
in rural Guatemala to the United States, hoping to reunite with his
father, whom he had not
seen in nearly four years. Guided by smugglers, he rode in cars, buses
and trains, walked countless miles, dodged the authorities in three
countries, hid out in dreary safe houses and went days at a time without
food.
But
Cristian’s trip came to an abrupt halt in March, when he was corralled
on a patch of Texas ranchland by American law enforcements agents.
Now
the daunting trials of his migration have been replaced by a new set of
difficulties. Though he was released to his father, a kitchen worker in
a restaurant in Ulster
County, N.Y., Cristian has been ordered to appear in immigration court
for a deportation hearing and is trying to find a low-cost lawyer to
take his case while he also struggles to learn English, fit into a new
high school and reacquaint himself with his father.
“I pray that they don’t deport me,” said Cristian, who asked that his full name not be used because he remains undocumented.
Cristian
is one of the tens of thousands of unaccompanied minors who have
illegally crossed the border with Mexico in recent months, in a wave
that has overwhelmed immigration
officials and prompted the Obama administration to declare a
humanitarian crisis and open three emergency shelters, on military bases
in California, Oklahoma and Texas.
But
while the government’s response has been largely focused on the
Southwest, the surge of child migrants is quickly becoming a crisis
around the country. The fallout
is being felt most acutely in places with large immigrant populations,
like New York, where newly arrived children and their relatives are
flooding community groups, seeking help in fighting deportation orders,
getting health care, dealing with the psychological
traumas of migration, managing the challenges of family reunification
and enrolling in school.
“It’s
almost like a refugee crisis,” said Steven Choi, executive director of
the New York Immigration Coalition, an advocacy group.
Federal
officials will not reveal how many children they are holding, how many
are being released or where they are being sent. But in the New York
region, immigrant advocacy
organizations say they have seen a stunning rise in the number of
unaccompanied minors seeking help in the past several months.
“All
of a sudden it went from a trickle to more like a river,” said Anne
Pilsbury, director of Central American Legal Assistance in Brooklyn.
At
the Worker Justice Center of New York, a group based in Kingston, N.Y.,
that helps farmworkers and other low-wage workers, employees were
caught off guard by a similarly
sharp increase.
“We
are trying to triage,” said Emma Kreyche, organizing and advocacy
coordinator for the group. “I don’t think anyone really knows what the
scope of this is and how to
see what’s coming down the pike and figure out how to respond.”
Many
of the unaccompanied minors say they have been driven to leave their
home countries because of violence and the threat of gang recruitment.
Others have been motivated
by economic necessity, a desire to rejoin parents who came to the
United States years ago or by a perceived change in American policy that
would favor child immigrants. (The Obama administration has emphasized
that there has been no such policy change.)
Most
of the children who have been detained at the southwest border have
been channeled into deportation proceedings and, within several days,
handed over to the Department
of Health and Human Services, which cares for them until they can be
released to relatives or legal guardians in the United States.
The
majority of the departments’ 100 or so shelters are near the border,
but others are scattered around the country. At least two are in the New
York metropolitan area,
housing a total of about 300 children; they have been at capacity for
months, advocacy groups said.
A
spokesman for the Administration for Children and Families, the
division of the Department of Health and Human Services that oversees
the shelters, would not comment
on the department’s current capacity or whether the agency was planning
to expand regional shelter capacity.
Leo,
who also asked that his full name not be used because he remains
undocumented, spent about two months at a shelter in the New York area
waiting to be reunited with
his brother, who was living in Brooklyn. Leo had left his home in
Guatemala at the end of 2012, when he was 16, fleeing gangs in his
hometown and hoping to find work in the United States. After traveling
for three months he had been detained in Houston.
“I
wanted to better myself,” Leo, now 18, said during an interview at
Atlas: DIY, a center for immigrant youths in Brooklyn, where he is
taking English classes and getting
legal guidance.
Many
of the children who have been released from detention and wind up in
New York are funneled onto special monthly court dockets for minors.
Those who arrive at court
without a lawyer have the option of being screened by pro bono lawyers
who will try to identify possible grounds for relief from deportation,
such as political asylum, or for special visas for children who have
been victims of crime or abuse.
On
a recent Thursday morning, several dozen children clustered with their
parents and other relatives in a hallway outside an immigration
courtroom in downtown Manhattan.
Several immigrant advocacy groups share responsibility for handling the
special dockets, and in June the job fell to Safe Passage Project, a
nonprofit based at New York Law School that provides free legal counsel
to immigrant children facing deportation.
“Do
you have an attorney?” asked Lenni Benson, the founder and director of
Safe Passage, as she went from family to family introducing herself. “Do
you want a free attorney?”
Those without representation were led to a room where they were
interviewed by a team of lawyers and paralegals.
It
is unclear how many of the recently arrived minors will be allowed to
stay permanently in the United States. But Ms. Benson said that nearly
90 percent of the unaccompanied
minors her group encountered appeared to qualify for some form of
immigration relief. Lawyers at the Door, another New York City group
that provides free legal services to young immigrants, said that more
than half of the children it screened during a special
immigration court docket in May appeared to qualify for some form of
relief.
Other
groups who principally represent child immigrants also said the soaring
demand, combined with limited resources, was prompting them to pick
their cases carefully,
focusing on those that had the best chance of success.
Beyond
legal help, the immigrants have other urgent needs that are not
necessarily being met, including health care, psychological counseling
and educational support,
advocates said.
Mario
Russell, director of the Immigrant and Refugee Services Division for
Catholic Charities Community Services in New York, said a lot of the
children had suffered trauma,
either in their home countries or en route to the United States.
“Over
time, how do these kids receive the care that they need?” Mr. Russell
asked. “How many will be lost into their communities? How many are going
to be sent to work?
How many will not go to school? How many are going to be sick?”
Service
providers have begun discussing among themselves how to deal with the
surge at this end of the pipeline, and wondering where they might get
much-needed funding
to provide additional help for the growing population of distressed
immigrant children.
As
he considered the challenge, Mr. Russell remembered a case he had
several years ago. He had been working with a girl, an unauthorized
immigrant, to legalize her status.
Her deportation was dismissed and she was finally approved to receive a
green card. But before she received it, she dropped off Mr. Russell’s
radar.
“She just disappeared,” he recalled. “She could’ve been trafficked, working in an apple orchard. I have no idea.”
Mr. Russell was never able to locate her.
“Her card is still in my desk,” he said.
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
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