Thread: Shelter home for undocumented immigrant children

http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/metro/ ... 246e1.html

Brandy Ralston
KENS 5 Eyewitness News

They are undocumented children who came to this country. Some were abandoned by their coyotes, others unable to reach their families, all of them captured by authorities.

However, they're too young to go to jail, so what do U.S. officials do with the children? The KENS 5 I-Team gained exclusive access to the place where these children are kept for a rare glimpse inside.

The facility is just a short drive outside San Antonio, but the federal government is so concerned with protecting its whereabouts that the I-Team agreed not to reveal its location.

There, the I-Team found another side to the immigration issue and saw the search for a better life from a child's perspective.

"These kids are gonna come. They're going to keep coming, just out of desperation," said Maggie Gaytan, the shelter's director.

They are children that fill the halls of what has become their temporary home in the United States.

"Most of our children here, our clients here, are OTMs, meaning 'Other Than Mexicans.' Most of them are from Central America," Gaytan said.

Some of these children have traveled more than 3,000 miles to get to the United States from countries like Honduras, Costa Rica, Ecuador and even Albania.

"America. You know, everyone is seeking the American dream," Gaytan said.

However, like so many others who came here before them, these children were captured for being in the country illegally. The average age of the children here is 15 years old. They are on their own, with no parents to care for them, so the federal government sends them to this shelter.

"This is what we are. We're an unaccompanied minor program," Gaytan said.

Serving more than 700 children in just nine months, the facility has quite a task.

"We have children that we receive that haven't eaten in five or six days. Some of their shoes that they come with don't have any soles on them anymore. Their feet are very cracked and brittle and sore and bleeding," Gaytan said.

At the facility, children are guaranteed three hot meals a day, receive the medical care they need, pick out clothes and shoes, and are granted a phone call home.

"Just to let them (family members) know that they've arrived," Gaytan said.

At the shelter, children are learning skills they can use when they are released. The kids attend school, where officials teach classes such as English as a second language, math, art, and even shop class.

"In the facility itself, they've built every bunk bed in the shelter," Gaytan said.

The challenge, though, is reuniting the children with family members. Many times, those family members have also come to the United State illegally.

"We are not an immigration facility, and immigration is not going to be here when you come to pick up your child," Gaytan said.

While the children will eventually leave the shelter, their journey to stay in the United States legally has just begun.

"After the child leaves here, it's pretty much in God's hands, really, because we don't know what's going to happen to them," Gaytan said. "All you can say is 'buenos suerte,' — 'good luck.'"

If a person shows up to claim a child, he or she is put through an extensive background check before the child is released. The person also has to commit to follow up with court hearings and runs the risk of being deported themselves.

If a person shows up to claim a child, he or she is put through an extensive background check before the child is released. The person also has to commit to follow up with court hearings and runs the risk of being deported themselves

Exactly how do they do an "extensive background check" if the parent is illegal??

They should be immediately returned to Mexico and the other southern border countries who encroach on America's territory. Let their governments deal with them. I don't want to spend one more dime on these idiots.

These poor little darling are getting better treatment then most of
our homeless kids. I know and see kids here living in cars and
unwashed, and hungery; some parents; if its nice out; let them stay in the park all day so they are not getting beaten up at a shelter.

Send those kids back to their own country - charity begins at home.

Saul should be the first one to be sent to Mexico. His mother, Elvira Arellano, has already created an anti-American monster by sending him all over the U.S. to do her dirty work. If he is expelled, she will have no excuse to stay.