Delaware immigration services feel the pressure
Leigh Giangreco, DelmarvaNow 11:32 a.m. EDT August 7, 2014


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(Photo: Staff photo by Joe Lamberti)


Until this December, Suzanne Murphy rarely saw children walk into her office at the Murphy Law Firm in Georgetown.

Since then, the immigration and nationality law firm has seen about 20 juveniles a month who are in removal proceedings. Most come from Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras, where gang violence, poverty and government corruption has forced more than 40,000 children to flee their homes.

“We’ve noticed a marked increase in the number of kids,” she said. “We find that most of them do not want to be in their country because it’s too dangerous. A lot of them have seen a lot of violence and horrible things.”

Suzanne Murphy, business manager at the law firm, and her husband, Theodore Murphy, managing attorney, are based in Pennsylvania but work at the Georgetown office twice a week. The recent influx of immigrants didn’t happen overnight, Theodore Murphy said. In the last six years, a power vacuum in Central America’s northern triangle has allowed drug cartels to flourish, he said.

Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.), who chairs the U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, emphasized the Central American migration has been building over time. Children are migrating both north and south in search of economic opportunity, he said.

“This is not a new phenomenon,” he said. “There’s a lack of hope. We have prosecutors who don’t prosecute, prisons which neither punish nor rehabilitate and extortion is rampant.”

Many of Theodore Murphy’s clients under the age of 18 are fleeing rape, forced prostitution and labor.

“I have one client who at the age of 6, was forced by his own family into working in the poppy fields to make heroin,” he said.

Some of the firm’s cases are referred by La Esperanza, a Georgetown-based nonprofit providing immigration, victim services and education for the Hispanic community.

La Esperanza handles many U visa cases, which include immigrants who have been victims of a crime within the U.S., but refers other cases to outside lawyers, said Mayra Cruz, who works for the nonprofit’s victim immigration assistance.

For years, Central American immigrants have established a community in Georgetown and throughout Sussex County. La Esperanza has always received immigrants from the region, but the organization has seen an increase since January, Cruz said. More immigrants from Honduras, including teens and those in their early 20s with young children, have also arrived in the past year.

“It’s definitely a strain,” she said. “We do have limited staff. It’s been a big strain on us because a lot of families need help and there’s not enough resources in southern Delaware.”

At Castaneda Planzer LLC, an immigration law firm Salisbury, the rise in cases has not stretched attorney Steven Planzer. The number of clients Planzer has received has been a little bit above steady, he said.

“It’s not an explosion as I thought it would be,” he said. “You hear about the crisis at the border, but the Delmarva area is a small community, so the impact is not as great.”

Planzer describes a gradual increase in clients from Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras. Before panic grew this year over the number of Central American children migrating north, he noticed a rise in juvenile clients last summer. Today, about one in 20 of his clients are juveniles and he has created a section of his office to address them.

“The surprising thing about these kids is how a lot of them grow up very fast,” he said. “Physically they’re children, but mentally and sort of emotionally, they’re very stoic, very much like adults.”

While local lawyers have seen more immigrants walk through their offices, it’s difficult for Hispanic communities to see a difference in the number of immigrants living in their neighborhoods. On July 24, Gov. Jack Markell announced 117 unaccompanied minors will be placed with families in Delaware. Some of the juveniles may enroll in public schools while awaiting processing, as immigrant children normally have in the past, he wrote.

Some faith-based organizations in Delaware are still waiting to determine their role in the border crisis. Catholic Charities in Wilmington has not heard from any clients, but the agency is working to find out how it can help the children, said Maria Mesias, who coordinates immigration and refugee resettlement for the organization.

At Bethel United Methodist Church in Georgetown, the Rev. René Knight said he has not seen new faces in the pews. Most of the teenagers who have arrived in the past five months have blended in with extended families in the area, he said. Knight did not share how many in his congregation are undocumented, but described the community as a mix of legal statuses.

Allison Burris Castellanos, a Georgetown resident, said the recent migration doesn’t feel any different than it has for the past 20 years.

“If you put it in the bigger context, Sussex County is growing,” she said. “As more people come, that’s going to put a strain on everything we have, but I don’t think this particular group is going to put a strain.”

lgiangrec@dmg.gannett.com
302-537-1881, ext. 204

http://www.delmarvanow.com/story/new...ants/13720557/