Thread: TN: Wave of migrant kids reaches area: Dozens are enrolled in school here and in Dalt

Wave of migrant kids reaches area: Dozens are enrolled in school here and in Dalton


By Tyler Jett, Yolanda Putman
Sunday, August 10, 2014

As students returned to area schools last week, teachers were greeted with some fresh faces.

For some of those faces, the adjustment will be harsher than for most. Hamilton County School officials say at least 30 unaccompanied immigrant children -- part of the wave that has entered the country illegally in the past nine months -- are enrolled in the school system this year.

In Dalton, Ga., meanwhile, 40 immigrant children have enrolled in the system's Newcomer Academy, a program officials launched this year when they noticed the wave of children flocking to the city. The academy, which is at Morris Innovative High School, is filled with students between the ages of 13 and 19.

Caroline Woodason, Dalton's assistant director of school support, expects the number of students enrolled in the academy to increase. She said some of them cross the border as unaccompanied minors.

These local students are among some 63,000 children who have come into the country since October and were funneled to detention centers where they initially were held.

President Barack Obama has referred to the influx of children as a "humanitarian crisis." The growing number of kids has raised sympathy as well as anti-immigrant sentiment, as well as questions about whether they should be allowed to remain in the country or be sent back where they came from. Primarily they arrive in the U.S. from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, where gang violence is pervasive.

There has been no word from the federal government on where the kids sent to Georgia and Tennessee have ended up. Thursday's news from Hamilton County Schools was one of the first indications that some of the children are in Chattanooga.

In Hamilton County, most are teenage boys enrolled at Howard and East Ridge high schools, said Julie Ann Legg, director of English for Speakers of Other Languages in the county schools.

Legg was among more than a dozen community leaders who met at Chattanooga State Community College to learn how to assist the children and other immigrants who speak English as a second language. They said there's a good chance that more such children will end up here.

Several of the leaders in attendance said they want to change public perception of the immigrants.

Most people don't understand the violence and desperate conditions they're trying to escape, said Gladys Pineda-Loher, director of community outreach for Chattanooga State.

She told the story of two teens who came to Chattanooga from Guatemala. Their parents and older brother were shot to death while they hid in another room, she said.

The parents told them to run and they thought they could find safety in the United States.

"I can't look at this as a political situation," said Pineda-Loher. "They're trying to survive."

The experience of the children Pineda-Loher met are common to the immigrants coming into the school system, said Legg.

"The bottom line is that the kids are not safe where they are," Legg said. "It's a hostile environment. This is a safety issue."

The students need common items such as school clothes and supplies, but their biggest unmet need is emotional support, said Legg.

Many of the teens are living with sponsors or foster parents, said Pineda-Loher.

Several are with family members, but they're still strangers. In some cases, the children had never laid eyes on their relatives before, Legg said.

The family members care for the children, including providing for health care and making sure they enroll in school.

"They have no support system," she said. "Just get to know them. Find out their interests."

In Dalton, school officials decided to create the Newcomer Academy after noticing a group of young boys trickling into the community beginning in October. She said the boys could not speak English. And even if they could, their academic level was behind an average American student of their age.

On the first day of school Thursday, Woodason said, the academy's three teachers taught the students how to introduce themselves in English. Eventually, the groups will be divided into three classrooms, based not on their age but on their comprehension of English and academic level.

The lowest-level students will learn things usually taught in first-grade classrooms -- what colors are, what shapes are and how to count, for example. The highest-level students will be in the equivalent of a fourth-grade classroom.

Most of the students come from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. Some don't speak Spanish. They come from isolated villages in the mountains of Guatemala, where natives still speak Mayan dialects.
Woodason said the teachers don't know how to speak that language, but other local students who immigrated years ago and still know the dialect are helping out.

At the meeting at Chattanooga State on Thursday, many community leaders offered to help:

• One local company offered computers for use in Latino churches.

• Becky Witt, with the Hamilton County Baptist Association and the St. Andrews Center, provides English as a Second Language classes.

• Police officers told the group about an Explorer program for youths ages 12 to 21 in which they receive mentoring.

• Pineda-Loher said she wants to organize a Latino Festival for 2015 and to create a directory of services offered to the immigrant community.

A representative from the city's Office of Multicultural Affairs also attended.
"We just want to be part of the solution," said Pineda-Loher, who hosted the meeting.

"The situation in Central America is affecting us," she said, "and we want to be part of the solution in a good way."

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published Thursday, July 31st, 2014
by Yolanda Putman

The mystery deepens. Or maybe it's not a mystery at all.

More than 760 unaccompanied immigrant children were sent to Tennessee after crossing the U.S. border in the past year or so with tens of thousands of others.

But only a handful of the 760 children can be accounted for.

One of them is in Chattanooga, according to Jennifer Cornwell, executive director of Bridge Refugee Services, which is headquartered in Knoxville and handles such services in East Tennessee.

Four of the unaccompanied children are in Loudon and Sevier counties near Knoxville, said Cornwell.

Another four are in MiddleTennessee, according to Kellye Branson, director of Refugee and Immigration Services at Catholic Charities of Tennessee Inc.

As for the rest, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and the Tennessee Immigrant & Refugee Rights Coalition were among the state and national agencies that said they don't know where the children are.

Gov. Bill Haslam's office has sent a letter asking President Barack Obama for more information about the children coming into the state and their whereabouts. A number of lawmakers have done so as well.

"They're under my radar," Cornwell said of the remaining children. But that might not be unusual because, though the children arrived unaccompanied, they may know someone here.

"The vast majority of these kids are coming because they already know someone who is here, so they're not in foster care and things like that that people are worried about," said Cornwell.

Typically, unaccompanied children are placed in a shelter once arriving in the U.S.

There, Cornwell said, representatives of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops meet with the children and try to learn of family members they have in the United States. Those children are placed with their families. If a child comes without a family member, another sponsor often takes the child.

Family members can pick up the children directly from detention centers, so they don't always go through an agency, said Branson.

Cornwell said her agency doesn't get involved until the children are in the state and placed with a family member or sponsor. Then Bridge goes to the child to make sure he has the services needed and his living arrangements are safe.

Branson said Catholic Charities is called in to follow up on the care of a child if he or she has a mental health or a medical condition requiring continuing care.

Unaccompanied minors are undocumented, so they don't qualify for state health care or assistance like food stamps. It's up to family members or sponsors to provide health care, get them enrolled in school and meet their other needs, Cornwell said.

All of the children who have come to Southeast Tennessee have arrived within the past year, said Cornwell. The youngest unaccompanied child is age 4.

All of them have different stories. Some come for safety. Some have other reasons, said Cornwell.

Because of the hundreds of children reported in the state, Cornwell said she expects more children will wind up in Southeast Tennessee.


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